It’s officially the summer break for Formula 1 teams, drivers and the thousands of workers that join them for the 24-stop trip around the world, meaning the action is as dry as the desert that surrounds Sakhir. With three weeks of pure R&R to enjoy, there is a limited number of topics to discuss other than the driver market and the incoming engine regulations for the 2026 season. Except, of course, analysing how the drivers have performed so far in 2025 with our F1 Mid-Season Driver Rankings.
F1 fans have been treated to 14 action-packed races to watch and enjoy, with McLaren pair Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris dominating at the front, winning 11 of those between them (Piastri 6-5 Norris). The Papaya pair will battle it out for the right to be called world champion, with four-time Drivers’ Championship winner Max Verstappen all but mathematically out of the equation, in the second half of the season and with only nine points separating leader Piastri and Norris, it’s still all to play for.
The overwhelming consensus suggests that the best is yet to come from the 2025 season and that defining moment of the campaign is yet to arrive. There’s still a few days to go before racing returns, but fortunately, Total Motorsport have a way to keep you entertained. In Part I of our Mid-Season Driver Rankings, we’re discussing everything that’s happened up to now and how that affects our top 10, starting with 10th to 6th.
We asked our expert panellists from our official podcast, The Total Motorsport F1 Show, to examine the drivers carefully and rank their drivers from 10th to 1st. Presenter Joe Krishnan, along with F1 experts Ewan Gale and Brandon Sutton, discussed their picks at length in the podcast episode, which you can listen to below. Alternatively, scroll down to continue reading.
*Disclaimer: Some of the opinions below were not included in the podcast but have been subsequently added for the purposes of this article
10th
JOE KRISHNAN: Pierre Gasly
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“I have agreed with Ewan’s call on Gasly because how has he managed to drag that woeful Alpine into the top 10 once, let alone scoring 20 points for them? It’s beyond me. Jack Doohan and Franco Colapinto haven’t got a single point between them. So full marks to Gasly for just reducing the embarrassment that has been Alpine’s season so far. Let’s hope in the second half, they can give him a car that is actually worthy of his talent.”
EWAN GALE: Pierre Gasly
“Gasly deserves to be in the top 10. He’s done a really good job in a car that lately isn’t where it needs to be for Alpine. There’s so much going behind the scenes at that team as well, but as usual, Gasly rolls his socks up and gets on with the job. I think he’s again proven that he’s unlucky in his placement, as he has been for a lot of his career, and probably deserves more. To be quite frank, I think he deserves to be fighting for podiums and wins with the talent that he’s displayed so far. But taking the machinery he’s been dealt with into mind, I’d put him in at 10th.”
BRANDON SUTTON: Nico Hulkenberg
“I thought it could be give or take between a few drivers, and considering Hulkenberg‘s performance in the British Grand Prix, that’s what swung it for me. He’s had a lot of big results. He’s had some good results in Australia and Spain, to go along with Britain, in the Sauber car that many wouldn’t have expected much from. And yeah, it looks like he’s adapted best to a new team out of all of the ones that have switched. The only reason that he’s not higher is he is being matched in his race head to head by a rookie, and the qualifying head is 10-7, which you’d probably expect a bigger margin to feel like there could be more left on the table. But he has done a good season so far, and he is 37 years old as well.”
9th
JOE: Esteban Ocon
“This goes against my very ethos because I hate long-lasting tyres and want them eradicated from F1. But I do appreciate the skill involved in terms of protecting them during a race and still being competitive – and I think there’s probably no other driver on the grid that can make a set of tyres last longer than Ocon. He somehow did 55 laps on a set of hards in Hungary, but that’s definitely not the first time he’s been asked to go beyond the scope of what’s deemed possible by Pirelli. It’s half the reason he’s 10th in the championship. I think it’s fair to say he had a lot of doubters and critics when he left Alpine after the fallout with Gasly, and Ocon is not the easiest team-mate to get along with. But no one can understate his ability and dedicating to pulling in the points for Haas.”
EWAN: Nico Hulkenberg
“Positions from 7-12 of the rankings are a much of a muchness. You mentioned Hulkenberg being matched by rookie and Hulkenberg is my ninth. It’s much is the same reason why Brandon has put him where he has is. He just gets an edge by the fact that he extracted the performance when he needed to bag the points in those consecutive races from Spain onwards, and haul Sauber up the Constructors’ Championship. But he is behind Gabriel Bortoleto, who’s unlucky not to make my top 10. He’s behind on qualifying head to head and matched on race head to head. It’s just Hulkenberg’s done what he needed to do when the team was in a position to capitalise, and that’s why he goes ninth for me, showing every reason why he’s still in the sport. He came back a few years ago, and he’s exactly why Sauber went and got him for this season.”
BRANDON: Isack Hadjar
“I went back to the pre-season expectations around him, surrounding his age, and a lot of people were questioning his temperament. So they’ve heard from Formula Two his angry radio as he gets when he’s frustrated, and he’s done that in Formula One, but it doesn’t seem to affect his driving too much. So with that in mind and the question marks around his composure, he was largely written off, and he’s silenced his critics. He’s 12-5 against his teammates in qualifying, 11-5 in races. He’s had mentioned over Liam Lawson, he wasn’t a million miles slower than Yuki Tsunoda, who was in his third or fourth year with the team at that point, and he’s yet to be out in in Q1 in qualifying, which actually shocked me when I realised that was a stat. So outside of Kimi Antonelli, he’s got the most rookie points, and Antonelli is running in a Mercedes, so it’s very tall order to beat Antonelli. Apart from his errors in Australia, as Ewan mentioned, and the British Grand Prix when he crashed into back of Antonelli, Hadjar’s had some great drives. He was sixth in Monaco, and we know how tough Monaco is to get qualifying lap on the board. Then in Japan, he was eighth, and he was seventh in Spain. So it’s not as though he’s just doing just enough, he’s going beyond.”
8th
JOE: Gabriel Bortoleto
“Even as an F2 champion – and I don’t think there’s ever been less hype placed upon a junior series winner – I had my doubts about him joining Sauber. Mainly because I didn’t believe that the environment, with so much change going in the background, would be the best for him. But it’s been an amazing season for Bortoleto and he’s settled so well into the sport. There is no denying he is quick and the fact he’s been quicker than Hulkenberg since the podium in Silverstone is impressive. With Alonso guiding him, I’m convinced he’s destined to achieve big things in this sport – maybe a future move to Ferrari when Lewis Hamilton packs it in.”
EWAN: Fernando Alonso
“It’s qualifying when he has been on it, and when the car has come together. He was sixth on the grid in Canada, for example. He’s right up there. It’s reminded me a little bit of Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen in the Haas over the past two years, where they show they’ve got the pace on a Saturday, and then the car lets them down on the Sunday, and they tend to fall back a little bit. Joe alluded to the idea that Alonso wasn’t really showing at the start of season. Well, it’s hard to show it when your car keeps going kaput. So Alonso has been just as good as ever, really. I don’t see any decline in his ability behind the car. He’s been biffed a couple of times, he got turned around by Lawson in Miami, for example. It’s just because the points haven’t been free flowing. It doesn’t mean that he’s been doing anything wrong, per se. He’s still extracting more out of the Aston Martin than Lance Stroll, weekend to weekend, even though Stroll, actually has had one of his better seasons. He’s been more consistent, he’s made less mistakes, and he’s shown a good show of pace across many of the races. But Alonso is still ahead, and I think that shows the level that Alonso is operating at the moment.”
BRANDON: Fernando Alonso
“Alonso had that crash in Australia, where there was gravel that was kicked onto a truck. So there’s a bit of a give or take about whether that was driver error. But then again, half of the grid crashed in that race. So if you want to hold that against them, you can do. I personally chose not to. And then in China, Stroll scored points there. But Alonso’s breaks failed on like that too. So those early chances to miss the points was Stroll was getting the rub of the green in terms of strategy. of when he’s chosen to pit or some kind of misfortune before for Alonso. That that made it look a lot worse than what it really was for Alonso at the start of the season. But since Aston Martin have picked up the pace a bit more, he’s been getting the massive amount of it again, like in the last six races. He scored points in five of them, and he had that weekend in Hungary, where he’s qualified fourth or fifth on the grid and then converted into the same result the next day. And I think you can see that he’s not losing pace relative to Stroll, because Stroll’s yet to out qualify him. Alonso is still showing he’s got what it takes. The only thing that I’ve like offset it by about not putting him higher is the fact that his team-mate is strong, and Alonso is 44, so he is a bit harder to tell when they have more performance left on the table.”
7th
JOE: Isack Hadjar
“He’s had a really great season in terms of the maturity shown for the Racing Bulls, picking up points and outperforming Lawson. It’s probably the least you could expect from him, on a personal level, in terms of the other cars. Other teams will bring upgrades and whatnot, they might fall back later in the season. They have to make way for Red Bull on the track. But in terms of the same machinery, if you beat your team-mate who has also raced before – I know he’s kind of like a bit of a rookie Lawson – [but it’s impressive from Hadjar] because he’s not had many races and had has made a big impression. Red Bull will be seriously considering him for one of their future drives, if they, for whatever reason, don’t go for [F2 driver] Arvid Lindblad.”
EWAN: Isack Hadjar
“He’s the best rookie on the grid from what I’ve seen, mentally brilliant. The best way to describe what he’s done is so many drivers and so many rookies, especially in the Red Bull environment, would have crumbled after what happened in Australia. He’s got the hype of making his debut in F1, he’s built himself up, it’s going to be the best day of his life. He crashes on formation lap. That could have been the undoing of his entire F1 career, but he’s actually bounced back and put in some of the best performances you’ll see from a rookie in F1, especially in a in a team of Racing Bulls’ stature. He’s been fabulous. And the amount of times you’ve seen him qualifying, Hadjar, and putting up a really fantastic time, you go ‘well, hang on, where’s he got that from?’ Really, really impressive. Definitely has a future and long future as well in F1, whether he makes a step up to Red Bull or he finds his way somewhere else on the grid, he’s definitely got what it takes to be an F1 driver.”
BRANDON: Pierre Gasly
“So, I went for Gasly in seventh because he’s had a clear margin over his team-mates throughout this 2025 Formula 1 season (10-6 race and 12-4 qualifying) – and granted they are rookies, I may hear some of you say. And that’s true, there’s only so much we can take from a Jack Doohan comparison. However, Colapinto was solid against Alex Albon for Williams so there is a solid floor there for the Argentinian and yet Gasly still has the edge. So that, coupled with the fact that the Alpine is not a competitive package, the Frenchman still has 20 points on the board (100 per cent for the team) and that speaks volumes. Standout drivers in Japan, Spain and Great Britain proves this is a continuation of the Gasly we’ve come to know since his demotion from Red Bull midway through 2019 – a driver who is extracting just about everything he can from his car.”
6th
JOE: Nico Hulkenberg
“I’ve been a Hulkenberg fan for a long, long time, and I think ending his 239-race run without a podium was truly one of the greatest sporting moments of the decade. I know there’s been plenty of marvellous moments in F1, but to see him on the podium at Silverstone, who would have thought that when he came back to the sport? No one. We all thought that record was just going to stay in the history books, untouched for decades. So I think this season, people have opened their eyes to what he can do. He’s an evergreen talent, and he’s another one that we have to put in that small club of ‘oldies’, along with Alonso and Hamilton, whom on their day, are still really, really quick. I know before I mentioned Bortoleto, but I think Hulkenberg really has had a great season for Sauber and is showing a lot of hope for what Audi can bring next season.”
EWAN: Alex Albon
“I’ll be honest with you, Joe, not having Albon in the top 10 is bonkers. I mean he’s sixth on my list, but after a quarter of the season, he would have been top three. It’s only the sort of the second quarter where, in fairness to him as well, the Williams has struggled a little bit more. They had a few issues with that car, a few power units let go as well, but he’s been fabulous. He’s leading that team. [Carlos] Sainz is on the back burner for him, although Sainz has had to get used to a new power unit and the new team. So a bit of a caveat with that. But Williams are fifth in the standings and this largely down to what Albon has done. He flies into the top six for me.”
BRANDON: Lando Norris
“Norris has been quick, but his key weakness has been his qualifying pace against Piastri. And I think that’s more about adaptability, rather than the questions about his mentality we see going around. He’s been struggling with McLaren’s rear end and Piastri’s just been managing to hold onto that. He seems a lot more comfortable, [he’s spent] a lot of the time leading rather than chasing his teammate down. So it doesn’t seem like it’s a mentality thing too much for Norris. It’s just qualifying issues stopping him from dominating the championship. And then you’ve had his mistakes in Bahrain and Saudi so it does take a bit of a shine off. But again, I would have had him lower down if he hadn’t shown such good form before the break, since Monaco he’s picked up three wins and four races, and he looks like he’s settling into the season now a crucial stage. His Canada crash was a really bad low point for him, but it does seem like he’s responded from that, and he’s picking up the pace. Now we’ll find out if he’ll rise or falter to the title challenge in the second half of the championship run. But the ones ahead of him – I’ve not put Norris in sixth because I’m criticising him – I just think the ones above him have been better.”
COMING SOON: Make sure you look out for Part II of Total Motorsport’s Mid-season Driver Rankings: 5th to 1st.
