The Three Title Contenders of the 2025 F1 Season

Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, and Oscar Piastri are the three title contenders for the 2025 Formula 1 season.

The Ferraris and Mercedes clearly lack pace. Considering how far ahead the McLarens and Max Verstappen are, it will be a while before they come into the title picture. 

One might argue that they will emerge dominant a bit later in the season to make it a close fight. That could’ve been possible if the regulations had remained unchanged for the upcoming season in 2026.

It could take forever or never to master that RB21 that is built around the Dutchman. But if anyone could do it, it’d be the Yellow Ranger. (Tiny hands = more precision.)

Anyway, let’s get back to the three championship contenders.

I’ve analyzed their strengths and weaknesses (so far) to give a verdict.

Max Verstappen

Strength: Generational Talent

Words fall short of describing this.

Whether you speak of his Red Bull debut in Spain 2016 or his most recent pole position in the 2025 Saudi Arabian GP, you can’t praise Verstappen’s skill set enough. 

To put it simply, Will Buxton was right; Max Verstappen is a generational talent. A gift to Formula 1 from the racing gods above. A gift that keeps on giving.

The 2025 Formula 1 season is all about qualifying and race starts. This is the last year with the current set of rules, leading to a bunched-up field. Consequently, overtaking is difficult. 

Unless you get a safety car at a favorable moment in the race, strategy is all you have. 

Hence, it is critical that the 2025 F1 title contenders secure pole on Saturday or at least be on the front row. All five races in the 2025 F1 season so far have been won from the front row — four of them from pole position.

And that’s where Max Verstappen shines. Yes, there were instances where he didn’t get pole or qualified poorly. But as long as Max's flying lap hasn’t finished, you gotta hold your breath.

His racing skills are flawless. He rarely makes mistakes. In fact, Verstappen orchestrates his mistakes. The overtaking move over Piastri in the first turn of the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix comes to mind. 

The Dutchman will do anything to overtake his rivals. It includes finding loopholes in the rulebook and driving into others.

If he is leading a race into the first turn, he will win.

Weaknesses: Car and temper

The RB21 is a shitbox. The intellectually handicapped engineers in Milton Keynes stuck with the same concept for longer than they should’ve. Despite maxing out the potential of that design philosophy, they kept going in the same direction.

This created an utterly sensitive car that needs to be driven aggressively in an extremely narrow setup window — a trait that Max loves in an F1 car.

However, as I mentioned, they have stuck with the same concept for far too long. Now, regardless of how sensitive you make it, it simply doesn’t give any performance gain.

They’ve finally hit the limit with that design philosophy, which was laid out by Adrian Newey. The current engineers continued to stick with it rather than innovate. They’re lazy. Perhaps Red Bull will help.

The second limitation is quite easy to spot. 

In the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, Verstappen pitted on lap 23. The stop was horrible. 11.1 seconds due to a fault in the front-right wheel gun. Max lost track position and came out in traffic.

Lewis Hamilton, his title rival that season, came in on lap 26, and he had a slow pitstop as well (4.2 seconds). When he came out, he was marginally ahead of Verstappen.

The Dutchman saw it as a now-or-never moment. He attempted an overtake around the outside of T1. His goal was to sneak the inside line for T2 and complete the move before T3.

However, Lewis was ahead, and there wasn’t enough space for both cars. Max’s Red Bull bounced off a sausage kerb and launched onto Hamilton’s Mercedes, taking them both out of the race.

This ambitious overtaking maneuver earned Verstappen a three-place grid penalty for the following grand prix in Sochi.

Max’s lack of calmness in a tough situation took him out of the race (which worked out in his favor because he took Lewis out), got him a penalty for the next race, and added two penalty points in his superlicense.

While it didn’t have a huge impact on the championship standings, it just might in 2025.

Some may suggest that Verstappen has matured since that moment. 

A similar incident was repeated in the F1 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix. After Lewis undercut Max in the first round of pit stops and pitted earlier after the second round of pit stops to retain track position, the Dutchman was furious.

Verstappen, with fresher tires, started closing the gap to his old nemesis and launched an ambitious attack on lap 63. He locked up and got launched in the air. Thankfully, he didn’t get a penalty, despite being out of control into the corner.

Again, here too, the four-time world champion got too impatient. It was quite likely that he would pass Hamilton in a few laps’ time. Unfortunately, his anger, emanating from the fact that he got undercut earlier, got the better of him.

These moments are inevitable in high-stakes championship fights. Considering there are three title contenders, such instances could be more frequent. And in those situations, Max will do himself no good.

Lando Norris

Strengths: WDC-level pace and team support

When Lando puts a weekend together, he is unbeatable. 

The 2024 season finale and the 2025 season opener come to mind. He won both of those races from pole position. Additionally, he didn’t make any mistakes at the race start.

Suffice it to say, Norris has championship-level pace in qualifying and the race.

Another advantage is that Zak Brown and other key figures at McLaren look at the young British driver favorably compared to his teammate. And he deserves it, considering he was a key ingredient in bringing that team to the front of the field.

Furthermore, Norris played a central role in securing McLaren’s first constructors’ title in this century in 2024.

This support can have a positive impact on the emotional Lando, who values friendship over anything.

Weakness: Mindset

Lando Norris doesn’t believe that he can beat the Hamiltons and Verstappens of the sport to win the F1 World Driver’s Championship. He said so implicitly in an interview with Lawrence Baretto right before the start of the 2025 season. [1]

The Brit suggested that, unlike others, he needs to be in the moment and get a feel of the situation before fostering that belief.

And that’s what cost him the championship in 2024 and will do so again in 2025.

Look, I am aware that self-doubt is natural. Everyone goes through it in different circumstances, such as the workplace, career, self-improvement, and relationships. And you must override that by focusing on the action and kind of tricking yourself into thinking that you got it covered.

If it fails afterwards, it doesn’t matter. Making yourself think that you have it covered allows you to give 100%.

Lando must do the same. 

It is almost impossible to become an F1 world champion. You have to go through a gruelling journey from a very young age. Then, you must be in the right team at the right time to have a shot at achieving the dream of winning the championship.

Regardless of whether your current ability around a race track is top tier from an objective standpoint, you must believe. Otherwise, why did you make all those sacrifices? Why not go home and be mediocre?

Because of this, he fumbles. He bottles the race starts, whether it is getting too much wheelspin or starting outside his grid box.

The worst part is that he talks about it everywhere. That doesn’t help him at all. Now everyone knows his weakness. Whenever anyone sees Norris, they can simply throw a “hey man, everything good?” and subconsciously remind him that he’s a bitch.

One of the fundamental rules of the F1 game is to never show your opponent where you bleed. 

When Max and Oscar start validating Lando’s pusillanimous mindset and speak with him in a patronizing manner as if the Brit needs a nanny in the paddock, Norris’ confidence dies a little.

He may not know it consciously, but it is definitely affecting him.

Besides, from a practical perspective, bitching about something never makes it go away. You’ve just got to learn, improve, and get on with it. Keep the self-doubt and whining for your therapist or coach.

Oscar Piastri

Strength: Verstappen without malice and rage

So far, there have been five races in the 2025 Formula 1 season, and Oscar Piastri has won three of them. He has won two of them from pole position and the third one from P2 (Jeddah).

He also acknowledges that the McLarens are fastest and takes pleasure in the process while remaining calm throughout.

We already knew from 2024 about his stellar racecraft and composure during tough situations, such as the first-lap collision with Verstappen in Abu Dhabi. The only area of improvement for the young Australian was qualifying.

And he has patched that hole.

Oscar has outqualified Lando 3-2 in the 2025 season (before the Miami Grand Prix) and looks pretty dialed in. This is the first time he has beaten his teammate in both qualifying and championship standings.

He, like Max, is a generational talent. However, since he doesn’t have anger problems, he is less likely to make stupid mistakes in difficult circumstances. 

Additionally, Piastri grew up in a loving household and had positive mentors, unlike Verstappen, meaning he won’t drive into his rivals to ruin their races to secure the championship. 

Some say it is a weakness. But it’s not because he is the silent killer.

When it comes to standing his ground and taking the fight to his opponent, the Aussie is as good as Max Verstappen. This is evident when you look at his amazing race start in the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Weakness: Inexperience

Regardless of how amazing Oscar Piastri’s performance has been so far, we still haven’t seen him against a strong title contender. He is yet to demonstrate that consistent and dominant form throughout the season.

Moreover, he made a few mistakes in wet-weather conditions in Sao Paulo 2024 and Australia 2025. 

At the same time, his inexperience is a fixable problem. He improves with each Grand Prix weekend, and it’s a matter of time before he matches the likes of Verstappen in terms of raw pace and sheer competitive mentality.

The Verdict

Oscar Piastri will beat Lando Norris and Max Verstappen to become the 2025 F1 World Champion.

He will beat Max with a faster car and a cool temperament.

He will beat Norris with a cool temperament.

The only way he can lose is if Red Bull ships some great upgrades so that the RB21 is on par with the MCL39 in qualifying and the race.

Miracles are a possibility, at least theoretically. The Ferraris or Mercedes could reemerge dominant deep into the season. The McLaren could magically lose pace. A meteorite could hit Piastri to turn him into a vegetable like Michael Schumacher. The sun could explode.

Realistically, it is Oscar’s championship to lose.

References

1. Lando’s mindset going into 2025