Grading My Predictions for 2025 F1 Season

It’s time to find out how accurately I predicted the final standings of the 2025 season of Formula 1 before the start of the pre-season testing!

We’ll start with the constructors’ championship.

Jen_ross83, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Predicted Position	Actual Position	Team	Drivers		Gap btwn Predicted Position and Actual Position	Point(s)
1	1	McLaren-Mercedes	Norris	Piastri	0	5
3	2	Mercedes	Russell	Antonelli	1	4
4	3	Red Bull-RBPT Honda	Verstappen	Tsunoda	1	4
2	4	Ferrari	Leclerc	Hamilton	-2	3
7	5	Williams-Mercedes	Sainz	Albon	2	3
8	6	Racing Bulls-RBPT Honda	Lawson	Hadjar	2	3
5	7	Aston Martin-Mercedes	Alonso	Stroll	-2	3
9	8	Haas-Ferrari	Ocon	Bearman	1	4
10	9	Stake Sauber-Ferrari	Hulkenberg	Bortoleto	1	4
6	10	Alpine-Renault	Gasly	Colapinto	-4	1

Score percentage: 68.000% (34/50 pts)

It’s no surprise that my prediction for P1 came true, as it was so obviously a realistic outcome given what we saw at the end of 2024.

I put Ferrari in P2, thinking they would stay in the fight for the championship with McLaren, but I was quite wrong both in terms of the way the title fight unfolded and the finishing order.

McLaren’s title win was only a matter of time since the start of the season, and it was the fight for P2 among Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari that remained close till the end.

Alpine cost me lots of points.

They finished the season in last place behind Sauber, who scored 70 points, despite some outstanding performance Gasly showed, as the Enstone team decided to pretty much abandon 2025 and fully focus on 2026.

2026 is the first year with a completely new set of technical regulations.

It’s going to be way more difficult to make any reliable predictions, so anything close to the score percentage of 68% would be an amazing result.

I reckon 40% would be a realistic goal.

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Now let’s move on to the drivers’ championship.

Predicted Position	Actual Position	Driver	Team	Gap btwn Predicted Position and Actual Position	Point(s)
1	1	Norris	McLaren-Mercedes	0	5
3	2	Verstappen	Red Bull-RBPT Honda	1	4
4	3	Piastri	McLaren-Mercedes	1	4
6	4	Russell	Mercedes	2	3
2	5	Leclerc	Ferrari	-3	2
5	6	Hamilton	Ferrari	-1	4
7	7	Antonelli	Mercedes	0	5
13	8	Albon	Williams-Mercedes	5	0
11	9	Sainz	Williams-Mercedes	2	3
8	10	Alonso	Aston Martin-Mercedes	-2	3
19	11	Hulkenberg	Stake Sauber-Ferrari	8	0
17	12	Hadjar	Racing Bulls-RBPT Honda	5	0
18	13	Bearman	Haas-Ferrari	5	0
12	14	Lawson	Red Bull-RBPT Honda	-2	0
16	15	Ocon	Haas-Ferrari	1	4
12	16	Stroll	Aston Martin-Mercedes	-4	1
14	17	Tsunoda	Racing Bulls-RBPT Honda	-3	2
10	18	Gasly	Alpine-Renault	-8	0
20	19	Bortoleto	Stake Sauber-Ferrari	1	4
-	20	Copapinto	Alpine-Renault	-	0
15	21	Doohan	Alpine-Renault	-6	0

Scoring percentage: 41.905% (44/105 pts)

The only ones whose finishing positions I accurately predicted were Norris in P1 and Antonelli in P7, scoring me 5 points each.

Off by just 1 position and scoring me 4 points were Max (predicted P3, actual result P2), Oscar (P4/P3), Hamilton (P5/P6), Ocon (P16/P15), and Bortoleto (P20/P19).

As an Oscar fan, I didn’t want to score this many points with his P3; I wanted him to win the drivers’ championship and reduced my points to 2.

Now I’ll list the drivers who cost me most points in the order of the gap between the predicted position and their actual position.

Drivers whom I underestimated the most were:

• Colapinto (not included in my prediction/actual result P20)

• Hulkenberg (predicted P19/actual result P11)

• Albon (P13/P8)

• Hadjar (P17/P12)

• Bearman (P18/P13)

Those I overestimated were:

• Gasly (P10/P18)

• Doohan (P15/P21)

• Lawson (P9/P14)

I must say I took too much risk when I decided not to include Colapinto in my pre-season predictions, not believing the rumour that he was going to race for Alpine in 2025.

I imagine no one would call me an idiot though for my failure to score points with Hulkenberg.

Many F1 fans would have approved my prediction that Sauber would finish last in the constructors’ with 0 points and both drivers at the bottom of the standings.

Hats off to Hulk and Sauber for the positive surprise of scoring many, many more points in several races, including Silverstone where Hulk scored his very first podium in Formula 1! 👏

Albon, Hadjar and Bearman were 5 positions off my prediction, scoring me no points.

If they finished the season just 4 positions off (meaning 1 points with each driver), I would have scored 46 points instead of 44, with the scoring percentage of 43.810%

My past-self underestimated the performance of VCARB and Williams, and that led to these poor results in the drivers’ prediction.

Out of 3 drivers whom I overestimated and scored no points with, I don’t blame myself too much about Gasly and Doohan.

As mentioned above, Alpine gave up on 2025 and poured much of their resources into 2026.

Doohan wasn’t even given a chance to finish higher up the order, as he was dropped only after 6 rounds.

I blame my past self even less about Lawson, whom I never expected Red Bull to be so quick to replace with Tsunoda… although I doubt he would have finished the season any better than Tsunoda did, even if he hadn’t been demoted back to VCARB.

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Scoring Percentage

Constructors	68.000%	34/50 pts
Drivers	41.905%	44/105 pts
Total	50.323%	78/155 pts

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With what could arguably be the biggest regulation change ever in Formula 1, predicting the finishing order of the 2026 season is far more of a random guess than 2025.

I will show you my predictions, which I made before the start of the first pre-season testing (which was oddly called ‘shakedown’) in the next blog post.

I’d say the realistic targets would be the scoring rate of 40% in the constructors championship, and 30% in the drivers’.