Formula 1 - 2025 Season Discussion

What are you expecting in 2025?
As a 90’s kid I’m excited to see what Williams can do…

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Really cool views. I hope for the best with Carlos and Williams. Want to see the beginning of their return to form. Also curious to see how Albon and Sainz stack up together.

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Unfortunately it sounds like Williams 2025 year is going to be sacrificed to allocate more resources to the 2026 rule change. Could be a rough year for them.

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Just seen that Spa will only be held every other year after 2028 :man_shrugging: One of the best tracks on the calendar. How about getting rid of Miami instead!

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I hope they fill the date with a different historic European track. I don’t know what the money situation is, but Hockenheim or Nurburgring or something like that would be nice to trade-off every other year.

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Colapinto confirmed as Alpine test and reserve driver.

I give Doohan three races before Briatore yanks him and puts Frank the Tank in the seat.

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Andretti wanted to one-up Williams I guess, though I guess it was a matter time for the kid
https://x.com/AndrettiIndy/status/1877701994477170756

Any idea what kind of support that entails for Burgess?

I was going to say I’m surprised a F1 team hasn’t picked him up, then remembered Andretti pretty much will be.

I find this kind of exposure weird to be honest. This kid is what? 9?

I think we all need to start looking at this kind of thing with a more skeptical eye.

I mean its safe to say that Andretti are not doing this for the kids benefit. It’s for their own benefit. Same as Mclaren and Lewis, or Merc and Kimi, or Mclaren and Ugo.

They want a marketing benefit and hope for a performance benefit in the future. Even better if they can leverage some of that marketing benefit now which they are trying to do.

I don’t like it personally. Not that the kid doesn’t deserve some recognition for his talent, but putting this level of career pressure on a child seems somewhat unethical and could be detrimental not only to his performance or career, but to his overall mental development. Imagine if his performances start to drop and he has to deal with the magnitude of failing in his dream career at age 12 or something. That’d be mentally devastating.

This isn’t just in racing, it’s for any sport. Let kids be kids and have fun and if they are good, they’ll make it. We don’t need to be heaping attention and pressure on children this early.

I get the angle. Everyone wants to be the one to find the “next big thing”. The next Hamilton or Verstappen or Antonelli, but we start pushing these kids earlier and earlier.

We don’t need to be pushing kids out of karts and into cars right when they become teenagers. We don’t need a whole grid of 12 year olds racing F4 cars. That’s a lot of machine for a child who hasn’t fully realized the realities of crashing at 150 mph.

Either way, wish him the best.

I agree, I’m not convinced Verstappen ever had a childhood. He looked pretty stressed when I remember him in Minimax.

And their are plenty of ex-jnr drivers that have never really recovered from being dropped. It depends on how the organisation supports them. Some ex-jnr drivers get a career from having been in the jnr program (many ex red bull jnrs)

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Yeah pretty clear Max has suffered from his upbringing a bit. He seems relatively well-adjusted but there are some hints of trauma that linger. We know how Jos is.

One thing that separates Max from the rest of the grid is how open he and his dad are about their time together. They are unique in the sense that most dads are hands off at that level of karting, when Jos was very much hands on tuning engines etc…, but also in how open they are now.

We rarely, if ever, hear about the stories from other drivers. I think a lot of stuff is thrown at max about ‘trauma’ etc… but we don’t know anything about all the other drivers. I notice people make it Jos Vs all other driver dads, when in fact we have NO idea about how the other dads/mums were.

Formula Day Care. It’s not exactly one big play date.

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Lewis made his debut in the Ferrari today. Probably not too much fun being as the track was damp. Nice to see him back with a yellow helmet design!
lewis-hamilton

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The yellow is iconic and when he moved away from the original JLF designed helmets I was very disappointed. Glad to see the yellow make a return and he looks good in red.

The hype is big, let’s see if Hamilton in his twilight years can match Leclerc who is probably at his peak. I predict that Charles will out-qualify him pretty soundly. As he’s gotten older, Lewis hasn’t been as powerful over a single lap, but in the races he can find magic that few other drivers in history can. I’m guessing they will be pretty closely matched overall in races, but Lewis will have one or two of those alien-level races where he stomps everyone.

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As you say Charles will most likely be superior over one lap but I’m expecting Lewis to be back closer to his best in qualy this year. I think it will be tight between them on points at the end of the year.
Lewis does excel in the races but if he can’t qualify near the front it makes it a tall order with so many drivers in the mix as was the case last year.
Looking forward to Australia!

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Hamilton in a Ferrari suit and car still feels surreal. Something you would most likely only see in an F1 game career mode.

With all the hype, it will be very disappointing if he gets outperformed by Charles. He will surely be better than 2024 but so far it doesn’t seem like the ground effect cars suit his driving style.