Written by Morgan Holiday
After quite a few Formula One seasons without more than one or two rookies coming in, 2025 will have six “rookies”.
In a pure sense, only three of those drivers haven’t raced in F1 at all yet, as the other three have taken part in at least one Grand Prix in the past two seasons.
But, off the back of the 2024 grid not bringing in any rookie drivers (at the start of the year anyway) it’s a huge leap in terms of drivers competing in their first full season of the category.
Or, at least, drivers who have signed up to compete for a full season. Based on recent history and the amount of pressure that some of these drivers are under, it wouldn’t be out of line to suggest that at least one of them won’t make it a full year before getting axed.
So let’s take a look at F1’s newest six drivers and see which one is under the most pressure to perform in their first full year.
6. Ollie Bearman - Haas
While Ollie Bearman comes into 2025 with just three F1 Grand Prix under his belt, he’s the driver on this list with the most points scored already (seven).
He raced one Grand Prix with Ferrari in 2024, filling in for an injured Carlos Sainz. The other two Grands Prix he took part in with Haas, the team he’ll be racing for this year.
His status as a Ferrari junior and the fact that he’s touted to drive for the Prancing Horse in the next few years should lend him some protection from any rumours of mid-season replacement as long as he keeps his car out of the wall most weekends. Given his recent performance, that’s unlikely to be a problem for him.
5. Gabriel Bortoleto - Kick Sauber
Another rookie who will probably be given some measure of patience is Kick Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto.
Bortoleto comes into F1 off the back of winning the Formula 3 and Formula 2 championships in his rookie season (a feat last achieved by Oscar Piastri), and he’s coming into a team that only scored four points last season.
Sauber’s status as a backmarker will prevent expectations from being too high. Plus, it’s the same team that kept Zhou Guanyu for three seasons, despite the fact that he never did anything particularly impressive.
4. Kimi Antonelli - Mercedes
Kimi Antonelli is the most anticipated driver on this list, as the media has been long heralding his arrival to the top step of motorsport.
Just 18 years old, Antonelli skipped F3 to jump straight into F2, where he competed with PREMA Racing in 2024. After a relatively anonymous start to his rookie year, the young Italian driver claimed two race wins in the second half of the season and ended up finishing sixth overall.
Still, sixth in F2 doesn’t even make him one of the top two best performing rookies that season, so a promotion to one of the best F1 teams for 2025 feels premature. But Lewis Hamilton’s shock move to Ferrari put Mercedes in need of a driver, and they were anxious to get Antonelli into F1.
Antonelli will be under pressure to prove that Mercedes’ faith in him isn’t misplaced, and it says a lot about the pressure these rookies are under that he’s only fourth on this list. But Mercedes seems to be playing somewhat of a long game here, since they passed up on more experienced drivers like Carlos Sainz.
He won’t be expected to perform at the same level as his teammate George Russell right away, and from comments made after Antonelli’s FP1 outings in 2024, the team appears willing to afford him a lot of patience, which can’t be said for other teams on the grid and their rookies.
3. Isack Hadjar - Visa CashApp RB
The seat Isack Hadjar is filling this season as Yuki Tsunoda’s teammate at RB has a rough record in the past couple of seasons.
After Nyck de Vries and then Daniel Ricciardo were both replaced mid-season in 2023 and 2024, Hadjar comes into a spot knowing that the team won’t hesitate to bump him should he not perform to whatever standards they set.
While Ricciardo’s replacement might be rationalised by his lack of performance relative to his experience, de Vries was replaced after just ten races with the team, less than half of the season.
He failed to score any points during those races, so the pressure will be on Hadjar both to keep up with Tsunoda and to score points when the opportunity presents itself.
Red Bull is known for its ruthless treatment of junior drivers, and their sister team is no exception. Add in Hadjar’s reputation as a somewhat brash and emotional driver, and he’ll be under a lot of pressure to keep his cool.
2. Liam Lawson - Red Bull
Liam Lawson’s appointment to Red Bull as Sergio Perez’s replacement certainly stunned many fans who felt he hadn’t earned the spot yet. Typically, Red Bull develops drivers at their sister team RB, moving them up once they’ve proven themselves.
Yuki Tsunoda had certainly done more than enough in his four seasons at the team to warrant the promotion.
But instead Red Bull kept Tsunoda at RB and moved Lawson up to replace Perez. Still, Lawson has had successful F1 outings before in 2023 and 2024 (both seasons as a stand-in for Ricciardo), and his track record in the junior categories is exemplary.
Whatever Red Bull’s logic, Lawson will be under pressure to perform relative to his teammate Max Verstappen, one of the hardest bars to measure up to on the grid. More so than any other new driver this season, he’ll be in the best position to get podiums and win races, and he’ll be expected to do so if he wants to keep his seat.
After all, the last two inexperienced Red Bull juniors to partner Verstappen (Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon) both faced a drop in performance as a result of that pressure that ultimately led to them getting cut from the team.
1. Jack Doohan - Alpine
While all these rookies will certainly be under a mountain of pressure, no one’s situation is as tenuous as Alpine’s newest driver Jack Doohan.
Doohan has a contract to partner Gasly for 2025, though the team’s most recent signing of Franco Colapinto as a reserve driver and comments made by both the team and the media have cemented the idea that Doohan only has a limited amount of time to prove himself before Colapinto is given preference.
While Red Bull is known for its ruthless treatment of its junior drivers, Alpine is better known for not particularly treating their junior drivers any way at all.
Sidelining Oscar Piastri before he got swept up by McLaren comes to mind as a perfect example. Doohan’s signing, despite the fact that he didn’t compete in F2 (or anywhere) last year, came as a bit of a surprise.
Alpine is a solid midfield team that has spent the past few seasons floating between backmarker and podium contender depending on the race.
But with a potential replacement waiting on the sidelines for a chance to jump in the second Doohan makes a mistake, the pressure will be monumental. That situation is hardly conducive to a pleasant work environment.
How much pressure is too much pressure?
These six drivers are coming into their first (full) seasons under an immense amount of pressure, on top of all the regular pressure that comes with being a driver in the most prestigious racing series in the world.
At some point, teams need to stop and ask themselves if the expectations they’re placing on young drivers crosses the line from healthy to being detrimental to their performance and wellbeing.
Sure, some drivers thrive under pressure, and drivers who can’t handle pressure at all shouldn’t be in F1.
But while it’s hard to blame some of the recent mid-season replacements, you have to wonder if the expectations placed on drivers like de Vries and more recently Logan Sargeant were simply unrealistic and there was no option for them but to fail.
Only time will tell how these six rookies fare, but the recent history doesn’t exactly bode well for some of them.
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