Hamilton’s struggles and ranking Verstappen’s 2025 – Q&A

McLaren’s Lando Norris is the 2025 world champion after he finished third at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The 26-year-old is the 11th British world champion in Formula 1.

Max Verstappen won the race but finished two points behind Norris in the standings, while Oscar Piastri finished second at the Yas Marina Circuit and ended his season in third overall.

Is Lewis Hamilton staying in F1 too long and damaging his reputation, just like Michael Schumacher did when returning with Mercedes? – Martin

Hamilton has had a very difficult season for Ferrari, however you look at it.

He has been comprehensively out-performed by team-mate Charles Leclerc in both qualifying and races, and he has failed to score a podium finish for the first time in his career.

Most observers felt that Hamilton might find it difficult to adapt to Ferrari, and that Leclerc would provide a stiff challenge. But few will have expected Hamilton to struggle the way he has.

Hamilton’s belief seems to be that the issue is a combination of the difficulty of adapting to an unfamiliar car in a new environment in a unique team, and the fundamental disconnect he has felt with the generation of cars that is now consigned to the bin.

The 2026 cars promise to be different in many ways, especially in terms of power-units and energy management, but in one potentially important factor they are a return to the cars in which Hamilton excelled.

The fundamental aerodynamic philosophy is a return to so-called ‘step-plane’ cars, with a flat bottom either side of the central chassis reference plane, with a diffuser at the back.

This type of car gelled much more naturally with Hamilton’s driving style, which is to brake late and use the change in aerodynamic pressure to help rotate the car into the corner.

Few – if any – were as good as him at balancing extreme braking with corner entry speed without compromising the exit.

Was it virtually impossible for the stewards to give any kind of penalty to Lando Norris for the Yuki Tsunoda incident in Abu Dhabi? – Danny

The stewards at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix were clear in their reasoning for penalising Tsunoda and not penalising Norris in the incident in which the Briton’s McLaren went off track in passing the Red Bull.

It was all applied according to the rules.

Tsunoda was penalised for making more than one move in defence – weaving, as it is known.

And while Norris technically broke the rule that forbids overtaking off track, he was deemed to have been forced there by Tsunoda.

The stewards’ report said that he had ended up there because Tsunoda “made multiple moves defending his position”.

It added: “Had (Tsunoda) not made those moves, (Norris) would have overtaken without going off track, but (he) moved off track to avoid contact”.

The FIA driving standards guidelines “provide that if a car is ‘forced off’ (which was effectively what occurred here) it is not considered to have exceeded track limits”.

It has to be said that Tsunoda did not do an especially good job, from the perspective of Red Bull, of holding up Norris.

Such was the tyre offset between the two cars, Norris was always going to find passing on the straight relatively easy.

But if Tsunoda had driven with more calculation, he could have measured his pace to ensure Norris caught him at the start of the final part of the track around the marina, where overtaking is impossible.

While we were talking about McLaren almost throwing away the drivers’ championship for different reasons, surely by Red Bull not having a decent number two driver, who would have taken points off both McLaren drivers, you could argue that this cost Max Verstappen the title. – Bill

It’s a fair point, but also a debatable one.

Red Bull are in a difficult position.

In Max Verstappen, they have someone who many – if not most – regard as the best racing driver in the world. Certainly, that’s what Red Bull think.

So they are probably working from the principle that whoever they signed alongside him is unlikely to be able to beat him over a season, and would not find it easy to get close to him.

Daniel Ricciardo left the team at the end of 2018 because he felt things had swung too much towards Verstappen. Partly in terms of the way the team operated. But also, almost certainly, because he could see the trend line of performance between the two of them was only going one way.

Since then, Red Bull have been looking for a driver of a similar sort of level.

Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon fell short at the team, but have gone on to have very solid careers elsewhere.

Sergio Perez’s status was pretty much established before he even got into a Red Bull, so it was no surprise he could not get close to matching Verstappen.

He proved handy in the Abu Dhabi showdown in 2021, by delaying Lewis Hamilton enough that when the critical late safety car came out, Hamilton did not have a gap large enough to pit for fresh tyres without losing the lead.

But Perez would likely have been of no significant help this season, judging by his average performance deficit to Verstappen over his time at Red Bull and the gaps between the front-running cars.

Then you’re looking at the next level of driver up. Red Bull could have signed Carlos Sainz for this season, for example. They chose not to because they felt it would disrupt the team dynamic.

And as much as a driver of that calibre would likely have got in the mix with the McLarens, he would also likely have taken points away from Verstappen, in the same way the McLaren drivers took points from each other.

Joining Stirling Moss, Jim Clark, Alain Prost and Lewis Hamilton in being a driver with the most victories in a season without winning the championship, where does Max Verstappen’s 2025 performance rank in terms of seasons without winning the title? – Alan

Any topic like this is always going to be subjective.

There are a number of examples of drivers who arguably, on merit, should have won the title but didn’t.

Stirling Moss in 1958, Niki Lauda in 1976, Gilles Villeneuve in 1979, Ayrton Senna in 1989 and Lewis Hamilton in 2007 are just some of the years up for discussion.

Arguably the peak example of this was Fernando Alonso in 2012, when he drove a season of remarkable consistency and excellence to keep a Ferrari that was on average the fourth fastest car in the title fight until the final race.

He ended up losing out to Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel. But had only one of two incidents for which he was entirely blameless not happened, he would easily have been champion.

He was taken out by the cartwheeling Lotus of Romain Grosjean at the start in Belgium, and his tyre was punctured by the other Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen into the first corner in Japan.

There is no doubting Verstappen’s excellence this season. How his year has compared with Alonso’s then is a matter for debate, but his Red Bull was certainly more competitive than that Ferrari.

As for Verstappen himself, he says he has “no regrets” about his season.

“I’ve hated this car at times,” he said in Abu Dhabi, “but I’ve also loved it at times. I always tried to extract the most from it, even in the difficult weekends that we’ve had.

“Luckily, the last, I would say, eight, nine rounds in general have been a lot more enjoyable. And also, in the team, we have a great atmosphere. We’re really on a roll – positive energy, belief, confidence – and that’s exactly what you want heading into next year.

“Of course, shame to miss out on the title, but at the same time, for a long period of time I was not even thinking about the title. I never felt like I was in it until a few rounds ago. That’s pretty crazy.

The phrase “it’s difficult to overtake at xxxx race track” seems to be getting more and more common. Should F1 be dropping the worst tracks or incentivising tracks to amend their layouts to provide overtaking opportunities? – Steve

With a few exceptions, it is primarily the nature of the cars that has restricted overtaking in recent years rather than circuits.

When the regulation cycle that ends this year was introduced, the aim was to make overtaking easier and racing closer.

The field has definitely closed up, but any effect on overtaking has been negligible. Drivers agree that it was marginally better in the first year of the regulations, 2022, but has become increasingly worse ever since.

That’s because the cars have become more sophisticated, and have developed more and more downforce. And the more downforce, the more disruption from the car in front.

The theory behind this set of rules – that controlling the wake created by a car and trying to direct it away from cars behind will make it easier to follow – has, at best, not been proven. At worst, it has been debunked.

Another factor in overtaking is tyres. Pirelli’s rubber has improved significantly this year in terms of durability, but the tyres are still prone to overheating when drivers follow other cars closely. And once they overheat, they lose grip, and bang goes the chance of overtaking.

There’s also the question of whether governing body the FIA has always made the right calculations about the length of the zones in which drivers can use the DRS overtaking aid. Which some would say has not always been the case.

Will next year’s cars be better?

They have a push-to-pass button that actives extra electrical energy instead of DRS, because both the front and rear wings will be moveable to decrease drag on straights.