F1 2025 Mega Thread

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Charles has been eliminated from the mathematics championship. Ferrari fans, who will you be rooting for now?

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Sky Sports has released a brief analysis of the upcoming races:

Mexico City 🇲🇽
The high altitude of the circuit makes the weekend challenging for drivers, as Oscar Piastri found out when he crashed out in the first segment of qualifying last season. Although Carlos Sainz won in 2024, this track is traditionally considered Red Bull territory: Max Verstappen has won five of the previous six races in Mexico.

São Paulo 🇧🇷
Interlagos is certainly a track where McLaren is hoping for a good result after dominating in dry conditions last year. However, Max Verstappen's impressive victory from 17th place in the wet race then dashed Lando Norris's title hopes. The weather in Brazil often influences the outcome of the championship – will it happen again?

Las Vegas 🇺🇸
In its two years on the calendar, Las Vegas has proven to be McLaren's worst track: the team has never qualified or finished higher than sixth place. In 2024, Mercedes dominated in the cool conditions, while Max Verstappen, who won the inaugural race a year earlier, finished fifth.

Qatar 🇶🇦
In theory, the Lusail circuit's configuration with its abundance of corners should play to McLaren's strengths. Every winner of the Qatar Grand Prix has also won in Bahrain in the same season, so the statistics point to a possible victory for Oscar Piastri. However, Red Bull will also have reasons for optimism, as this is the only dry race that Max Verstappen has won in the last five months of 2024. Abu Dhabi 🇦🇪
Theoretically, the Yas Marina circuit should suit McLaren, as Lando Norris was the undisputed winner in Abu Dhabi in 2024. However, that victory interrupted a series of four wins for Max Verstappen at this track, so the final race promises to be tense.

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Closing the gap!

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New leader of the championship 🤝

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Oliver Berman, with a fantastic performance and five positions, managed to achieve fourth place, his best finish in Formula One so far.

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Total domination in Mexico. Lando Norris won by the biggest winning margin we've seen this season so far, over half a minute up the road!

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And here are some better photos of the Brazilian trophy

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Biggest winning margins in 2025 (GP and Sprints)

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P8, P9, and P10 have never been stronger - all three are set to break the all time points records for these positions

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Championship Standings and Eliminations - Mexico GP

WDC: There were no eliminations in the WDC this race, with Russell remaining in contention. To remain in contention after Brazil, he will need to outscore Norris by 15 points and Piastri by 16. For him to win the championship, he would need to win every race from now on, and hope that Norris scores no more than 17 points, Piastri no more than 18, and Verstappen no more than 53 over all remaining races.

Despite Norris retaking the lead in WDC by one point, Piastri remains ahead in number of wins. This means that whichever McLaren scores the most points in Brazil will walk away with the lead, even if Piastri only outscores Norris by 1 point. The singular exception to this would be if Norris scores 0 in the sprint and wins the race, while Piastri wins the sprint and is 2nd in the race. In that case, both drivers would end the weekend on 382 points and tied on 7 wins. Norris would then be ahead on 2nd place countback, with 8 to Piastri's 4.

It is not currently possible for a driver to clinch before Abu Dhabi simply by winning everything. If Norris were to win everything and Piastri come 2nd in everything, they would go into Abu Dhabi separated by 24 points, making it technically possible for Piastri to win in the final race.

WCC: Ferrari outscored Mercedes just enough to retake 2nd by 1 point, and while Red Bull did outscore Mercedes, it was only by 1 point (I'm sensing a 1 point theme here...). This means that once again, 2nd place is on offer for all three teams:

Ferrari needs to outscore (or score the same as) Mercedes and not be outscored by 10 or more points by Red Bull to retain 2nd

Mercedes needs to outscore Ferrari by any amount and not be outscored by Red Bull by 9 or more points to retake 2nd

Red Bull needs to outscore Ferrari by at least 10 points and Mercedes by at least 9 to move up to 2nd

Williams is also officially out of the fight for 2nd, and will now have to settle for a best possible finish of 5th.

Note: the best and worst finishing positions are rough calculations, and assume that multiple drivers can finish in the same position. Obviously this is not possible, but there are 670 billion scoring possibilities in each GP and 5 billion in each sprint; so it's not exactly practical to figure out the true best and worst positions. (If you're interested, there are 2 billion billion, or 2 quintillion finishing possibilities per race...)

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🇧🇷 Schedule for the twenty-first round of the 2025 Formula 1 season: Brazilian Grand Prix (Interlagos)

🏆 November 7th (Friday)
FP1 - 17:30
Sprint Qualifying - 21:30

🏆 November 8th (Saturday)
Sprint Race - 17:00
Qualifying - 21:00

🏆 November 9th (Sunday)
Brazilian Grand Prix - 20:00

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▫️ The trend of the changes in the positions of the contenders for the Constructors' Championship since the beginning of the season

• Current standings:
▫️ Ferrari - 356
▫️ Mercedes - 355
▫️ Red Bull - 346

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This year, Pirelli brought compounds one step harder than in 2024: C2, C3 and C4.

The Italians indicate that, although slick tires were not used in the race, during Friday's practice sessions and also on Saturday morning it became clear that the dry weather tires were wearing out too quickly, and that graining was reaching too high a degree, especially on the rear axle.

Thus, the harder compounds will help teams use the "soft" tires not only in qualifying, but also in the race.

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Lewis takes his honorary Brazilian citizenship seriously 🇧🇷

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❤️ Official Ferrari poster for the 2025 Brazilian Grand Prix

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Kick Sauber poster for the 2025 São Paulo Grand Prix

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Mercedes' poster for the Brazilian Grand Prix

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Racing Bulls poster for the 2025 São Paulo Grand Prix

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🔵 Special Gulf livery for Williams at the 2025 Brazilian Grand Prix

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Let's go!!!!

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▫️2025 Season Winners by Round So Far

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Zak Brown has revealed McLaren would rather lose the Drivers' Championship to Max Verstappen than favour one of their drivers 👀