F1’s next generation arrives: Meet the five rookies set to transform the 2025 season

The start of a Formula One season always brings new cars, new expectations and new driver names to get to know.

But for 2025, the change in the field has been the most substantial in a generation as six drivers — five of whom have graduated from Formula Two in the past two years — prepare for their first full F1 season.

Liam Lawson has already established himself as an F1 regular with 11 race starts, leading him to the senior Red Bull team and shedding his true ‘rookie’ status. (In F1, rookies are defined as a driver who has started two or fewer grands prix.) But the other five youngsters will face more unknowns together this year.

Bruno Michel, the CEO of F2 and Formula Three, told The Athletic it was “incredible” to have so many graduates to F1, calling it “an exceptional year in terms of the quality of drivers” for F2 through 2024.

The quintet of Kimi Antonelli, Jack Doohan, Ollie Bearman, Gabriel Bortoleto and Isack Hadjar gives the F1 grid a more youthful feel. But all five have earned their opportunity and convinced teams to put their faith in young talent, instead of sticking with the known pool of more experienced drivers.

“That fresh blood, when those young guys are ready, and they’ve been proving that they are, and they’ve been doing very, very well, it’s a definite plus for F1 teams,” Michel says.

The second-generation star

Of the five, Jack Doohan is the most experienced in F1 machinery.

The 22-year-old Australian is a product of Alpine’s young driver academy, and spent two years in both F3 and F2. He did not race last year, leaving F2 after finishing third in the 2023 standings, but was able to conduct plenty of private testing with Alpine.

Michel called Doohan’s second F2 season “quite bizarre” — after struggling in its first half, he won three out of five feature races to close out the campaign.

“He has the talent, he has the speed,” Michel says. “He makes very few mistakes. The massive advantage that he had is that he’s been a reserve driver for Alpine for a full year; he’s been in the garage most of the weekends, he’s been in the simulator when he’s not in the garage.”

An F1 team’s operational crew is five times as big as those in F2, making it an adjustment for any driver stepping up. By spending the past year fully embedding himself within Alpine, and with his first race weekend already out of the way after a last-minute debut in Abu Dhabi last December, Doohan won’t experience quite the same dramatic change as his peers.

Doohan’s future is already a talking point in F1 after Alpine signed Franco Colapinto on loan from Williams as a reserve driver. He has already handled the inevitable questions well, making clear he is not paying attention to the outside noise. But a stronger answer will come from his performances on the track in the early part of this season.

The opening race in Australia will carry an extra degree of significance as he follows in his father’s footsteps by flying the flag at home.

Mick Doohan is one of Australia’s greatest motor-racing figures, winning the premier class of motorcycle racing five times in the 1990s, and completed a side-by-side show run with Jack at Albert Park in their respective machinery last year.

Ollie Bearman has two races under his belt already (Sipa USA)

The supersub

Doohan’s six days of notice before racing in Abu Dhabi at the end of last year is nothing compared to Ollie Bearman, who found out just hours before final practice in Jeddah in the March that he’d be making his F1 debut — for Ferrari, of all teams.

Ferrari’s decision paid off, as Bearman qualified 11th and finished seventh, establishing him as a future superstar. When Haas needed a stand-in for Kevin Magnussen, who was banned for Azerbaijan in September and ill in Brazil two months later, the team quickly drafted in Bearman, who it had previously signed for 2025 back in July.

The Ferrari junior had already shown signs of his quality in F3, where he narrowly missed out on the title in 2022, before graduating to F2. “His first season was good, but I think he had one weekend that showed how special he is, and it was Baku,” Michel says. In just his fourth F2 round, Bearman completed a rare weekend sweep, scoring pole, winning the reverse grid sprint race and the feature race.

“When you see a driver do that over a race weekend, in a difficult track like Baku, where he had never been before, he was absolutely amazing,” Michel says. “That’s when everybody said, ‘Wow, this guy is special’, there’s no doubt about that.”

Since his supersub display in Jeddah a year ago, Bearman’s graduation to the F1 grid always felt like a formality, making his 12th-place finish in the final F2 standings of little consequence.

“When people are asking me, ‘Do you think it’s normal that Ollie … finished P12 in our championship, he is going to F1?’. The answer is of course, it’s completely normal — it’s the P12 that’s not normal, it’s not the fact that Ollie is being called,” Michel says.

Bearman has already endeared himself to many of the British fans who are eager to support their nation’s next great driver. When he emerged on stage at F1 75 Live at The O2 in London last month, Bearman sparked some of the biggest cheers of the night.

“He’s a very likeable person,” says Michel. “He’s got his fanbase now, and it’s fantastic that he arrives in F1, and he’s already one of the favorites of the public.”

Kimi Antonelli replaces Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes (Sipa USA)

The next big thing

It is no easy task to succeed Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes after the most successful driver-team partnership in F1 history. The team’s willingness to put its faith in Kimi Antonelli proves how highly it rates the young Italian.

Antonelli was always the intended successor to Hamilton, whose Ferrari move for this season caused plans to be fast-tracked. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff had taken a keen interest in Antonelli’s career since go-karting. When he teased, just 24 hours after Hamilton’s exit was announced, that the team could do “something bold” with his replacement, it was evident he meant Antonelli. Wolff later said it took him five minutes to decide on him as Hamilton’s replacement.

From the moment he first starred in single-seaters, winning both the Italian and German F4 titles in the same year as a 16-year-old, Antonelli was on the radar for anyone trying to spot the next great junior talent.

Mercedes has traditionally taken a methodical approach to developing young drivers, letting them take time at each stage up the racing ladder. Not Antonelli. Off the back of his Formula Regional title win in 2023, the team promoted him straight into F2, skipping F3 – a category often regarded as the better first step for adjusting to life on the F1 undercard.

“That is a massive jump,” Michel says. “Missing all this preparation with F3 and the race weekends and the format and jumping directly into F2 was something that was really new and difficult.” Antonelli’s Prema team also struggled initially with the new F2 car for 2024, meaning he did not stand on the podium until his sprint race win at Silverstone in July.

Alongside his F2 duties, Antonelli also had a sizable private test program in recent F1 cars, so he could adjust to the demands of the machinery. Mercedes’ technical director James Allison said his performance was “metronomic”.

Michel also notes the scrutiny that Antonelli, then just 17, was under before even setting foot in an F2 car.

“Since Lewis announced at the very beginning of the season that he was moving to Ferrari, my god, the pressure on Kimi was absolutely incredible over the season,” Michel says. “Because everybody was expecting him to go to Mercedes, which is what happened, because Toto rates him so highly. And Toto is absolutely right, because I think he’s an exceptional driver. But nobody made his situation easy.”

After missing out on Max Verstappen a decade ago due to his caution over giving a 16-year-old an F1 seat, Wolff was eager not to let the driver he believes can be the next great talent slip through his fingers, meaning there will also be patience this season in terms of rookie mistakes. A level of performance from Antonelli anywhere close to his teammate George Russell would be a success.

“He has the full trust of Mercedes and the full trust of Toto,” Michel says. “(His) first season in F1, if it’s not a perfect season, it doesn’t matter, because he’s got his life in front of him.”

Gabriel Bortoleto won the F2 championship in 2024 (Sipa USA)

The champion

Winning the F3 and F2 titles in consecutive years is the best possible endorsement of a young driver’s ability. Russell, Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri all managed it before delivering on their potential by becoming race winners in F1.

The next in that sequence is Brazil’s Gabriel Bortoleto, who debuts for Sauber this year after his back-to-back junior series championship wins. Bortoleto was previously part of McLaren’s academy, but the team released him at the end of last year so he could link up with Sauber. Ahead of its evolution into Audi in 2026, his new team sees Bortoleto as a key part of its future.

Winning a spec series such as F2 or F3 (where everyone has the same car) in your rookie season is a serious achievement, showing an adaptability that will be incredibly valuable for his rookie F1 season.

“His season in F3 was amazing,” says Michel. “People were not expecting him to do that. He got immediately at an outstanding level compared to everybody else. I wouldn’t say he had it easy, because it was not the case. But he was really dominating this season.

“(He) got into F2 as a rookie — same thing. It took him quite a while, first half of the season was not so good, and then when he started to perform, he was absolutely untouchable.”

It has been eight years since the most recent Brazilian driver, Felipe Massa, raced in F1 — a lengthy drought for a country that has produced world champions Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet and Emerson Fittipaldi. Now Bortoleto has the chance to electrify his homeland’s fanbase. “It’s going to be crazy in Brazil if he starts to do well, there’s no doubt about that,” Michel said.

One person not surprised by Bortoleto’s success in F3 and F2 was Fernando Alonso, the two-time world champion whose management company has looked after the youngster. Even in such a talent-packed rookie class, Bortoleto stands above the rest in Alonso’s eyes.

“I know there are a lot of talks about the young generation, a lot of rookies also next year — very talented all of them,” Alonso said in Abu Dhabi at the end of last season. “But the best is Gabriel. He showed it on track with the same cars.

“Obviously, next year, he will maybe not have the same car as some of the rookies, but I hope people do not forget that he’s better than them.”

Isack Hadjar pairs with Yuki Tsunoda this season (Sipa USA)

The fighter

The final rookie to secure his spot on this year’s grid was Isack Hadjar. He had to wait for the Red Bull reshuffle involving Lawson, Daniel Ricciardo and Sergio Pérez before a spot opened up for him at Racing Bulls.

French-Algerian Hadjar was runner-up to Bortoleto in F2 last year, scoring four feature race victories, and only missed out on a chance to contend for the title in the final round in Abu Dhabi after his engine stalled on the grid. When Red Bull looked to its young driver program to fill Lawson’s seat for 2025, Hadjar was the clear choice.

Surviving the notoriously cutthroat Red Bull junior ranks to F1 is no mean feat, but Michel feels Hadjar’s character and self-confidence have served him well. “He’s in a tough program, everybody knows that, but he’s a tough guy as well,” Michel says. “He’s a fighter.”

Last December, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner referred to Hadjar as “a raw talent” who “needs a little bit of polishing, but he has the speed”. Horner also noted Hadjar outpaced new teammate Yuki Tsunoda in the post-season test, which “turned heads”.

There’ll be an expectation for both Hadjar and Tsunoda to perform, particularly as Red Bull already casts its eyes to the next young talents rolling down its conveyor belt. Senior figures at the team are known to highly rate Arvid Lindblad, a 17-year-old Swede now moving into F2 who also got his F1 super license through the winter, making him a likely candidate for 2026 if he excels this year.

Michel does not think the high-pressure environment will faze Hadjar.

“He’s the kind of character that’s going to match with this kind of environment,” he says. “I’m not worried about it. I’m sure he’ll make a great team with Yuki, and it’s a very strong choice that they made.

“It’s fully deserved for him to be there as well. I would have been sorry not to have seen him in F1 this year.”

(Top photo of Doohan, left, Bearman, centre, and Bortoleto; Clive Rose/Getty Images)