The 2025 Formula 1 season fires back into life at this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix for the final 10 weekends of this era before a big reset in 2026.
McLaren is in an near-unassailable position at the top of one F1 title race, but there's still plenty to watch out for across these final races, from the neck-and-neck drivers' title fight to some big unanswered driver market questions.
How tense will McLaren's title fight get?
So far, the 2025 championship battle between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris has been one of the most civilised intra-team title scraps in F1 history.
Take the biggest flashpoint of the fight so far as evidence of this: Norris crashing into the back of Piastri at the Canadian GP and wiping himself out before profusely apologising and owning it as his own mistake.
But don't expect things to stay that civil as the title is decided over the next 10 races, as both drivers attempt to strike a decisive blow.
It's not ever going to descend to Ayrton Senna-Alain Prost - or likely even Lewis Hamilton-Nico Rosberg - levels of angst, but things could still get more tense.
Scenarios such as Norris beating Piastri on an alternative strategy at the Hungaroring are going to become harder for the losing driver to stomach; imagine if that situation plays out in an Abu Dhabi title decider.
Plus, further clashes between the two almost feel inevitable, especially if things remain as close as the nine-point gap between Piastri and Norris right now.
And McLaren's already thinking about the endgame as it plans to have discussions with both its drivers on how it celebrates when the title is decided.
McLaren should wrap up the constructors' title with multiple races to spare, but we can be decently hopeful that the drivers' fight can be a simmering slow-burner right until Abu Dhabi.
Can Ferrari become a victory contender again?
Charles Leclerc believed his mysterious collapse in the Hungarian GP cost him his best victory chance of 2025 - but his Ferrari team insists there will be further chances in this year's final 10 races, and we'd have to agree.
Its early-season problems are well documented, but the Ferrari SF-25 improved before the summer break, with the upgraded floor and rear suspension providing a step in performance and widening the operating window.
So there will be dreams of Leclerc repeating his 2024 Monza win - although, just as that race required, Ferrari might need to pull off a strategic masterstroke to beat the McLarens.
That could be Ferrari's biggest strength, in that Piastri and Norris will be so focused on racing and beating each other like in Hungary, there could be an opportunity for a Ferrari to slip through the middle.
Team boss Fred Vasseur's future is at least secured too, with his new contract, so some of the noise around the team has quietened.
But nothing would quieten that noise before a pivotal 2026 more than a solid, consistent end to 2025 with a victory or two would.
Will Hamilton's woes continue?
So far, Leclerc has been the only Ferrari driver in contention for grands prix victories in 2025, with Lewis Hamilton still waiting for his first outright podium with Ferrari.
In fact, should he fail to finish in the top three at Zandvoort, Hamilton will surpass Ivan Capelli as the driver with the most starts for Ferrari without a grand prix podium.
But more galling than that unwanted Ferrari record is Hamilton's inconsistent form, which has led to a rollercoaster of emotions - peaking with Hamilton's suggestion that Ferrari needs a new driver after being eliminated in Q2 at the Hungaroring.
The final races of 2025 are so significant because they're going to shape the narrative for Hamilton heading into 2026.
Should Hamilton make a step in the latter half of 2025 and be consistently close to Leclerc, then there's proper hope that Hamilton will be in a position to benefit in 2026 if Ferrari gets it right.
But should his 2025 season continue as it has been, then Hamilton's final hope will be the new-for-2026 cars unlocking his magic, essentially confirming it was just these ground effect cars Hamilton never gelled with all along.
Otherwise, it's only ever going to be Leclerc spearheading Ferrari's title charge if it starts 2026 as strongly as it started the last rules reset in 2022, and with it some deeply uncomfortable questions for Hamilton's F1 future.
What's going on with the second Red Bull seat?
The biggest open driver market question for 2026 is who partners Max Verstappen at Red Bull.
That's feeling like a pretty straight choice between Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar, with their form in the second half of 2025 critical to who gets the nod.
Tsunoda hasn't scored a point in seven successive weekends, so that kind of form makes a Hadjar promotion the most likely scenario.
But should Tsunoda be able to build on the promising signs he showed just before the summer break, including his smallest qualifying deficit to Verstappen yet, then maybe there's still time for a reprieve.
New team boss Laurent Mekies has rare insight into all available options, having spent time with both Tsunoda and Hadjar as his drivers.
There's also the question of what happens at Racing Bulls, with 18-year-old Arvid Lindblad waiting in the wings and near-certain to get more FP1 outings with Red Bull and Racing Bulls before the end of 2025.
Red Bull has to decide whether to push on with promoting Lindblad to Racing Bulls or give him another year to develop. His Formula 2 season has stagnated on paper (skewed slightly by losing a win at Spa to illegal tyre pressures), but he's still been showing impressive speed.
Should Red Bull promote him to Racing Bulls, then you'd imagine it's either Tsunoda or Liam Lawson who will be facing F1's exit door.
If Tsunoda loses his Red Bull seat, Hadjar should replace him, leaving a Racing Bulls seat for Lindblad alongside Lawson.
If Tsunoda keeps his Red Bull seat, then it will be Lawson making way for Lindblad to slot in alongside Hadjar.
That would be a tough break for Lawson, who has rebuilt himself well after his shock demotion to become Red Bull's second-highest points-scoring driver across the last seven races.
With all its likely options in-house - bar a wild swoop for an outsider - Red Bull can afford to take its time before it makes a choice it hopefully won't have to reverse after two races next time.
How will Red Bull recover from its 2025 low?
There's no rush for Red Bull to decide who occupies its second 2026 seat because Mekies and Red Bull have much bigger fish to fry.
The team needs to prove its disastrous Hungaroring weekend was a one-off, both in terms of its poor performance and lack of its trademark Friday-Saturday turnaround.
Otherwise, it's hard to see any way it can prevent a fourth-place finish in the championship - which would be Red Bull's worst result since it finished in that position in 2015.
The team at least knows Verstappen is now committed to staying with the team for 2026, but the fight to keep him beyond that has already started.
There are only going to be "minimal" upgrades brought to the RB21 before the end of the year, but the team believes there's still a lot more potential to extract from better understanding the existing package.
Red Bull debuted an extensive upgrade package at Spa that the team hopes will deliver more performance in the second half of the season, having only had a sprint weekend at Spa and a Hungaroring circuit that was never going to be its strongest to use it on so far.
How it begins 2026 with its all-new car and first-ever homegrown F1 power unit will define Verstappen's future, but how Red Bull can utilise what it has for the rest of 2025 under Mekies will also be a good test of its troubleshooting, potential-extracting capabilities post-Christian Horner.
Can Colapinto save his Alpine seat?
Just like Tsunoda at Red Bull, Alpine driver Franco Colapinto faces a fight to save his seat and his F1 future in the coming races.
Colapinto hasn't delivered the performance and points that were expected of him when Flavio Briatore benched Jack Doohan for him.
There have been too many incidents, too, like the confidence-shattering crash on his first weekend at Imola and the clumsy spin into the gravel while showing strong pace in qualifying at Silverstone.
Colapinto at least ended the first half of the season with a rare Pierre Gasly-beating weekend at the Hungaroring but, crucially, he's only been delivering those when the Alpine hasn't been in points-scoring contention.
Doing so on the weekends where Alpine can score points would be enough for Colapinto to secure his future for 2026 with strong backing behind him and a lack of obvious replacements.
Two experienced would-be replacements are off the driver market table with both Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez locked into Cadillac for 2026.
That means Alpine would either need to scoop up whoever Red Bull spits out (Tsunoda or Lawson) or gamble again and go for a third rookie in two years, were it to look for an alternative.
Paul Aron is taking part in three FP1s with Alpine in the second half of the year, so Alpine will have its most direct comparison there. Plus, you can never rule out Briatore striking a deal to sign another team's junior for 2026 (as he did with Colapinto for 2025).
So all Colapinto can do in the meantime is perform, deliver some much-needed points to F1's last-placed team, and show Briatore that he doesn't need to take another driver market gamble.
Can Williams hold onto fifth?
Having raced into an early advantage in F1's Class B fight, Williams has seen its lead slowly nibbled away at as its rivals have made big development strides.
Given Aston Martin's surprisingly (even to itself) strong Hungaroring weekend and Sauber's monster points haul before the summer break, they're the two most likely threats to Williams's grip on fifth place.
Sauber scored 45 points and Aston Martin scored 40 over the last six races compared to Williams's tally of 16.
Williams's advantage is currently 18 points over Aston Martin and 19 over Sauber so, at this current rate, things are going to be very close between the three of them come Abu Dhabi.
Williams accepts it's going to be up against it, having made a very deliberate early move to switch off its 2025 development and set full focus on 2026, even if that costs it a position or two in 2025.
But with prize money differences in the region of $10million per place in the constructors' championship, the 2025 midfield fight really does matter to every team involved.
You can't fully count out Racing Bulls either (25 adrift of Williams and now with two drivers capable of regularly scoring points), nor Haas, 35 points back but with a big upgrade coming for the US GP in October.
Williams needs to start unlocking more from its star signing Carlos Sainz (currently a somewhat unrepresentative 16-54 down on points to team-mate Alex Albon) in the second half of the year too if it's to stave off multi-pronged pressure from behind.
What F1 2026 clues will we get?
F1’s once-distant 2026 revolution is getting closer and closer, so you can expect the first hints of who is quietly confident and who is reaching for the panic button to emerge over the next few months.
Just over seven weeks after the 2025 Abu Dhabi season finale, F1 teams will need to have their 2026 cars ready for the first behind-closed-doors 2026 test in Barcelona.
That's the shortest winter break in modern F1 history and one that will only add to the pressure for any team in trouble.
We'll also get a clearer idea of what the teams and drivers make of the new regulations before then as teams' simulated 2026 cars become more developed and closer to what will break cover in pre-season testing.
Some of the early negative reviews from the likes of Leclerc and Lance Stroll were based on early development models; will the opinions of those drivers and others soften, or will they double down when they get a closer version of the real thing?
And if the second half of 2025 does produce a nail-biting title fight with close competition both at the front and in the midfield, will there be any remorse that we're throwing away this current set of regulations for a ruleset that's so far received such lukewarm reviews and a multitude of concerns?
