Every so often, a Formula 1 season boasts an outstanding crop of rookie drivers. The expectation heading into 2025 was that this might be one of those years, and the first 14 events of the season have at least partly delivered on that expectation.
For The Race's ranking of the rookie drivers, we are counting only drivers either who had not started a grand prix before 2025, or those who had only a limited campaign in the previous season. That means Liam Lawson, who contested 11 races across 2023 and 2024 combined, is not included.
The ranking is based on their pace both in qualifying and the race, number of mistakes, all-round execution and the countless other factors that contribute to a driver’s overall performance.
6 Franco Colapinto
That Colapinto said ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix that he was at his most confident before the crash in qualifying on his first weekend back at Imola was telling.
He's had a tough time, although there have been moments when his pace has looked good compared to Gasly, including in Canada, where he ran in the points in the first stint, and last time out in Hungary.
Given Alpine's struggles and his late start to the season, it's perhaps no surprise he has yet to show anything like his best form. The return to a run of tracks where he's previously raced in F1 perhaps offers his best chance of delivering the performances we know he's capable of.
Just as it was a mistake of Alpine to drop Jack Doohan earlier this season, so too would it be an error not to let Colapinto have the chance to build on his difficult start.
5 Jack Doohan
Both Doohan and the driver who replaced him, Colapinto, have hardly been dealt a good hand this season. As a result, it's inevitably they've ended up in the final two slots of our ranking.
All things considered, their performances have been comparable and the reason Doohan nicks fifth place is that he showed flashes of Pierre Gasly-beating speed a little more regularly than his successor has.
Ranged against that, he had the advantage of pre-season and the rolling start of last year's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix outing, and had too many mishaps in his brief stint. This included the crash in Australia, collisions in China, tyre struggles that meant he faded while in the hunt for points in Bahrain, and the FP1 crash in Japan.
He was removed after a Miami weekend in which he showed promising speed but again made errors. He should have been given the opportunity to build on that.
4 Kimi Antonelli
Antonelli is the reverse of one of the drivers ahead of him in this list. He's been more consistent, or at least he was until struggling with the instability created in the car by the Imola rear suspension upgrade misstep, but has rarely shown the searing pace expected of him.
Miami, where he qualified on pole position for the sprint and outpaced team-mate George Russell in qualifying proper, was the exception to that. Partly this is down to a cautious approach rooted in his FP1 shunt at Monza last year. In Austria, Antonelli admitted "I've been maybe a bit too tense on some occasions, and a bit too conservative as well, especially in practice".
He's banked some good, solid results with largely error-free drives and looked set to kick on after easing himself in once he'd driven a superb race to a first podium finish in Canada. But troubles with the car instability instead meant he had a troubled run.
Antonelli's rookie season so far has been decent enough, but not yet extraordinary. However, while he's ranked only fourth it's a strong enough fourth that he could climb to top spot by the end of the season.
3 Ollie Bearman
Bearman has been fast but frustrating. He hasn't scored points in the last 10 grands prix, with only a couple of points for seventh in the Spa sprint since he finished 10th in Bahrain in mid-April, but has more often than not exhibited a good turn of pace.
His eyecatching speed is the clear positive and this is what lifts him above former Formula 2 team-mate Antonelli in our ranking. While there have been weekends where his underlying pace has not converted to a well-executed qualifying performance, and a few where he's struggled, when things come together he has been electric. Silverstone stands out, as there he qualified eighth, heading the midfield.
However, Silverstone also encapsulates how unreliable Bearman has been. In FP3, under the red flag, he attacked the pitlane entry and spun into the wall. That earned him a grid penalty that meant his superb qualifying performance was squandered. It was his second red-flag penalty of the year.
This could well just be the usual rookie growing pains, however, and if he turns his speed into more consistently well-executed weekends he will quickly rack up more results.
2 Gabriel Bortoleto
Bortoleto was an under-the-radar star early in the season. His qualifying pace relative to veteran team-mate Nico Hulkenberg stood out, but Sauber's race struggles meant the occasional Q2 appearance didn't translate into a points finish.
Consequently, he was only conspicuous to the watching world when things went wrong, crashing in Australia and spinning into the gravel on the opening lap in China after being caught out by turbulence. Even so, there was plenty of promise in his race drives when they went to plan.
Then came the first of a triptych of floor upgrades for the ninth race of the season in Spain that transformed Sauber's form. Points, and a first Q3 appearance, finally came in Austria and Bortoleto scored in three of the four events before the August break - albeit punctuated by a dismal Silverstone weekend.
Bortoleto has shown he's fast, intelligent, a quick learner and now capable of scoring regularly. On his current trajectory, he's very close to claiming top spot in this ranking.
1 Isack Hadjar
Red Bull gave the impression it promoted Hadjar as the only realistic option rather than because of confidence in his potential. Yet he's been a revelation.
Hadjar crashed out of what should have been his grand prix debut in Australia, then bounced back immediately by qualifying as the best of the midfield in the second round in China. He then repeated the trick at Suzuka and bagged his first F1 points with an eighth place. That was the first of five points finishes in the first nine events of the season, peaking with sixth at Monaco.
While results have trailed off, that's partly because of an increasingly competitive midfield pack, the odd slice of misfortune such as his power unit-related problem at Spa, and Hadjar himself, who rear-ended Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes in the Silverstone gloom.
There have been a few occasions when, by his own admission, he hasn't extracted all of the pace from the car. But his performances against the returning Liam Lawson have been strong and he's catapulted himself into contention for promotion to Red Bull next year.
