A four-week pause isn't exactly in keeping with the fast-paced nature of the now 24-race long Formula 1 season, but its annual summer shutdown does allow for the chance to reflect on the performances of teams and drivers with more context than the weekend-by-weekend grind would.
And that's just as well when you consider just how much has happened up and down the grid already in F1 2025.
With so much to get into, here's our pick of winners and losers from the season so far:
Loser: Red Bull
Absolute chaos
This time last year, Max Verstappen was leading the drivers' championship by 78 points and Red Bull had a 42-point lead in the constructors' standings, too.
But 12 months on, the team has promoted and sacked Liam Lawson after just two races, jettisoned its team boss of over 20 years, Christian Horner, and has been a clear second-best - and sometimes even further behind - to McLaren in most measurable statistics.
The occasional Max Verstappen flash of excellence reminds us how recently this team was unimpeachable, shortly before another Yuki Tsunoda Q1 exit or anonymous race reminds us the writing was on the wall for Red Bull - which has failed to sort its second driver situation and has failed to match McLaren's development rate too.
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Tsunoda has shown signs of improvement and has dealt with a lower-spec car for parts of the year, in his defence.
But from leading at this point last year to being fourth and 365 points behind McLaren now is simply unacceptable, even for the staunchest Red Bull supporter. - Jack Benyon
Winner: Oscar Piastri
Making the most of this title chance
McLaren's produced a package so good for 2025 that it has exclusivity over the constructors' and drivers' championship titles. In the case of the individual prize, with two drivers who probably aren't quite the finished article, the outcome is going to be at the very least significantly influenced by who makes the fewest mistakes.
And on that score, it's Piastri who inevitably has the upper hand in the title fight.
But it would be reductive to say that's the sole reason for Piastri's current nine-point advantage. He's been a much more rounded, consistent performer this year and has shown devastating turns of speed at times.
This title won't be a walkover - team-mate Lando Norris is putting up a fight - but based on the performances behind the points table from the first 14 rounds of the season, right now Piastri is the safer bet to end McLaren's 17-year wait for a drivers' championship. - Jack Cozens
Loser: Lewis Hamilton
Not that bad - but at times also quite bad
Lewis Hamilton after 14 rounds in 2024: 150 points.
Lewis Hamilton after 14 rounds in 2025: 109 points.
OK, that gap (Hamilton's points tally this year is 73% of what he had at the same time 12 months ago) is bigger thanks in part to his (inherited) victory in the final race before the 2024 summer break, the Belgian Grand Prix.
But that also serves to underline the fact he was a two-time winner by this point last year. Brilliant though his China sprint race win was, in grand prix trim Hamilton hasn't look anything close to adding to his 105 wins since his move to Ferrari.
In his defence, the 2025 Ferrari hadn't looked like a win contender at any point prior to the Hungarian GP. And Hamilton's performance level hasn't been as bad as the results, or, sometimes, his words, have suggested.
But the SF-25 isn't that bad a car, either - so the fact he's still waiting for a first grand prix podium, 14 races into the season, doesn't bode well. - JC
Winner: Sauber
Welcome surprise after pre-season woe
Expectations were on the floor for Sauber after pre-season testing. As Nico Hulkenberg later admitted, "we were in major trouble and things were looking very grim".
Yet Sauber has turned that disastrous start into a remarkable run of results that made it the highest midfield points scorer across the six events before the August break.
The recovery started with an upgrade package for the season-opening Australian GP that delivered backmarker respectability. The car could nick a Q2 place, but it was difficult to drive and aerodynamically unstable.
What really changed things was the first of a trio of floor upgrades for the ninth race of the season in Spain that not only upped the downforce, but also made the car less peaky and inspired more driver confidence.
As well as the positive technical story, the team trackside has sharpened up considerably from the occasional haplessness of the past couple of years to become one capable of consistently delivering points.
Add to that the feel-good story of Nico Hulkenberg finally taking his first F1 podium with a brilliant drive in the rain-hit British Grand Prix, and rookie Gabriel Bortoleto's emergence as a regular scorer after breaking his duck in Austria, and it's clear Sauber is making gains on all fronts.
And it's happened in the nick of time ahead of its transformation into Audi's works team in just a few months. - Edd Straw
Loser: Mercedes
Same issue keeps cropping up
A grand prix winner (something Ferrari can't call itself yet this year) and just 24 points off second in the constructors' championship, Mercedes' season doesn't look too bad at a glance.
The problem is in the details. Too many mid-race slumps. The complete disasters of the Monaco and British GPs.
Most of all: the on-off upgrade situation where a rear suspension change was used, contributed to the Montreal win, then binned again as its downsides outweighed its pros too heavily when it came to car consistency and driver confidence.
If that had been the only time in this era when a Mercedes upgrade hadn't done what the team expected you could shrug that off. But it's a trend.
And too many times this year Mercedes has still not seemed to understand why things have gone wrong on its bad days. That's a tale we've heard too many times since 2022 and it's why it's hard to have a lot of faith in how it will start the new rules era.
Mercedes will probably win one or two more grands prix before 2025 is over. That might even take it to second in the championship. But it won't provide any reassurance that the team that dominated most of a decade and two whole rules cycles is going to be anything other than a yo-yoing sporadic winner in the next era. - Matt Beer
Winner: McLaren
Made good on its 2024 breakthrough
The only real downside for McLaren this year is that it has been too successful and that's caused a few issues with managing its drivers.
While McLaren ended 2024 as the strongest team, there was no guarantee that would continue. But it has taken another step forward. Short of not being as dominant in qualifying as some of the teams that have held the leading baton before it, its supreme tyre-management in races usually means qualifying is irrelevant anyway.
It leads the constructors' championship by 299 points over Ferrari (that's more points than Ferrari has scored total in second place) and its drivers have 97- and 88-point cushions back to Verstappen in the drivers' championship. It also has 11 wins and eight poles from 14 grands prix.
A definite 'winner' in that the team - which has a customer engine - continues to dominate all before it. Only some sort of extraterrestrial intervention will stop it from taking the drivers' and constructors' titles for the first time since 1998. - JB
Loser: Carlos Sainz
Sub-par (but not by as much as it seems)
Sainz's season is nothing like as bad as 16th in the drivers' championship, 38 points behind team-mate Alex Albon's total, would indicate.
He's had his fair share of misfortune, Williams's execution has often been imperfect, and Sainz was bought some time by the fact he has been adapting to a new team.
Except that final point doesn't really hold water. The pace was basically there at the Australian GP season opener, and has been often enough since, it's just the case that Sainz has also been guilty at times of not delivering the speed he's been capable of when it counted.
It's not been disastrous, and there's every possibility he'll turn things around in the second half of the season. But it's also true that the first part of 2025 has fallen short of his and our expectations. - JC
Winner: Pierre Gasly
His team's saviour
Alpine would be even deeper in a hole of its own digging but for Pierre Gasly's exploits. He's wrung the neck of the Alpine consistently and bagged all of its 20 points.
While opportunities to score have been rare, he's seized them when they present themselves.
That mission has not been helped by problems such as being unable to start the Spa sprint from eighth on the grid thanks to a water leak. There have also been occasions where the Alpine's poor race pace, partly thanks to its inefficient energy recovery, have left him fighting a rearguard action.
At times, such as in the Belgian GP, he's fought hard enough to bag an against-the-odds point.
His high point was Silverstone, where his remarkable drive to sixth was overshadowed by Hulkenberg's third place. But Gasly's was the stronger all-round weekend performance, earning him first place in The Race's event driver rankings.
Given the car also lacks traction and struggles on bumps, Gasly has had many weekends where even performing well could only yield an anonymous finish deep in the midfield. Yet for the most part, he's maintained a calm demeanour with his frustration only boiling over in the car noticeably during a frustrating Austrian GP.
Gasly's performances are one of the few positives at Alpine in 2025 and the struggling team is lucky to have him. The question is how long it is before a more credible rival tries to sign him, which will happen if he continues to perform at this level. - ES
Losers: Alpine's second drivers
One dropped, one below par
Stints in the second Alpine have pretty much ended Jack Doohan and Franco Colapinto's fledgling F1 careers (even if Colapinto stays on all year, he'll need a sustained form turnaround to earn another chance here or elsewhere).
It probably wouldn't do anything for Paul Aron's long-term prospects or reputation if he got a call-up too. And it's easy to see why Valtteri Bottas looks more interested in the unknown quantity of Cadillac than this known dead-end.
That's not to say Doohan and Colapinto both did brilliant jobs and were flawless in their own contributions.
But rookie drivers under huge career pressure are rarely going to thrive when the behaviour of both the car beneath them and the team set-up around them are so unpredictable. - MB
Winner: Williams
A huge turnaround
Williams has been, on balance, the class of a midfield F1 fight that's fiercer (and had more points on offer) than at any other point during the ground effect era.
To underline that progress, its star driver line-up - even with Sainz struggling to get the rub of the green since his switch from Ferrari - has already combined for 70 points, 17 more than Williams has managed in the previous three seasons combined.
As a result, it's on course for fifth place in the constructors' championship - a finish it hasn't achieved since 2017 - and needs just 14 points to eclipse its tally from that year.
And you have to go a year further back for the last time a Williams driver, Bottas, finished in the top 10 in the championship - something Albon, who's eighth and closer to Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli than the next-best midfield driver, is comfortably on course to do.
So Williams is a winner for now, undoubtedly. The only question is how much ground it might forfeit in the second half of the year, having switched its development priorities to 2026 earlier than the rest - a decision that should pay off next year.
Still, the first half of the season has been so strong that it feels like the second half will only determine how much of a winner it is. - JC
Loser: Ferrari
End to 2024 was just a false dawn
Ferrari fell just 15 points short of winning the 2024 constructors' championship - which would've marked its first F1 title success in 16 years - and, broadly speaking, had momentum on its side: it outscored McLaren in five of the final six rounds.
But that looks like nothing more than a false dawn; you'd have no idea looking at this year's performance, and the gulf between it and the McLaren team it ran so close for the title, that it was so competitive in 2024.
That gulf is applicable to Red Bull and Mercedes, too, which are similarly far adrift of McLaren (which also deserves its dues for what it's achieved with the MCL39 this season).
But there's no getting away from the fact Ferrari has fallen well short of expectations - both internal and external - with a revised car concept that hasn't paid off.
What Ferrari really needed in 2025 was a title push. That thought is long gone. Instead, it's winless. - JC
Winner: Isack Hadjar
Rookie revelation
Arguably the rookie the least was expected of coming into the season - or, perhaps, the rookie whose backer expected least from - Hadjar has been a revelation.
The first two events didn't go to plan - there was the ignominy of the formation lap crash in Australia, and Racing Bulls' strategic misstep proved the main barrier to points in the Chinese GP - but the signs were still there that Hadjar had a decent turn of speed about him.
There was no better way to underline that than by cracking the top 10 (and finishing best of the rest) next time out at Suzuka, of all places.
In what has generally been a strong crop, Hadjar has established himself as the standout among the newcomers - and shot himself up the rankings in Red Bull's estimations. - JC
Loser: Kimi Antonelli
Lacking more 'wow' moments
Listening to Kimi Antonelli explain his performances and what he's learning during his rookie F1 season is always fascinating - he's a highly intelligent and articulate young racer tackling this big high-pressure chance with great maturity.
The only thing is, outstanding Miami sprint pole aside, shouldn't we have seen more by now? A few more moments that make you go 'wow, he really, really is special'.
No one expects shunt-free ultra-consistency from an 18-year-old rookie. But when someone comes in with as much hype around them as the man Mercedes was ready to edge Hamilton out for in the long-term, even before Hamilton made his own exit, you expect fireworks.
That Miami sprint qualifying lap proved there's sensational ability within Antonelli. What needs to happen for us to see it more often? He's not exactly under pressure, but neither is he proving hugely memorable so far. - MB
