Three of the top four teams on the F1 grid have now finalised their line-ups for the 2025 season. World champions Red Bull did so most recently when they handed Sergio Perez a new deal.
Max Verstappen is under contract at Milton Keynes until the end of the 2028 season. However, he can apparently break that deal ahead of the 2026 regulations, or at the point executive director Helmut Marko leaves.
With Perez potentially needing to meet certain performance criteria to stay for 2026, there could soon be one seat or even two available under Christian Horner. One driver who won’t be in the running is Lewis Hamilton, who’s instead signed for Ferrari on a multi-year deal.
Hamilton will race alongside Charles Leclerc in what could be his final challenge before he retires. 18-year-old academy driver Oliver Bearman, who’s set to race for Haas next year, will hope to be the seven-time world champion’s successor.
Another potential superstar in Kimi Antonelli is poised to succeed Hamilton at Mercedes. George Russell is under contract until the end of 2025, but Toto Wolff could have a problem if Verstappen becomes available.
And that just leaves McLaren, who will feel their line-up is secure for the long term. Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have signed contract extensions within the last eight months.
Carlos Sainz may never return to the front of the F1 grid
With Mercedes plumping for Antonelli, Carlos Sainz finds his options extremely limited. Sainz is the unfortunate victim of Hamilton’s move to Ferrari.
Reports suggested that the Silver Arrows did offer him a contract, but it was only a guaranteed one-year deal. That indicates that they viewed him as a second-class driver who would be moved aside if Verstappen was available, or Antonelli impressed further down the grid.
Sainz is choosing between Williams and Sauber (set to become Audi in 2026), the two lowest-ranking teams in the constructors’. At 29, he could conceivably return to the front of the F1 grid within a couple of years.
But writing in a Q&A for BBC Sport, journalist Andrew Benson suggested that his time with the top teams may be up. If they truly rated Sainz, he says one of them would have snapped him up this year.
“The top teams in F1 have made clear their views on drivers and Sainz is clearly not in their minds – if he was, he would not be in the situation he is,” he said. “That being the case, it’s hard to see him ending up in an elite car again in the near future. But in F1 you never know what will happen, so it cannot be ruled out.”
What Sainz camp told David Croft about next move amid Williams talk
Sainz started his F1 career at Red Bull junior team Toro Rosso, where he competed against Verstappen. Their fractious relationship is part of the reason that Horner was reluctant to hire him for 2025.
From there, he moved on to Renault, where he spent a single season before landing at McLaren. The Spaniard bagged his first two F1 podiums while racing for the Woking outfit.
But Ferrari then lured him away in 2021 as a successor to Sebastian Vettel, and he’s gone on to win three Grands Prix for the Scuderia. With around two-thirds of his final season to go, he’s sitting fourth in the championship on 108 points.
F1 Oversteer understands that he’s set to sign a deal with Williams, which will mean embracing a long-term project. Team principal James Vowles believes they will be more competitive than new entrants Audi.
The German giants have apparently offered him a contract so lucrative that even Red Bull couldn’t match it. But Sainz’s camp have told Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft that they’re not motivated by money and instead want the most appealing ‘vision for the future’.
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