F1 2025 team-mate battles - Who’s leading each pair at the summer break?

For some drivers the F1 summer shutdown offers a chance to reset their season and return rejuvenated. For others, it’s a disruptive break in their upward momentum in the battle that matters most: the one with their team-mate.

Although Formula 1 might be a team sport, we regularly see some of the most competitive racing between drivers in the same cars, bidding to prove themselves against the most revealing benchmark for any racer.

And with a team-mate battle looking set to decide this year’s world championship, and several more fascinating duels running down the grid, the summer break offers the ideal opportunity to evaluate which drivers have the edge in a close-fought battle, and which are winning extremely one-sided battles.

McLaren
Oscar Piastri vs Lando Norris

1st (284 points)	Standings	2nd (275 points)
8	Head-to-head qualifying	6
7	Head-to-head grands prix	7
2	Head-to-head sprints	1
6	GP wins	5

Verdict

McLaren’s duo have delivered one of the tightest and most intense intra-team battles this year, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, as they are are fighting for their first F1 title.

After two seasons where Norris generally had the upper hand, Piastri has raised his level to become McLaren’s most successful driver so far, securing more race wins and holding a narrow lead in both points and race head-to-heads.

He’s been cool, calm and assured in coming back from a disastrous start to the season when rain started falling at the Australian Grand Prix while he was challenging Norris for the lead. He slithered on to the grass and only managed to recover to finish ninth in front of his home crowd. Piastri followed that with four victories in the next five races, giving him the lead of the championship that he’s held on to since.

In contrast, Norris’s start to the season was error-strewn: he crashed during qualifying in Saudi Arabia, misjudged a pass on Max Verstappen in Miami and then drove into his team-mate in Canada. However, in the last few races, Norris has also made a comeback, winning three grands prix in four to close the championship gap to just nine points.

Thanks to McLaren’s superior car, the 2025 title will go to one of them unless something dramatic happens in the final 10 races of the season, and the battle to decide the victor should be well worth watching.

Ferrari
Charles Leclerc vs Lewis Hamilton

5th (151 points)	Standings	6th (109 points)
10	Head-to-head qualifying	4
11	Head-to-head grands prix	2
1	Head-to-head sprints	2
5	Podiums	0

Verdict

Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari dominated the start of the season, with wall-to-wall coverage of his first visit to the Maranello factory; the first pictures of him in a red Ferrari race suit; and his first laps in this year’s car.

But once competition commenced, the year has so far tilted clearly in Charles Leclerc’s favour, particularly on race days.

Hamilton has beaten Leclerc in sprint races, even winning in China, but has struggled to consistently match his team-mate across grand prix distances and is yet to score a podium finish in 14 outings.

He’s clearly less familiar with a team that Leclerc has now been with for seven seasons, but also appears to be struggling more with the compromised set-up forced on the drivers by a Ferrari that can’t run as low as it needs to.

That’s not to say that Leclerc is overjoyed with the performance of his car, but he tends to be able to coax more from it, bringing him five podium places this year.

The arrival of upgrades in recent races has not proved to be the silver bullet for the team’s troubles. In fact, Hamilton had an even more torrid time of it as the summer break approached. He was knocked out in the first Q1 stage of qualifying for both the Belgian sprint and the Grand Prix before a virtuoso drive in the latter saw him finish in the points.

In Hungary, however, he once again missed out on the final qualifying shootout when he was eliminated in Q2, while Leclerc started on pole. “I’m useless, absolutely useless,” he said. “Probably need to change the driver.” After an uninspiring race to 12th — the first time he had failed to score at the Hungaroring — Hamilton insisted that he would be back in the car at the next race in Zandvoort.

Red Bull
Max Verstappen vs Yuki Tsunoda

3rd (187 points)	Standings	18th (10 points)
12	Head-to-head qualifying	0
11	Head-to-head grands prix	1
1	Head-to-head sprints	1
2	GP wins	0

Verdict

There isn’t much to say here… Verstappen has been completely dominant in qualifying and races against both Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda, who has struggled to make an impression since being promoted to Red Bull.

Tsunoda is yet to outqualify Verstappen, trails by an average of over half a second per session, hasn’t finished in the points in the last seven races, and now sits behind Lawson — the man he replaced after just two races this year — in the standings.

In this respect, Tsunoda’s statistics show him following the same trend as Verstappen’s recent team-mates: Lawson and Sergio Perez (at least in his later years with the team) simply could not unlock the same level of performance as Verstappen from the tricky-to-drive Red Bull.

This year, even Verstappen is struggling with the car and looks to have little hope in the title race. However, don’t let that overshadow the gains that Tsunoda appears to be making — particularly since team principal Christian Horner was replaced by his former Racing Bull boss, Laurent Mekies.

He qualified inside the top ten at Belgium for the first time in seven races, and missed out on a points finish largely because of a miscommunication. And while he might have been knocked out in Q1 at Hungary, it was with a time that was just 0.15sec slower than his team-mate.

If Tsunoda’s progress continues in the second half of the season, will Red Bull finally have two drivers capable of fighting at the front… given the right car?

Mercedes
George Russell vs Kimi Antonelli

4th (172 points)	Standings	7th (64 points)
13	Head-to-head qualifying	1
14	Head-to-head grands prix	0
3	Head-to-head sprints	0
1	GP wins	0

Verdict

Russell has dominated rookie Antonelli throughout the 2025 season so far, leading in points, qualifying, and race head-to-heads.

Antonelli has shown flashes of pace, taking pole in the Miami Grand Prix sprint race, and finishing on the podium in Canada but is still lacking consistency and confidence, while Russell’s experience has made him the clear team leader.

In fairness, this is exactly what Mercedes predicted when it signed Antonelli to replace Lewis Hamilton, with a view to getting him up to speed in time for the 2026 season, when Mercedes has high hopes of gaining an advantage thanks to a change in regulations which will require all-new cars and power units.

“For Kimi, it’s about the time to develop, to learn the tracks, to be on top for next year, the regulation change,” said team boss Toto Wolff at the start of this year. “That means great results and that means moments where it’s going to be more difficult.”

Williams
Alex Albon vs Carlos Sainz

8th (54 points)	Standings	16th (16 points)
8	Head-to-head qualifying	6
9	Head-to-head grands prix	4
2	Head-to-head sprints	1

Verdict

2025 was the year of truth for Alex Albon who, it could be argued, hadn’t yet been properly tested against a team-mate during his F1 career. He joined the grid in 2019 with Toro Rosso and was rapidly promoted to Red Bull against Max Verstappen — who he had no expectation of beating.

That stint didn’t end well for Albon who dropped out of F1 — yet another team-mate to struggle against Verstappen. On his return with Williams, he unsurprisingly beat the unpromising Nicholas Laitifi, followed by rookies Logan Sargeant and Franco Colapinto.

In Sainz, however, Albon faced a proven race-winner, whose pace and consistency in 2024 made some onlookers wonder whether Ferrari had made the right choice in dropping him instead of Charles Leclerc.

So far, Albon has aced the test and clearly established himself as the leading driver at Williams in 2025. He has built a sizeable points gap and has won the lion’s share of their head-to-head battles.

Sainz seemed surprised at how long it was taking to adapt to the new car, and much of his slow start to the season can be put down to that learning process. He has managed flashes of competitiveness but has also been plagued by problems that have hampered his progress.

Sauber
Nico Hülkenberg vs Gabriel Bortoleto

9th (37 points)	Standings	17th (14 points)
6	Head-to-head qualifying	8
8	Head-to-head grands prix	5
1	Head-to-head sprints	2

Verdict

Fresh from winning the Formula 2 championship, Gabriel Bortoleto has proved himself ready for Formula 1, with increasingly impressive results as the season has gone on, and especially since an upgraded floor put the Sauber into points contention from the ninth race of year, the Spanish Grand Prix, onwards.

Generally quicker over a single lap than Hülkenberg, Bortoleto has qualified in the top ten for three of the past four races, during which time Hülkenberg didn’t manage that feat at all.

However, the veteran driver wasn’t brought into the team for his speed alone and he has proven his worth time and time again in races, not least at Silverstone where he led the team’s strategy from the cockpit, calling the pitstops perfectly in changeable wet-dry conditions to secure a podium place and end a record run of races without a top-three finish.

His race advantage may not continue for the rest of the year if Bortoleto gets his way though. The Brazilian enjoyed his strongest weekend of the year in Hungary, finishing sixth after a brilliant drive, which was his second points finish in a row. With the Sauber likely to remain competitive for the rest of the year, both drivers could be regularly battling in the points.

Racing Bulls
Isack Hadjar vs Liam Lawson

13th (22 points)	Standings	15th (20 points)
9	Head-to-head qualifying	3
8	Head-to-head GP results	3
2	Head-to-head sprint results	0

Verdict

After four F2 race wins in 2024, which helped him to the runners-up spot in the championship, Isack Hadjar earned a promotion to the F1 grid and — Australian Grand Prix formation lap crash notwithstanding — looked immediately at home.

Once Yuki Tsunoda moved to Red Bull from the third race of the season onwards, Hadjar looked to have the measure of the returning Liam Lawson, scoring points consistently and generally being the quickest of the two.

But while Hadjar can be content in ‘winning’ the first part of the season on every measure, the rest of the year could take a different turn, as Lawson appears to have raised his game in recent races and is finally gelling with the car, as evidenced by his three points-scoring finishes in the past few races — each ahead of Hadjar.

It has taken several races for Lawson to rediscover his pace after a stuttering start to his F1 career, that included an impressive debut when he stood in for an injured Daniel Ricciardo at Racing Bulls (then AlphaTauri) in 2023, and then a steady set of races when he replaced Ricciardo permanently in 2024.

But he was all at sea at Red Bull, and still looked dazed when he was sent back to Racing Bulls for the Japanese Grand Prix. Now just two points behind Hadjar in the championship, he’ll be looking to overhaul the gap when racing resumes.

Aston Martin
Fernando Alonso vs Lance Stroll

11th (26 points)	Standings	12th (26 points)
14	Head-to-head qualifying	0
8	Head-to-head grands prix	5
0	Head-to-head sprints	3

Verdict

Aston Martin has been back in the doldrums for most of 2025, with an uncompetitive car that has only recently been scoring points with any regularity. And while the cars have been towards the back of the grid, it might have gone unnoticed that Lance Stroll has at times been close to Fernando Alonso’s pace.

Stroll is yet to outqualify Alonso for a grand prix but got close in Hungary, with less than two-hundredths of a second separating the cars in fifth and sixth places on the grid.

For much of the season, Stroll led Alonso in the championship too, before a recent run of points finishes put the two drivers level on 26 points.

However, other races have seen Stroll languishing far behind his team-mate and unless reliability and fortunes shift, Alonso’s consistent edge in outright performance and consistency still makes him Aston Martin’s benchmark driver.

Haas
Esteban Ocon vs Oliver Bearman

10th (27 points)	Standings	19th (8 points)
8	Head-to-head qualifying	6
9	Head-to-head GP results	5
1	Head-to-head sprint results	2

Verdict

Ocon’s experience and speed have made him Haas’s leading points scorer in 2025, but Bearman has lived up to the expectations he created on his first F1 appearance when he stood in for Carlos Sainz at last year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

He’s been a good match for his experienced team-mate in qualifying, and would likely be closer in the standings were it not for two unnecessary grid penalties for failing to observe red flags at the Monaco and British Grands Prix weekends.

Another rookie who looks well-suited to Formula 1, if Bearman can translate his one-lap pace into Sunday results, this pairing could tighten up further after the break.

Alpine
Pierre Gasly vs Franco Colapinto

14th (20 points)	Standings	20th (0 points)
6	Head-to-head qualifying	2
5	Head-to-head GP results	3
0	Head-to-head sprint results	1

Verdict

Pierre Gasly is one of the many drivers to have joined Red Bull on a high, only to be spat out a few races later as he failed to get on terms with Max Verstappen.

The boot’s on the other foot at Alpine, where Gasly watches his team-mates struggle to get on terms with the the now-veteran driver.

First was Jack Doohan who was roundly beaten on all fronts by his team-mate. However, replacing him with Franco Colapinto hasn’t shifted the balance.

Gasly has scored all of the team’s points and has outperformed the former Williams driver in qualifying and grand prix results too. One bright spot for Colapinto was at the last race in Hungary, where he outqualfied Gasly and finished ahead of him in the race too. Can he do more of the same after summer?