McLaren’s Oscar Piastri will aim to make it four wins in a row when the 2025 Formula 1 season arrives in Europe for the first time for this weekend’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola.
Meanwhile, there will be plenty of attention on Lewis Hamilton as he competes in Italy for the first time as a Ferrari driver.
BBC Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.
Why do we now have a situation where a rookie only lasts a few races before being replaced? Is it the cost cap that makes the teams wary of a crash-prone rookie? So few of them seem to be given time to establish themselves in a team now compared with past seasons. – Christopher
You’re obviously referring to the fact that after just six races this year, two of the 20 drivers have already been replaced, Liam Lawson at Red Bull and Jack Doohan at Alpine.
But I don’t think that necessarily means it is a trend across the sport. This feels more like two isolated situations that look related only out of coincidence.
Red Bull have always been unforgiving with their drivers. And to understand why, you have to look at what their young driver programme is for.
The are looking for a new driver of world-championship calibre.
They believe that if a driver is going to get to that level, they will adapt quickly to F1 – and the evidence suggests they’re right. All the greats shone pretty much immediately.
Red Bull’s belief is that, if a driver struggles in their first half-season, they are simply not of the highest calibre. They might be good enough for a solid F1 career. But that’s not enough for Red Bull. So they have no compunction about jettisoning them.
In Lawson’s case, the feeling was that he had got himself into a spin that he was not going to get out of, so they needed to get him out of that scenario as soon as possible.
It might have been an admission of their own failure, that they should have gone for Yuki Tsunoda in the first place. But they didn’t waste any time when it came to it.
As for Alpine, Doohan always appeared on borrowed time.
Executive adviser Flavio Briatore never seemed convinced he had been the right choice. And as soon as he signed Franco Colapinto over the winter, it was obvious what was going to happen sooner or later.
The only way Doohan might have stopped it would have been to be outstanding from the off. He’s shown flashes of promise, undoubtedly, but his two big crashes did not help.
Do you think Renault/Alpine have been directionless since the Crash-gate scandal came out in 2009? Is promoting Flavio Briatore to principal a step forward or morally wrong after his controversial past? – Ryan
Let’s tidy up a bit of history here. ‘Crash-gate’ is the name given to the scandal when Nelson Piquet deliberately crashed in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix as part of a plan to advantage his team-mate Fernando Alonso, who went on to win the race.
When what happened became public a year later, then Renault team principal Flavio Briatore and engineering director Pat Symonds were banned from the sport, Briatore indefinitely, Symonds for five years. Renault itself was given a two-year suspended ban.
Renault quit F1 as a team owner at the end of 2009, and sold the team to an investment group called Genii Capital, which kept the name Renault in 2010, and then ran as Lotus until 2016.
Renault stayed involved in F1 as an engine builder and returned as a team owner in 2016, buying back the team. It set itself an initial five-year plan to become competitive, which was not achieved, despite some progress being made.
The team was rebranded as Alpine for 2021, when it set a new plan, this time to be competitive within 100 races. Effectively a second five-year plan.
They won a grand prix, with Esteban Ocon in Hungary in 2021, in a race of particularly unusual circumstances. And Alonso was outstanding in getting a podium in Qatar in 2021 and putting the car on the front row in the wet in Canada in 2022.
But precious little obvious progress was made, and in the past two years the team has gone backwards.
The Alpine period has been characterised by turmoil, with a succession of management changes and some very obvious examples of mismanagement.
The most obvious of these was when they managed to lose both Alonso and Oscar Piastri in one summer in 2022.
Fundamentally, in this period, Renault has known what it has wanted but not given any real indication that it understands how to get it.
Introducing Briatore was an attempt by Renault chief executive officer Luca de Meo to inject some direction and vigour into the team.
But it remains to be seen what that direction is.
On the face of it, closing the Renault F1 engine facility and switching to Mercedes engines from 2026 is a short-term way of both saving money and increasing competitiveness, as Renault has lagged behind throughout the hybrid era, and the company was clearly not willing to spend the money to become competitive.
The charge laid against Renault is that it betrays a storied history of the brand in F1, and misunderstands how teams have traditionally become frontrunners. Although McLaren are currently proving a factory engine partnership is not required to win world titles.
As for Briatore, it’s not for me to say whether it’s right or wrong that he be allowed back.
In 2010, a French court overturned the ban imposed on him. Symonds has since been rehabilitated. One could argue that Briatore has paid for his misdemeanour and should be given a chance to work again.
Others will think that’s wrong. But the sport as a collective has decided otherwise.
Does Carlos Sainz Sr have a realistic chance of becoming FIA president? – Tom
Sainz announced last week that he was considering running for FIA president this year. He has not yet confirmed that he will do so. Other candidates may yet emerge – there are certainly rumours that there are a couple out there.
Within F1, there is widespread concern about the leadership of the current FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, but it’s FIA members who vote in December’s election.
For any opponent to succeed, they will have to convince the members around the world to back them. And Ben Sulayem already has a lot of support, even if there are a number of clubs who don’t like the direction in which he is taking the FIA.
The way the FIA statutes are set up, there is quite a high bar even to get into the election, as candidates have to come up with a full presidential team, which has to fit some quite demanding criteria.
Defeating Ben Sulayem as the incumbent will not be easy – the system is stacked in his favour, and many expect him to make further changes to make that even more the case in the run-up to the election.
Which drivers are in contention for the seats at Cadillac? Will it be Daniel Ricciardo or Sergio Perez with a rookie? Will they choose someone from IndyCar to help generate extra American interest? – Matt
Daniel Ricciardo’s time in F1 is almost certainly over.
Sergio Perez is a strong candidate for the Cadillac seat. Valtteri Bottas is another contender.
There is definitely interest at Cadillac in having an American driver – and Colton Herta was the front-runner when the project was initially launched as Andretti – but they have made it clear it is not an immediate requirement.
Dan Towriss, boss of TWG, which is the organisation running the team, said at the Miami Grand Prix: “We’re committed to having an American driver. It’s important to all of us to do it the right way.
“It’s not a gimmick to just grab somebody and drop them in the seat because it’s important to us that they’re successful.
“We want that seat respected when that American driver does come in for the team
“We’re committed to that and we’ll find the right way and the right time to bring the right driver into Formula 1.”
As for wider driver choice, Towriss said: “We’re not in a hurry to select a driver. We’re taking our time.”
If stewards won’t penalise first-lap indiscipline with anything more than a five-second penalty, and clean air is everything, what stops anyone in the first group of cars at the start just cutting corners to take the lead in the hope they get more than a five-second advantage before the first stop? – Andy
In theory, this might work, at least in the context of how the rules were administered in Saudi Arabia, when Max Verstappen retained the lead by cutting the first corner and then received a five-second penalty because he did not give the place back.
But is it likely to become a consistent pattern of behaviour by enough drivers for it to become a common theme, as opposed to isolated incidents that stewards can deal with on a one-by-one basis? I doubt it.
