There are two sides to every coin. Just as this season has had its fair share of standout entries, it has also seen several drivers fall short of their respective marks. Here are Living Sports’ top five worst drivers of 2025.
Rare and twisted is the individual who takes pleasure in putting Lewis Hamilton in a list like this. Having come into this season atop a wave of fanfare and hype, Hamilton’s first year in red has been a self-described nightmare. That’s not to say it's been all bad, the sprint pole and win in Shanghai speak for themselves, while that opening stint on the intermediate tyres in Belgium – during which he went from 18th to 7th – was nothing short of mesmeric. That said, the uncharacteristic mistakes have been undeniable. Hamilton crashed out of the Dutch Grand Prix, ended up 18th after a sprint qualifying spin in Belgium, drove into the back of Franco Colapinto in Brazil, and, while his Q1 exit in Las Vegas was due in part to a miscommunication from the pitwall, the seven-time world champion still clouted a bollard on his warmup lap. He outraced Charles Leclerc just eight times over the course of the season and outqualified him on only seven occasions. As a result, the unwanted records Hamilton has accumulated make for grim reading. He currently holds the record for most Ferrari starts before a first podium at 24. In Las Vegas, he qualified last after getting a time on the board for the very first time in his career and is the only full-time Ferrari driver in history to record three consecutive Q1 exits.
There have been flashes of the old magic, and with 39.2% of his team’s total points haul, Hamilton has been a credible rear gunner for Leclerc, as was made clear in Austria and Bahrain, where he put in solid drives and finished just one place behind him. But while that may be enough for a midfield journeyman, it's not enough for a seven-time world champion.
Let’s not forget why Lewis Hamilton is still here. He moved to Ferrari with a very clear objective: win the eighth world title he feels was taken away from him.
As far as that project is concerned, 2025 has been a dismal starting point, and Hamilton has understandably chosen to focus on recentering himself during the winter break. Should he throw in the towel? Absolutely not. But it's no exaggeration to say 2026 will be a make-or-break year for him. Should Hamilton adjust to the new regulations and secure a car that suits his driving style, he will definitely stay on; should Ferrari fail to improve on their shambolic form, there’s a chance the most decorated Formula 1 career of all-time could be nearing its end.
It's the same story every year. Every now and again, Lance Stroll will put in a handful of good performances and remind us all that while he does not occupy his current seat on merit, he has the skill to be of service to a team further down the grid. All before slipping into anonymity for the rest of the season. Needless to say, 2025 has been no different. He held his nerve at the rain-affected season opener in Australia to secure sixth while his teammate crashed out, finished a solid seventh at Silverstone, and repeated the feat at Zandvoort (despite crashing twice over the course of the weekend). But too often we have seen Stroll bogged down in midfield obscurity.
His penchant for crashes continues to blight his record (best exemplified by that desperate lunge on Esteban Ocon in the Austin sprint), while Stroll’s pace has been well off that of his teammate. He outqualified Fernando Alonso just once in the China sprint, was outraced by him 17 times over the course of the season and ended up six places behind him in the standings, having scored just 37% of Aston Martin’s total points. That’s despite Alonso’s run of bad luck in the early part of the season, during which he recorded three DNFs from the opening eight races.
Aston Martin have made some big promises as of late. With their state-of-the-art factory now complete, Honda’s backing secured and design legend Adrian Newey hard at work on the 2026 car, the team has all the right ingredients to become a bona fide front runner. Should Aston Martin produce a title-challenging car, it will be interesting to see if Stroll can rise to the occasion and what may become of him if he doesn’t.
The latest in a long, long line of capable racing drivers who have fallen victim to that second Red Bull seat, Yuki Tsunoda’s long-awaited shot at the senior team did not pay dividends. A solid start to the season with Racing Bulls saw him take over from the struggling Liam Lawson after just two races. There were signs of initial promise as he made Q3 and secured his first points in Bahrain (two things Lawson never came close to achieving in his limited time with the team), but after a heavy crash during qualifying at Imola, Tsunoda’s season was permanently compromised.
He may have completed a decent recovery drive to tenth in the race, but he was never on equal footing with Max Verstappen when it came to upgrades, nor did the team trust him to bring the car back in one piece. Tsunoda soon spiralled with a seven-race run of pointless finishes, the most of any Red Bull driver in history. There were flashes of promise as he secured seventh place in Austin, did his part in keeping Lando Norris at bay en route to sixth in Baku, and looked set to provide similar assistance to Verstappen in Mexico before being hit with a 12-second pitstop.
In the end, however, Tsunoda was too far adrift of the frontrunners for far too long. With an average qualifying deficit of over seven tenths of a second and just 31 points to Verstappen’s 421, it's easy to see why he has lost his seat to a burgeoning Isack Hadjar. Tsunoda has proven himself to be a capable midfield driver in the past, but with this torrid run of form, it's hard to contest the claim that his F1 career is probably over.
Quick but crash-prone during his brief stint at Williams in 2024, Franco Colapinto did little to impress in 2025. Starting on the sidelines, Colapinto was granted an Alpine race seat at round seven at Imola. A crash in his first qualifying session did his confidence no favours, and Colapinto spent much of the season miles off his teammate, Pierre Gasly. On paper, a rookie trailing an experienced teammate by an average of three-tenths of a second isn’t dire, but failing to beat said teammate in the last nine qualifying sessions of the season certainly is. Granted, the car was underwhelming, but whenever a points finish was possible, it was always Gasly who capitalised as he scored all 22 of Alpine’s points.
Mild improvements in qualifying, an eleventh-place finish at Zandvoort, and a significant injection of funding from sponsors have kept Colapinto on the grid for 2026. On reflection, he’s done just enough to earn another shot, but should this barren run of form continue, don’t be surprised if the name Paul Aron starts making the rounds next season.
Remember him? Having only contested six of 2025’s 24 grand prix, it's easy to forget Jack Doohan was even on the grid this year. There’s a strong argument to be made for the placement of an ‘N/A’ next to his name, as the Australian was arguably set up to fail. After debuting at last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in place of the departing Esteban Ocon, Doohan was retained by Alpine for 2025. However, after Flavio Briatore returned to the F1 fold with Team Enstone and granted Colapinto a reserve driver role in January, rumours of Doohan being tied to a six-race deal began to spread. Reports suggested that Briatore favoured Colapinto for the race seat, while other senior figures at Alpine are said to have had their doubts.
A major internal shakeup came after the Miami Grand Prix. Team principal Oliver Oakes was superseded by Briatore, who duly dropped Doohan before the very next race. It's therefore safe to say Jack Doohan never got a fair shot at F1. However, the 22-year-old didn’t help himself with two major crashes in Australia and Japan. He only outperformed Gasly in two of the five grand prix they contested as teammates, was second best in both the sprints, and failed to get anywhere near the points. Some may consider this harsh, but of the limited evidence we have available, there’s no getting around the fact that Jack Doohan had the least going for him in 2025.
