Season Review: Final Drivers’ & Teams’ Standings
A 24‑race season is always a story of momentum — but 2025 was a story of margins. The kind that live in tyre temperatures, undercut windows, and the last few tenths you can still find when your engineer says, “Target is P3.”
Because that’s what decided it: Lando Norris is the 2025 Formula 1 World Champion on 423 points, with Max Verstappen just two points back on 421, and Oscar Piastri third on 410. And yes, it really was that tight: the finale at Yas Marina delivered a 10‑point swing (VER P1 vs NOR P3) that nearly rewrote the entire season in 90 minutes.
On the team side, McLaren didn’t just win — they controlled. The papaya machine finished P1 in the Constructors’ Championship with 833 points, clear of Mercedes (469) and Red Bull Racing (451).
If you want the Abu Dhabi build-up and the title math that set up the decider, jump back into our recent coverage:
The 2025 F1 Points Picture (and the big scoring change)
Before we dive into the final 2025 F1 standings, one rule matters for how we read this season:
- No fastest lap bonus point from 2025 onwards.
That means a race win is back to a clean 25 points, not 26 — and late “free-stop” fastest lap grabs (or fastest lap denials) are gone. The rest of the core scoring remains familiar: points to the top 10 in Grands Prix, and to the top eight in Sprint races.
In a championship decided by two points, the removal of that bonus point feels less like trivia and more like theme.
Final 2025 Drivers’ Championship Standings
Here are the final 2025 Drivers’ Championship standings (full classified drivers):
| Pos | Driver | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 423 |
| 2 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 421 |
| 3 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 410 |
| 4 | George Russell | Mercedes | 319 |
| 5 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 242 |
| 6 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 156 |
| 7 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 150 |
| 8 | Alexander Albon | Williams | 73 |
| 9 | Carlos Sainz | Williams | 64 |
| 10 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | 56 |
| 11 | Nico Hülkenberg | Kick Sauber | 51 |
| 12 | Isack Hadjar | Racing Bulls | 51 |
| 13 | Oliver Bearman | Haas | 41 |
| 14 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 38 |
| 15 | Esteban Ocon | Haas | 38 |
| 16 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 33 |
| 17 | Yuki Tsunoda | Red Bull Racing | 33 |
| 18 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 22 |
| 19 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Kick Sauber | 19 |
| 20 | Franco Colapinto | Alpine | 0 |
| 21 | Jack Doohan | Alpine | 0 |
The title fight, in one brutal line
Norris 423, Verstappen 421, Piastri 410. No decimals, no asterisks, no bonus point footnotes — just a two‑point gap after 24 races.
And to connect the dots with the numbers many fans were tracking heading into the finale: Norris led on 408 points, with Verstappen on 396 (-12) and Piastri on 392 (-16) before Abu Dhabi. Sunday then added 15 to Norris, 25 to Verstappen, and 18 to Piastri — exactly how you land at 423/421/410.
Norris vs Verstappen vs Piastri: why the points landed this way
The cleanest way to explain 2025 is this:
- Verstappen won more races (8).
- Norris won 7.
- Piastri won 7.
- Norris still won the championship.
That’s not a contradiction — it’s a reminder that titles are typically won by weeks you don’t lose, not just Sundays you dominate. Verstappen’s late-season surge was real (and terrifying), but the early-season inconsistencies left him with a points deficit he could only almost erase.
Piastri’s season is the fascinating counterpoint: he finished third on 410, yet spent large chunks of the year looking like the man to beat — including leading the championship across 15 races. In a three‑way fight, “led the most weekends” and “won the title” are different trophies.
Final 2025 Constructors’ Championship Standings
The team picture is simpler at the top — but the midfield layers tell their own story. Here are the final 2025 Constructors’ standings:
| Pos | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | McLaren | 833 |
| 2 | Mercedes | 469 |
| 3 | Red Bull Racing | 451 |
| 4 | Ferrari | 398 |
| 5 | Williams | 137 |
| 6 | Racing Bulls | 92 |
| 7 | Aston Martin | 89 |
| 8 | Haas | 79 |
| 9 | Kick Sauber | 70 |
| 10 | Alpine | 22 |
Why your “McLaren 800 / Mercedes 459 / Red Bull 426” snapshot still matters
If you’re cross‑checking the season with a late‑year checkpoint (like the one many of us carried into Abu Dhabi week), numbers like McLaren 800, Mercedes 459, Red Bull 426 reflect how the Constructors’ table looked before the final points drop.
But the final totals after Abu Dhabi are definitive:
- McLaren: 833
- Mercedes: 469
- Red Bull Racing: 451
That’s not just a bookkeeping correction — it changes how we read the “how close was it?” question. The Drivers’ title went to the wire; the Constructors’ title didn’t.
The data storylines that defined 2025
1) McLaren’s championship double was built on two cars scoring
The Constructors’ Championship is the purest “systems test” in F1: upgrades, operations, pit stops, strategy, reliability — and the ability to bank points even on off‑weeks.
McLaren did that better than anyone, and they did it early enough to lock the team title down with races remaining (clinched in Singapore).
At season end, the math is loud:
- McLaren scored 833
- Mercedes scored 469
That’s a 364‑point gap to P2 — the kind of margin that lets a team manage risk, allocate development, and still keep both championships “live” into December.
2) Mercedes won the “best of the rest” race — and did it with structure
George Russell (319) put together a season that looks like a modern top‑tier campaign: high floor, consistent extraction, and minimal weekends thrown away.
And Mercedes got the second half of the equation too: Kimi Antonelli (150) delivered enough points to keep the team ahead of Red Bull in the Constructors’ table, even with Red Bull’s race‑winning ceiling.
3) Red Bull: the fastest “weapon” in the title fight — not the highest-scoring “team”
Red Bull’s 2025 is what happens when your peak is terrifying but your average takes damage.
Verstappen’s 421 points and 8 wins scream title‑level performance. The Constructors’ 451 points and P3 finish say the team didn’t convert enough weekends across both cars.
4) Ferrari’s points total tells you exactly how “close” they weren’t
Ferrari finishing P4 on 398 is still a respectable haul — but it also maps the gap to the top three. They ended 53 points behind Red Bull and 71 behind Mercedes, with the front two teams far beyond reach.
Individually, Charles Leclerc (242) did the heavy lifting, while Lewis Hamilton (156) added solid support in a season that often looked like “maximising what exists” rather than dictating the meta.
Midfield review: where the hidden 2025 battles lived
Williams: a genuine points platform (P5, 137)
Williams finishing P5 on 137 is one of the cleanest “good season” signals on the board — because it required both drivers to contribute.
- Alex Albon: 73
- Carlos Sainz: 64
That’s not one hot streak — that’s a functioning baseline.
Racing Bulls vs Aston Martin vs Haas vs Sauber: the four-way grind
The gap between P6 and P9 was small enough to turn strategy calls into season‑defining decisions:
- Racing Bulls: 92
- Aston Martin: 89
- Haas: 79
- Kick Sauber: 70
On the driver side, the tie‑point headlines matter:
- Hülkenberg 51 and Hadjar 51
- Lawson 38 and Ocon 38
Those are the kinds of equalities that only happen when the midfield is trading weekends like chess pieces.
Alpine: the season that never found traction (P10, 22)
22 points across a full season is the definition of being boxed out of the points economy — especially with no fastest lap bonus point available to steal a marginal extra. Alpine’s final total underlines how harsh the modern grid is when you start the weekend needing miracles just to see Q3.
Championship math you can run yourself
Want to stress-test the 2025 season with alternate outcomes — a different Abu Dhabi podium, a swing at a Sprint weekend, or a hypothetical DNF at a title-critical round?
Use RaceMate’s championship calculator here: Simulate the 2025 title fight.
Try these quick scenarios:
- Swap P1 and P3 at Abu Dhabi (VER ↔ NOR) and see how instantly the championship flips.
- Remove a single P2 from any one of the top three and watch the margin balloon.
- Add one extra double‑points weekend worth of mistakes (DNF + low score) and see who survives.
Conclusion: 2025 proved that margins beat moments
The headline is simple: Norris won the 2025 Drivers’ Championship and McLaren won the Constructors’ Championship.
But the season’s real lesson is sharper: in the modern points era — and especially now that the fastest lap bonus is gone — championships don’t require perfection. They require repeatable execution. Norris didn’t need to win every Sunday; he needed to keep the title fight on his terms until the last chequered flag.
Verstappen’s response was pure champion DNA: more wins, maximum pressure, and a finale that nearly stole it back. Piastri’s presence made it even harder: one team-mate as a rival, another rival as a benchmark, and every strategy call suddenly political.
2025 ends with a two‑point gap and a new champion — the kind of finish that doesn’t just close a season.
It resets expectations for the next one.