Oscar Piastri in first and Lewis Hamilton snubbed as Sky F1 pundits rank the 2025 drivers | F1 | Sport

Sky Sports F1 pundits have ranked the 2025 F1 drivers with some surprising results. Oscar Piastri was tipped as Bernie Collins’ best of the season, while Lewis Hamilton failed to make the top 10 for any of the four experts polled after a miserable first year with Ferrari. 

Collins was joined in her rankings by fellow pundits Ted Kravitz, Karun Chandhok and Simon Lazenby, all three of whom agreed and picked Max Verstappen as their best driver of the season. The former Aston Martin strategist instead went with an eye-catching selection, choosing Piastri as her number one in 2025.

This is despite the Australian racer’s challenging run after his seventh and final Grand Prix win of the season in Zandvoort. Piastri was 104 points ahead of eventual championship runner-up Verstappen at that point, but ended the year behind him in the standings.

The 2025 world champion, Lando Norris, was ranked second by Kravitz and Collins, and third by Chandhok and Lazenby. The latter duo picked George Russell as their runner-up to Verstappen in the order, putting Britain’s 11th world champion third in their lists.

There was plenty of representation for the rookies, too. Isack Hadjar featured on the lists of all four Sky F1 pundits, and the Red Bull driver-to-be was even ranked fifth by Lazenby. Oliver Bearman and Kimi Antonelli featured in three top-10s respectively.

Absent from all four lists, however, was Lewis Hamilton, who suffered through a miserable campaign with Ferrari. The move from Mercedes was meant to mark a resurgence for both driver and team, but the opposite proved to be true as the Prancing Horse slipped to fourth in the Constructors’ Championship standings.

Hamilton, meanwhile, ended the campaign without a podium finish to his name for the first time in his F1 career, concluding the season down in sixth place in the Drivers’ Championship. Worse still, his qualifying results deteriorated dramatically during the final rounds of the season as he suffered three consecutive Q1 knockouts.

“At the moment I’m only looking forward to the break,” Hamilton said after finishing eighth in Abu Dhabi when he was asked to look ahead to the 2026 season and the new technical regulations.

“Just to disconnecting, not speaking to anyone. No one will be able to get in touch with me this winter. I won’t have my phone with me, and I’m looking forward to that. Completely unplug from the matrix.”