A quarter of the 2025 Formula 1 grid is made of rookies, but who are the five young stars eager to take on the Australian Grand Prix this weekend?
In 2024, the exact same 20 drivers who’d finished the previous campaign remained with the same team for the first time in the sport’s history and many questioned if rookies would ever get a shot again.
What a difference 12 months makes as Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Alpine’s Jack Doohan, Haas’ Oliver Bearman, Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar and Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto are all ready to take on the F1 challenge.
Each driver has shown prowess at junior level and has a unique entry into F1.
Kimi Antonelli – Mercedes
Antonelli joined the Mercedes junior programme in April 2019, a few months before his 13th birthday and the Italian’s rise through the ranks has been rapid.
His single-seater debut came in Italian Formula 4 at the end of 2021 and Antonelli immediately saw podium finishes in a handful of appearances.
A title onslaught came the following year with championship victories in Italian and ADAC F4 with Prema and in 2023 Antonelli added the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine (FRECA) title to his trophy cabinet.
That convinced Mercedes to fast-track Antonelli to Formula 2 and he repaid that faith by taking multiple victories before his 18th birthday, earning his shot at being Lewis Hamilton’s F1 replacement in Brackley.
Jack Doohan – Alpine
Doohan, 22, is the son of five-time MotoGP champion Mick, but a karting gift from family friend Michael Schumacher helped convince the young Australian to commit to four wheels.
After success in karting, Doohan stepped up to single-seaters in 2018 and finished fifth in the British F4 championship.
He progressed to EuroFormula and the F3 Asian Championship in 2019 before making the jump to FIA Formula 3 a year later.
After finishing second in the 2021 F3 Drivers’ standings, Doohan made a cameo late in the year in F2, claiming a front row spot in his second event which earned him Alpine Academy status for 2022.
Doohan took six wins across two seasons in F2 and was confirmed as Alpine’s F1 reserve in 2023 and ‘24.
With Esteban Ocon departing Alpine one race early last year, Doohan received his full-GP debut in Abu Dhabi, but his first full campaign begins with his home race this weekend in Melbourne.
Oliver Bearman – Haas
Perhaps the most-known of all the F1 rookies thanks to three super-sub appearances in 2024, Haas has a potential future world champion on its hands with Bearman.
The 19-year-old Englishman made his single-seater debut in ADAC and Italian Formula 4 in 2020 and a year later became the first driver to win both championships in a single season and that got him onto Ferrari’s radar.
As a member of the Scuderia’s academy programme, Bearman made his FIA F3 debut in 2022 and flourished, finishing third in the championship with Prema.
Bearman progressed to take on two seasons in F2 with Prema, winning seven races across the campaigns, but it was his 2024 exploits in F1 that made the world take notice.
With Carlos Sainz suffering with appendicitis in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia last year, Bearman made his F1 debut with Ferrari at short notice, narrowly missing out on a Q3 appearance after just an hour of practice.
Bearman impressed in the race, finishing seventh and he made two further GP appearances for Haas later in the season in place of Kevin Magnussen, scoring another point in Baku and out-qualifying Nico Hulkenberg on both appearances.
Isack Hadjar – Racing Bulls
Hadjar, 21, is a race winner at every level of single-seater competition.
In 2019, at just 14-years-old, he made his single-seater debut in the French Formula Four Championship, winning at Spa-Francorchamps and finishing seventh in the standings.
On his rise through the ranks, Hadjar won races in FRECA, FIA F3 and F2 and last year mounted a title challenge on the final rung of the single-seater ladder before F1.
Hadjar’s title challenge came to a sad end in the final race, with stalling at the start rendering him unable to prevent Bortoleto from taking the championship.
However, Hadjar’s season-long fight in F2 meant he got the nod to join Racing Bulls in 2025 as Liam Lawson progressed to the senior Red Bull outfit.
Gabriel Bortoleto – Sauber
Bortoleto joins the long list of Brazilian stars to race in F1 and does so with the backing of Fernando Alonso’s management company.
The 20-year-old made his single-seater debut in 2020 but it wasn’t until 2023 that he started to gain global recognition, winning the FIA F3 championship as a rookie and earning a place in the McLaren development programme as a result.
He made the jump to F2 in 2024 and joined an illustrious group of racing legends to win both F3 and F2 as a rookie, following the likes of Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri.
That convinced Sauber to poach Bortoleto from the McLaren stable to make his F1 debut this season.
READ MORE – How the F1 pecking order is shaping up heading into 2025
