The 2025 grid has seen an influx of rookies, which can only be paralleled by the 2019 crop of F2 graduates. Back then, the F1 grid featured three rookies namely, George Russell, Lando Norris, and Alex Albon, all of whom have now gone on to carve out a stellar name for themselves in the paddock.
Norris, who debuted for McLaren in 2019, is one of the favorites to clinch the 2025 drivers’ title for the Woking-based team. Russell, a Mercedes academy driver, began his career with Williams, and since getting the step up to the Silver Arrows, from 2022 onwards, has assumed the role of team leader alongside 18-year-old prodigy and 2025 rookie, Kimi Antonelli.
Albon debuted for Red Bull’s sister team Toro Rosso (now Racing Bulls), and was quickly promoted to the main team midway through his debut season in 2019. But his time with Red Bull wasn’t smooth sailing and he was dropped in favor of Sergio Perez at the end of the 2020 season.
After a single year out on the sidelines, Albon joined Williams in 2022 and now spearheads the team’s resurgence back up the grid.
One commonality linking all three of them was their friendship and rivalry coming up the ranks in their junior careers. Today, F1 sees five rookies line up on the grid with similar trajectories—from F2 rivals to compatriots in the F1 paddock.
Watching these young drivers share the paddock together made Russell reminisce about his own relationship with the likes of Norris and Albon and how his rivalries have evolved as their respective careers took off in F1.
“This season reminds me a bit when Lando, Alex and I came to Formula 1. Like with you guys, you come together from F2 and it’s fun. We were rivals in F2 the same as you guys were but then now you’re in F1 [and] we’re all in slightly different positions so the rivalry is still there but it’s not as intense,” he told Antonelli in a feature Mercedes’ YouTube channel.
and we will get that 2019 rookie podium this year, it’s coming pic.twitter.com/XgzeXmIXYg
— poppy ️ (@formula__fuck) May 6, 2025
Antonelli himself shared a teammate dynamic with Oliver Bearman at Prema racing last year in F2. Meanwhile, the likes of Isack Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto fought for the championship up front. Coming into F1, though, the divergence in their cars’ performance level is similar to the 2019 batch.
Antonelli finds himself with the second-fastest package on the grid at Mercedes and is raking in consistent points. He recently also became the youngest-ever pole-sitter in F1 after grabbing the sprint pole at Miami, last weekend.
Hadjar and Bearman have impressed, too, but they’ve been plying their trade in the mid-field with the likes of Racing Bulls and Haas, respectively. Bortoleto has found his time a bit too tricky with a sluggish Sauber.
Jack Doohan, however, has failed to cope at all with Alpine deciding to demote him from the race seat in favor of Franco Colapinto. Doohan wasn’t in F2 last year, having graduated from the feeder category at the end of 2022 itself. The 22-year-old was serving as a reserve for Alpine and now is back to the same role after just seven races in the F1 cockpit.
That said, these drivers—barely into their 20s—are the stars of the future. At least, some of them. But it must be known that the latest generations of drivers, like Russell’s and Antonelli’s will be fighting wheel-to-wheel for glory, against each other, for many years to come.
