2025 Brazilian GP: Post Race Analysis

Brazil should be the final race of the season because it typically puts on some amazing races and today was no exception. A candidate for race of the year. In modern F1, usually we need rain or mixed weather to get a good action packed race. Not this time. Has to be one of the best dry races in years.

McLaren are getting what they want, with Lando winning and extending his championship lead. Pretty smooth race with no real danger for behind. Oscar again mysteriously off the pace compared to Lando. Made a dive into turn 1 after the restart, the gap was there and he was definitely along side Kimi into the braking zone. Charles said it best; Optimistic by Oscar but Kimi didn't leave him any room. 9 out 10 times, that's a racing incident. Oscar making a move that resulted in a collision and damage to Kimi and of course a collision and a DNF to Leclerc might be why he was given a penalty. Gotta say, his penalty conveniently helped Lando in the championship once again.

Mercedes had a good car. They seemed to have less struggles than many other teams. On the rare occasion, Antonelli was properly quicker than George. A career best 2nd place and well deserved. Any damage he picked up from the Piastri incident likely didn't effect his result. He was never going to catch Lando. George just did nothing all race and finished 4th. I guess he did a decent job defending against Piastri at the end.

Red Bull had a roller coaster weekend. From being decent in the Sprint to one of the worst in Quali to being a challenger in the race is insane. Huge effort by the team without a doubt, but must bow down to Verstappen who had another unbelievable drive. One could argue it was better than his race last year, where he went from 17th to win, simply because this was done in the dry and he had an unscheduled stop for a puncture and it was done in a car that was literally among the two worst cars in quali. Wow. Yuki had a tough day. With multiple penalties he was never really given the chance to try for points.

Haas get another load of points with another brilliant drive by Ollie Bearman. He's been a star lately and you have to think there are people at Ferrari that would like to see him move to the big team by replacing Hamilton. At least they should because he's been very impressive. Ocon looks like he's starting to deflate as he continues to get beaten by his Rookie teammate. He's going to need to start picking up the pace or he will be at risk of the team wanting to replace him.

RB finally score some good points and it nearly got thrown away at the end. Lawson did a superb job with a 1 stop strategy and deserved his P7. Hadjar perhaps didn't have things quite go his way but he made it back up to P8 and then tried sending it on the outside of T1 on the last lap and drove right into Lawson. Fortunately no damage for either car but a senseless move when both cars were solidly in the points.

Sauber was reasonably competitive and Hulkenberg was one of the rock stars today. Had some good battles and a ballsy strategy and ended up with a couple of points. Bortoleto couldn't have had his Brazilian GP go much worse. Enormous crash in the Sprint race which meant he missed out in quali and then to get wrecked immediately in the GP. That's brutal in front of his home crowd.

Alpine has earned their place as the worst car of the season. Gasly however, was outstanding! Showed good pace through the weekend and scored a point. Yes it's only a point but he beat a lot of better cars and in most cases would but in it for Driver of the Day. Colapinto surprisingly still struggling to get to grips with the car. Really didn't make an impression today.

Williams can't be happy with their result. While they didn't exactly do anything wrong, they didn't do anything right either. Two good drivers and both were outside the points all day.

Aston Martin. Such a shame their competitiveness got worse and worse as the weekend went on. That's how that team rolls though. Alonso's car had no top speed, they were blowing by him with ease. Seemed to be worse than Lance but it's hard to say. Lance did nothing all race like usual but it didn't matter, their car was junk so they had no hope for a good result.

Ferrari. Leclerc somehow got that car into P3 in quali and was making a go for P2 before getting collected. Hamilton made an amateur mistake and it destroyed his front wing. This resulted in a damage floor and Lewis is quite poor at adapting to a car that has balance issues. No shock at all the team chose to retire him. Frankly he should have carried a penalty into the race for flat footing through a double yellow, so maybe he got a little karma for the race.

Driver of the Day: Max Verstappen, as if there was any other option.

 

Including Piastri