Formula One enters its summer break following Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, with Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli still in charge in the standings.
The new era of regulations this season has seen Mercedes emerge as the front-runner and Antonelli surging to the top in just his second year in F1.
Here’s a look at the best surprises and biggest disappointments from the first half of the season and the biggest questions as we look ahead.
Drivers’ championship top five
1. Kimi Antonelli — 219 points (six wins, six poles, nine podiums)
2. Lewis Hamilton — 169 points (one win, zero poles, five podiums)
3. George Russell — 160 points (two wins, four poles, five podiums)
4. Charles Leclerc — 138 points (one win, zero poles, four podiums)
5. Lando Norris — 128 points (one win, one pole, three podiums)
• We predicted Mercedes would have the car to beat to start the season, but who could have expected it would be the 19-year-old sophomore and not the veteran leading the championship by a healthy margin? Antonelli had moments during his rookie season, earning a trio of podiums, but he’s taken a mega leap forward in his second year on the grid with Mercedes.
The Italian teen, who turns 20 on Aug. 25, earned his maiden victory at the Chinese GP in March that opened the floodgates and kicked off an incredible five-race winning streak as he became the youngest driver ever to lead the championship. With a sixth victory earlier this month in Belgium, Antonelli is only one win away from matching teammate George Russell’s career total.
Even when he was handed a three-place grid penalty in Hungary that had him starting seventh, Antonelli managed to make the best of a bad situation to finish third and extend his points lead. Antonelli enters the summer break with a 50-point cushion in the championship over Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton and a 59-point advantage over Russell, essentially giving him a two-race buffer should he run into any bad luck. His car also appears to be immune to the glitch gremlins that have plagued Russell in recent weeks.
For the record: Antonelli is on track to become the youngest drivers’ champion, a mark set by Sebastian Vettel (23 years, 134 days) in 2010.
• Somehow, Ferrari has returned. After a winless 2025 campaign, the Prancing Horse was back in victory lane in Barcelona in June, with Hamilton earning his first GP win since joining Ferrari at the start of last season. Charles Leclerc then snapped his 37-race win drought with a victory at the British GP this month. Although neither driver has earned pole position, Ferrari has excelled with hot starts off the grid.
Unfortunately for Ferrari, the Hungarian GP was another reminder not to get your hopes up, as the team appeared to be the fastest in practice but walked away with fourth and fifth place. Hamilton, who had to overcome a three-place grid penalty at the start, was caught speeding through the pit lane late in the race as he was battling Antonelli for the final podium position. The seven-time world champion was told to hand over third place to Antonelli and then fell behind his teammate Leclerc after he was assessed a five-second time penalty for his pit lane infraction. Still, the first half of the season has been positive for Ferrari.
• We’d say Alpine had nowhere to go but up after finishing in the basement in 10th place last season, but with an 11th team joining the grid this year in Cadillac, yes, they could’ve ended up lower. Although parent company Renault withdrew as an engine supplier, the switch to Mercedes power units has been successful. Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto already surpassed Alpine’s 2025 output of 22 points by the fourth race of the season in Miami. A podium result for Gasly, finishing third at the iconic Monaco GP, was more than anyone could have expected.
• Racing Bulls has had a driver finish in the points in all but one race this season, with both Liam Lawson and rookie Arvid Lindblad reaching the top 10 in five of the past six. That stretch has lifted Racing Bulls over Alpine for fifth place in the constructors’ standings and the “best of the rest” in the midfield.
• Isack Hadjar had a rough start to his tenure on the main Red Bull team, with just one top-10 finish and two retirements through the first four races. That would have had him on the hot seat under the previous regime led by Christian Horner and Helmut Marko, but this is a new era for Red Bull under Laurent Mekies. Patience has paid off as Hadjar has finished within the top six in every race since then.
• How about the racing itself? Drivers have been critical of the new regulations due to the focus on battery management and the reliance on deploying and harvesting energy. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has been among the most vocal, comparing it to “playing Mario Kart.” It feels like it’s gotten better now with Ferrari and McLaren earning wins as we enter the summer break on the back of a stretch with five different winners over the past five races. The competition should increase as teams continue to familiarize themselves with the rules. It just takes time, as we saw during the last regulation period where Red Bull dominated before McLaren finally figured things out.
• Our expectations for newbie Cadillac were low, but holy macaroni. Cadillac is dead last in 11th place as the lone team yet to score any points. Veteran drivers Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez have a combined nine retirements between them, including a dreadful double DNF in Hungary. Perez should have earned a point in Monaco if not for a 10-second post-race time penalty for being out of position during a restart that dropped him from 10th to 15th. We’ll cut them some slack as an expansion team, but Cadillac needs to start showing signs of improvement.
• There were high hopes at Aston Martin this season as the team joined forces with Honda on a new power unit and lured design guru Adrian Newey, who had helped engineer championship-winning cars at Williams, McLaren and Red Bull during his illustrious career. Newey may need to write an updated chapter to his memoir to explain what went wrong here. The team experienced a nightmare start, as drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll felt unsafe behind the wheel due to vibrations in the car that could potentially cause permanent damage. Things have gotten better, to the point where they can actually finish a race, and Alonso holds the team’s lone point of the season, gifted in Monaco as the two-time world champion was promoted to 10th place following Perez’s aforementioned penalty.
The team brought massive upgrades to Hungary, but the net result was both drivers finishing out of the points, with Stroll in 13th and Alonso in 14th. That’s better than the results from the tailspinning Haas and Williams teams that finished behind them, but it’s still only one small step forward.
Biggest questions for the second half
• How will the remainder of the schedule play out? F1 was forced to postpone the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs in April due to the conflict in the Middle East, with no replacements immediately announced. Well, Bahrain is now back on the calendar, as it was just announced Sunday that it will be held at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia in October. The Bahrain GP in Malaysia. Yes, you read that right.
That might not be the only alteration. F1 may need to consider a backup plan with its penultimate and final races of the season set for Qatar in late November and Abu Dhabi in December. Could the season wrap up early in Las Vegas on Nov. 21, will more replacement races enter the picture, or will the schedule remain as is?
• Can Antonelli hold on in the title race? Let’s not forget what happened last year. McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was leading the championship heading into the summer break with a nine-point advantage over teammate Lando Norris and a seemingly insurmountable 97-point gap to Verstappen. In the end, Norris won the title, fending off Verstappen by a slim two-point margin. Piastri finished an additional 11 points behind in third place as he faded during the back half. Anything can happen in Formula One.
• How will “silly season” play out? With the next race not until the Dutch Grand Prix on Aug. 23, expect the drama off the track to heat up over the next four weeks and speculation over who will drive where next year. Expect most of the noise to surround Verstappen. Although the four-time world champion is under contract with Red Bull through 2028, Verstappen reportedly has performance-related exit clauses that would allow him to back out of the deal.
It would be a seismic shift if Verstappen were to move on, as the 28-year-old has been part of the Red Bull program his entire career. Despite his constant gripes with the car, Verstappen has earned four podiums this season (no wins, yet) and is sixth in the standings — only terrible by the standards he’s become accustomed to.
• Has McLaren returned to top form? We shall see. The team looked like double-defending constructors’ champions in Hungary, with pole-sitter Norris cruising to his first GP victory of the year after some tense early moments with Piastri. It’s a shame Piastri sustained a broken gearbox as McLaren was well-positioned for a 1-2 finish.