The 2024 Formula 1 season is serving up a solid amount of drama. While the year began with concerns that Max Verstappen and Red Bull would again run away with the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships respectively, as they did a season ago, things are much tighter at the top of the table this season. While both Red Bull and Verstappen remain the favorites in those respective Championships, neither title is done and dusted at the moment.
However, the specter of the 2025 driver transfer market has hung over this entire season, kicked into gear early with the stunning announcement that Lewis Hamilton would be leaving Mercedes for Ferrari next year.
The grid is in Barcelona, for this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, and still almost half of the seats on the grid are open for next season. That includes two teams — Haas and Alpine — who have yet to announce any drivers for next year.
And sure, you could read what one singular F1 writer thinks could happen, or you could learn what F1 fans believe will happen. That is the approach we are taking today, looking at four drivers in particular: Carlos Sainz Jr., Esteban Ocon, Valtteri Bottas, and Mercedes driver program phenom Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Earlier this week I posted a series of polls on Threads — shoutout to the wonderful people on F1 Threads — featuring a question on each driver:
Where will they be next year?
Where should they be next year?
Here are the supremely scientific results.
Carlos Sainz Jr.
By an large, there is every expectation that Carlos Sainz Jr. is headed to Williams next season. Williams team boss James Vowles has made it clear that Sainz is his top driver target, and while Logan Sargeant is in that seat at the moment and Vowles has outlined that Sargeant can still keep that spot, it seems an uphill battle.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, an overwhelming majority of respondents believe that Sainz is headed to Williams. 84% of those who voted indicated that Sainz would be with Williams next year, followed by 12% of votes for Sauber/Audi, and 5% of votes for Mercedes.
However, should Sainz be headed to Williams?
That vote was much closer.
Williams was still the winner when it came to that question, with 44% of the vote. However, the big gainer was Mercedes, as 31% of respondents believe Sainz should be headed to the Silver Arrows. Sauber received 25% of votes.
Valtteri Bottas
Next up? Valtteri Bottas, who is in the last year of his current deal with Sauber. Sauber already announced that Nico Hülkenberg would be joining the team for next season, ahead of the organization becoming the Audi works team in 2026. Pairing a German driver in Hülkenberg with a German team certainly seems like a good fit.
But will Bottas be his teammate?
According to 42% of respondents, Bottas will remain at Sauber next season. Interestingly enough, “Other” led the way with the second-most votes, clocking in at 16%. A return to Williams could be in the cards — if Sainz ends up elsewhere — while teams mentioned in the “Other” category included Haas and Alpine.
As for where Bottas should land, Sauber was again the winner, with 50% of respondents picking his current team as his 2025 home. On this question “Other” was the clear second-place vote getter, with Haas and Alpine again mentioned as possibilities.
Esteban Ocon
So this was fun …
The four options listed for Esteban Ocon for next season were: Haas, Mercedes, Sauber/Audi, and “Other.”
Haas was the winner for the first question, with 49% of respondents indicating that Ocon would move to Haas next season. However, a close second was “Other” with 30% of the vote.
And many of those respondents indicated that Ocon would not even been in Formula 1 next season.
Then came the true stunner of this exercise. When asked where Ocon should be next season 56% selected “Other,” with the majority of those respondents replying on Threads to indicate that Ocon should be out of F1 entirely.
Will the people get it right?
Andrea Kimi Antonelli
We conclude with the young phenom, Andrea Kimi Antonelli. By every indication he is being fast-tracked to F1, with the FIA even adjusting their rules in recent weeks to allow drivers under the age of 18 to be granted a dispensation to drive on the grid before their 18th birthday.
Antonelli turns 18 in August.
The FIA even tweaked the rule that requires drivers on the grid to have a driving license in their home nation. Antonelli is from Italy, where the driving age is 18.
Now, Antonelli might not see the grid this season — although the door is now open to that happening sooner rather than later — but will he be on the F1 grid next year?
And should he be?
A large majority of respondents, 79% to be exact, believe Antonelli will be driving for Mercedes next season. That does seem to be where he is headed, with reports consistently surfacing that Toto Wollf wants to move in a new direction at Mercedes. The Silver Arrows boss discussed that in Montreal, addressing the decision to make it clear they were moving on from Sainz as an option.
“I think first of all, Carlos deserves a top seat,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1 ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix. “He’s done a fantastic job. But for us, we’ve embarked on a route now to say, ‘You know what, we want to reinvent ourselves a little bit, going forward.’ Kimi Antonelli definitely plays a part in that.”
But should that part begin in 2025?
Most respondents to the poll do not believe so.
According to 59% of respondents, Antonelli should remain in F2 next season, rather than make the leap to F1 after just one season in F2 and skipping F3 altogether.
Of course, it is fair to offer some caveats. This is just a very small sample size of around 80 respondents per question. Not exactly an overwhelming selection of voters. Furthermore the formatting of the questions could be tweaked, as the question about where each driver “will” land received many more votes than where they would land. We can blame he poll designer — the undersigned author — for that failure in sampling.
Still, the votes come from a very knowledgeable fan base, who follow the ins and outs of F1 on a daily — if not hourly — basis.
Will their votes hold true over the next few months?
We will know soon enough.