The 2025 Formula 1 season is scheduled to get underway on Sunday, March 16 with the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park Circuit. It is set to mark the dawn of a new era, with seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton set for his first race with Ferrari after a 12-year run with Mercedes, a run which produced the single most successful driver/team pairing in the history of the sport.
The driver lineup pairing of Hamilton and Charles Leclerc is arguably the best on the grid, and Leclerc might well be the best teammate Hamilton has had since Nico Rosberg beat out the 105-time Grand Prix winner to the 2016 world title in equal machinery.
But the first three years of the ground effect era of regulations have given us a solid indication that while Leclerc is trending up, Hamilton may be trending down.
Leclerc won three races en route to a runner-up finish in the 2022 standings, and he added three more wins in 2024 en route to a third place finish. He nearly beat Lando Norris to second, even with Norris in the constructor title-winning McLaren.
Hamilton, on the flip side, only managed to outscore teammate George Russell 697 to 695 during those three seasons, and had Russell not been disqualified from his Belgian Grand Prix victory, handing the win to Hamilton, Russell would have had a 30-point advantage.
He experienced the first two winless seasons of his career in 2022 and 2023, and he recorded a career-worst finish of sixth place in the standings in 2024, even with two wins. Specifically, his qualifying form has taken a big hit as of late.
While his Silverstone victory last year showed that he is still capable of getting the job done on a good day, the 40-year-old British driver is inarguably slower than he once was.
Yet we're already seeing headlines suggesting that Ferrari is now Hamilton's team.
And don't think that won't be the narrative that Sky Sports run with throughout the season, unless Leclerc totally blows him out of the water, because as much as they want to deny it, their British bias has been through the roof in recent seasons.
Before Red Bull's Max Verstappen emerged as a true title threat to Hamilton in 2021, they never minded him winning the odd race here and there.
But the second that changed, they completely turned on him, and with pretty much everybody on the main commentary team not named Karun Chandhok, it hasn't been the same ever since.
That was particularly true in 2024, when Norris emerged as a title threat to Verstappen. Every week, they shamelessly found new ways to take their vitriol toward the Briton's rival to a new level.
As Verstappen crossed the line to win from 17th on the grid in Brazil, on the very day Sky Sports had circled as Norris' day to close the gap in the title race from pole, David Croft decided it'd be a great time to criticize his performance from the previous race.
To the satisfaction of any objective viewer, Chandhok quickly shut him down, noting that he has more God-given talent in his little finger than most of the other drivers on the grid.
We've heard everything from placing full blame on Verstappen for 50/50 incidents to complaining when somebody other than Verstappen is penalized to downplaying Verstappen's tire management skills while praising everybody else as a "tire whisperer".
We've heard them try to speak other drivers into contention as well, and Abu Dhabi, where Verstappen did what any other driver would have done until that particular set of circumstances, controversial or not, remains a subject they can't resist bringing up.
And that's not to mention the unprofessionally leading questions that Verstappen is asked whenever there is any sort of controversy, to the point where he's effectively being told to stop trying to win.
It makes it even more obvious that it exists when Sky Sports is constantly coming out and talking about how they aren't biased. What do you expect them to say? Everybody who watches Formula 1 sees it, to the point where some of their comments are simply laughable.
We even saw them take digs at Oscar Piastri for daring to race (and, on a number of occasions, beat) his McLaren teammate at times last year, insinuating that he should simply be a good boy and play the number two role.
It's no wonder fans called for Rosberg to be installed as a permanent fixture in the Sky F1 booth after his no-nonsense approach as a driver analyst in China last year.
But 2025 might be the year somebody other than Verstappen gets the full-blown Verstappen treatment.
With Ferrari expected to be legitimate title threats after running McLaren a close second during the back half of the 2024 campaign, expect Team Hamilton all the way from Sky Sports, from the second the lights go out in Melbourne.
Everything Leclerc does will be scrutinized, his achievements will be played down, and Hamilton, after three years of being a relative non-factor (and sharing the same nationality as his teammate), will be able to do no wrong. Major potential also exists for the drumming up of controversy and intra-team conflict when and where there is no such thing.
On one hand, you sort of understand the Hamilton favoritism heading into the year. Ferrari already paid Leclerc like a top driver with his $34 million salary, and now Hamilton steps in on a two-year deal worth $446 million in total, with $174 million of that going directly to him across 2025 and 2026.
But Leclerc has been Ferrari's top driver since he joined the team in 2019, and yes, that includes when he was there with four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel. While some suggested Vettel's performance would "make Leclerc cry", it was Leclerc's stellar performance which resulted in Vettel being quickly replaced.
How long that attitude lasts remains to be seen. As we already said, it's clear that Leclerc is trending up, while Hamilton's move looks a lot more like Aaron Rodgers joining the New York Jets than it does Tom Brady joining the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
While we'll never get a Hamilton/Verstappen teammate pairing, this is probably the next best thing, and Leclerc looks poised for success, with or without bogus criticism from a network known for regularly favoring British drivers and putting down their challengers.
ESPN is set to provide live coverage of the 2025 Formula 1 season-opening Australian Grand Prix from Albert Park Circuit beginning at 11:55 p.m. ET on Saturday, March 15, carrying the commentary and broadcast from Sky Sports. Start a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss any of the action!