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As pre-season testing gets underway in Bahrain for the 2025 season, it’s the first chance we have to see the full lineup of 20 drivers take to the track in their cars for the year.
Liam Lawson replaced Perez to partner Verstappen at Redbull, and the Kiwi rookie has his work cut out this season. Going up against the 4-time champion is a tall order, but in the few races Liam competed in during 2024 he showed he was hungry and not willing to back down.
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He had a spat with Alonso at the US GP at COTA after some on-track argy bargy. Then at the Mexican Grand Prix he got in to a scrap with Perez and decided to flip him the bird as he overtook him, in front of Checo’s home crowd. Nice.
So Lawson’s definitely got the fight in him, but has he got enough to go up against Max? We’ll have to wait and see.
The Formula 1 season got off to a start not in Bahrain for testing, but for the pre-season F1 75 launch event at the 02 in London.
At the launch, each team had 7 minutes to show off their ‘new’ livery for the season. All teams, except for VCARB, had paintjobs that closely resembled the ones from the year before. But that was to be expected; it was more a chance for us fans to get an early glimpse at our driver lineup for the season and kick off the year with a bang.
As we’ve already heard, things didn’t go great for Red Bull at the event. Horner and Verstappen were the villians of the piece and were booed by the English crowd. In the end the two Red Bull drivers were the only two not to be interviewed, perhaps as a result of the team’s frosty reception.
The evening started better, however, with a red carpet arrival for all drivers, team members and VIPs. And as ever it was interesting to see which cars the drivers arrived in.
Most of them turned up in some kind of modern supercar manufactured by their team. Alonso and Stroll arived in an Aston Martin DBX 707, for example.
Lando Norris and Zak Brown pulled up in a one-of-nine McLaren Artura MCL38 Celebration Edition, built to honour McLaren winning their ninth F1 constructor’s title in 2024.
As Red Bull F1 cars are powered by Honda, their drivers had to arrive in something from the Japanese marque. But Honda don’t make any supercars at the moment, and one of the fastest cars they currently produce is the FL5 Civic Type R. A spicy hot-hatch, but a bit predicatable. Christian Horner arrived in one of those with his wife Geri.
Verstappen and Lawson decided to go for something a little more classic. And to those who know, their choice was a fine one. They arrived in an original Honda NSX.
The Honda NSX was famously owned by Ayrton Senna. Infact he had three of them, and rumour has it he was involved in the car’s development.
Whether that’s true or not is a debate for another day, but either way Senna appreciated the NSX for what it was; one of the best handling sports cars ever produced.
And that tie-up was not lost on whoever decided this was the car for the Red Bull drivers to arrive in at the pre-season event. The NSX that Max and Liam drove up to the red carpet, registration G280 EJH, was previously driven by Senna himself.
Currently it’s owned by Honda UK as part of their heritage fleet. It was only the second NSX to ever arrive in the UK and was driven by Ayrton on one of his visits to the country back when he was racing for McLaren Honda.
It’s not the top of the range NSX however, as it’s not the Type R. Instead this one has a 252bhp 3.0litre V6, but is sadly fitted with a four-speed automatic gearbox instead of the six-speed manual that made the cars much more exciting to drive.
