F1 news LIVE: Lewis Hamilton’s Max Verstappen ‘promise’ revealed ahead of Australian Grand Prix – UK Times

Just over a week out from the 2025 season-opening Australian Grand Prix, F1 and the FIA have confirmed the team’s entry “met their requirements to join the existing 10 teams starting next year”.

A joint-statement read: “The FIA and Formula 1 can confirm that, following the completion of their respective sporting, technical and commercial assessments, the application by General Motors and TWG Motorsports to bring a Cadillac team to the FIA Formula One World Championship from 2026 has been approved.”

While Stefano Domenicali, President and CEO of Formula 1, added: “As we said in November, the commitment by General Motors to bring a Cadillac team to Formula 1 was an important and positive demonstration of the evolution of our sport.

“I want to thank GM and TWG for their constructive engagement over many months and look forward to welcoming the team on the grid from 2026 for what will be another exciting year for Formula 1.”

The eagle-eyed amongst the F1 ‘twitter-sphere’ on Tuesday spotted something far too endearing to ignore ahead of F1 75 Live in London. Sat next to each other in sleek black suits, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were already turned off by the preamble in The O2. As such, Leclerc whipped out his mobile phone and triggered a game of online chess between the pair. Currently, Hamilton has a one-game lead.

Nip-and-tuck already, it seems, in the quest for checkmate. This year, seven-time world champion Hamilton and Ferrari’s long-term golden boy Leclerc will be teammates at the prancing horse yet, in the same breath, will carve out every millisecond to beat the other.

Is your teammate your friend or foe? In F1 spiel, it’s more often the latter. And as Hamilton will know from his torrid qualifying record against George Russell last year (5-19), the stopwatch doesn’t lie.

What a difference 12 months can make.

Prior to the 2024 season, for the first time in F1 history, not one team changed their driver lineup in the off-season. It gave the look of a sport in stagnation, particularly amid Max Verstappen’s hyper-dominance, with fresh blood and intrigue nowhere to be seen.

Where was the next generation? Well, they were actually just a year behind.

This year sees six full-time rookies (classed as rookies because, despite three having race starts to their name, this is their first full-time seat in F1) enter the fray, with eight teams in total changing their driver lineup.

So ahead of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on 16 March, who are the rookies who have been thrown into the limelight at the top tier of world motorsport?

Lewis Hamilton has admitted that incidents of black footballers being racially abused in Italy did make him think twice when deciding to move to Ferrari this year.

Hamilton is also F1’s first and only black driver and has detailed in the past the “traumatising” racial abuse he has suffered, detailing in 2023 that he had bananas thrown at him and was repeatedly called the “n-word” at school. He was also racially abused at F1 testing in Barcelona in 2008.

Serie A footballers such as Mike Maignan and Moise Kean have been subject to racial abuse in the past and Hamilton did admit that racist chanting at Italian matches “crossed his mind” when making the decision to move to Ferrari last winter.

“I don’t want to dwell,” he told TIME, when asked about some black footballers being racially abused in Italy.

Let’s start with the obvious: Christian Horner has been a dream for Drive to Survive since the show landed in 2019. The Red Bull F1 CEO has been front-and-centre of countless episodes in the past six seasons, gladly playing the role of F1’s pantomime villain, with numerous scenes filmed at his country mansion home in Oxfordshire, alongside Spice Girl wife Geri Halliwell.

Season seven is no different. The latest instalment, chronicling the 2024 season, begins with Horner at the wheel of his 4×4, locked in conversation with Geri about a record-breaking 2023 campaign, in which Red Bull won 21 out of 22 races.

With an air of inevitability synonymous with Netflix’s exquisitely curated narratives, Geri strikes a warning to her husband: “You never know what life’s going to bring.” In actual fact, we all know what’s coming next.

Roll up, roll up – it’s pre-season predictions time!

The 2025 F1 season has all the foundations to be one of the most action-packed in the sport’s 75-year history, with a title race set to be extremely close and Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari certain to attract even more eyeballs to the sport.

There are also six new full-time rookies on the starting grid, including British teenager Ollie Bearman – who impressed on debut for Ferrari last year in Saudi Arabia – and Hamilton’s replacement at Mercedes, 18-year-old Italian hotshot Kimi Antonelli.

Less than two weeks out from the season-opener in Melbourne, these are the predictions for 2025: