Formula 1 swings past South America just once per year, but the sport’s forgotten continent is set to play an outsized role in placing the final pieces of the 2025 driver market puzzle.
But two wildcard entries have the potential to blow up the market in the final month of the campaign. His FP1 appearance for Red Bull Racing at the British Grand Prix this year was uneventful but tentative, the young gun understandably not willing to risk Pérez’s car but in exchange not making much of an impression.Colapinto had been in his maiden F2 season before his Williams call-up at the Italian Grand Prix, having won a sprint race and collected a couple of other podiums.
Still young and with plenty of scope to improve, he would be an obvious candidate to slot into the team after 2026 should either Albon or Sainz leave Grove. “When we’re into a sensitive negotiation, you don’t give away anything at this stage,” Vowles told Sky Sports when asked if Colapinto could be destined for Red Bull. “I can’t really answer that.”Williams would be entitled to ask for a high price for Colapinto’s contract given his level of performance and general paddock hype around him.
That’s a lot of potential vacancies, but at the moment its junior books boast only Hadjar as a potentially F1-ready option, and even then there are doubts about his preparedness to step up. Max Verstappen joined the team in late 2014 only after Red Bull offered him a full-time Toro Rosso drive for 2015 to snatch him from Mercedes.
The decline of that race preceded a general decline in the connection between South America and Formula 1. The last full-time driver from the continent was Felipe Massa in 2017 — remarkable for a sport once dominated by Brazilians. There’s a certain logic to partnering him with a young gun. If the bet pays off, Audi has an instant star to lead it into its competitive era, if not, he can be shuffled off and the team can go back to market.Bottas had been seeking alternative options earlier this year, including at Williams, with former boss Andreas Seidl having been pursuing a clean break from these chaotic and deeply uncompetitive later seasons of the Sauber team.