Three champions RETURN as iconic Vettel confirmation given in official release

An official Formula 1 release has confirmed all 20 driver numbers for the 2025 F1 season.

The 2025 season is fast approaching, and is one of the most hotly-anticipated seasons in modern F1 history, with a plethora of driver changes and a wide open championship battle.

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Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has ditched the Mercedes team with whom he spent 12 highly-successful seasons, and has joined the most successful team in F1 history in Ferrari.

That move prompted a number of other team switches for experienced drivers, including Carlos Sainz moving to Williams, Nico Hulkenberg moving to Sauber and Esteban Ocon replacing Hulkenberg at Haas.

On top of this, there are a number of new faces on the grid, with youngsters Jack Doohan, Kimi Antonelli, Ollie Bearman, Gabriel Bortoleto and Isack Hadjar all being given their first full-time seats on the F1 grid.

Now, all of those youngster's numbers that they are going to use have been officially confirmed, with Doohan using 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen's number seven, Bortoleto using the legendary Sebastian Vettel's number five, and Nico Rosberg's number six being used by Hadjar.

2025 F1 driver numbers

McLaren

Lando Norris - #4 Oscar Piastri - #81

Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton - #44 Charles Leclerc - #16

Red Bull

Max Verstappen - #1 Liam Lawson - #30

Mercedes

George Russell - #63 Kimi Antonelli - #12

Aston Martin

Fernando Alonso - #14 Lance Stroll - #18

Alpine

Jack Doohan - #7 Pierre Gasly - #10

Haas

Esteban Ocon - #31 Ollie Bearman - #87

VCARB

Isack Hadjar - #6 Yuki Tsunoda - #22

Williams

Alex Albon - #23 Carlos Sainz- #55

Sauber

Gabriel Bortoleto - #5 Nico Hulkenberg - #27

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Why do drivers use race numbers?

Whereas F1 drivers used to use the number that directly correlated with their championship standing the year before, in 2014 the rules were changed to allow drivers to pick their own number.

This was designed to try and make drivers more easily identifiable, as well as increasing the personal brand of each driver, as demonstrated by Hamilton's now iconic number 44.

The idea is for each driver to stick with their number throughout their whole career, unless they win the world championship, and then a different number becomes available to them.

Why did Max Verstappen change his race number?

That different number is the number one, a driver number that is reserved only for the world champion.

While Hamilton didn't choose to use the number one that was available when he won six championships between 2014-2020, Verstappen did opt to take on the mantle of being the number one driver, when he won his first championship in 2021.

Verstappen's previous number was 33, a number that he may have to go back to, should he lose out on the 2025 title and the new champion wants to take on the number one mantle.

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