2025 Australian GP won’t break record for youngest average age in F1 (but it’ll come close). The F1 paddock is no longer a place for the old.

The F1 paddock is no longer a place for the old
First came the announcement of Oliver Bearman joining Haas, then Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s move to Mercedes to replace Lewis Hamilton. Finally, a flurry of new names emerged in the latter stages of the season: Lawson at Red Bull, Bortoleto at Sauber, Doohan at Alpine, and Hadjar at Racing Bulls. Exactly one year after the unprecedented stagnation of the driver market between the 2023 and 2024 seasons — the first time in 74 years of F1 history that the grid remained unchanged from one season’s last GP to the next season’s opener — the paddock is ready for a breath of fresh air. However, it won’t break a record that has stood for more than seven seasons.

The record of the 2017 Russian GP
There’s no doubt that the most talked-about driver, for better or worse, will be Sir Lewis Hamilton, making his historic debut with Ferrari. At the same time, the influx of young talent, promoted (perhaps prematurely, as the track will reveal) from junior categories, will be a recurring topic in the upcoming championship. What is certain is that the 2025 Australian GP, despite the many young debutants, will not be the F1 race with the youngest average age in history. That record belongs to the 2017 Russian GP, which featured an average driver age of 26 years, 9 months, and 7 days.

The average age in F1 at Melbourne 2025
This statistic is somewhat skewed by the absence of 35-year-old Fernando Alonso from that GP due to a technical issue that forced his retirement minutes before the start. Alonso’s absence — he was driving for McLaren-Honda at the time — significantly lowered the average in a season already filled with young drivers. Record or not, it’s undeniable that the average age in F1 is dropping dramatically, by nearly two years, between the 2024 Bahrain GP and the upcoming 2025 Australian GP, even though all returning drivers are, naturally, a year older.

The 2025 Formula 1 season opener in Melbourne will feature an average age of 27.28 years among the 20 starting drivers, significantly lower than the 29.25 years recorded in Bahrain in 2024. It goes without saying that the record could still be broken, particularly if one of the three veterans — Fernando Alonso (43), Lewis Hamilton (40), or Nico Hulkenberg (37) — were to miss a race or be unable to participate due to a technical issue before the start (as happened to Fernando Alonso in Sochi 2017). Interestingly, apart from the three aforementioned veterans, the fourth oldest driver and the only other over-30 on the grid will be Carlos Sainz, who will start the season’s first GP at the age of 30 years, 6 months, and 19 days.

The table of all F1 drivers’ ages at the 2025 Australian GP
Below is a table showing the ages of all drivers as of March 16, the day the 2025 F1 World Championship begins with the Australian GP.

 March 16 , that is, the day in which the 2025 F1 World Championship will start with the Australian GP.