Audi F1 2025 driver line-up: The five best options to partner Nico Hulkenberg

After missing out on top target Carlos Sainz to Williams, Audi F1’s driver line-up is likely to be more solid than spectacular for the F1 2025 season.

So who should the existing Sauber team pick as Nico Hulkenberg ‘s team-mate ahead of Audi’s highly anticipated arrival in 2026? Let’s run through some of the main contenders…

Who should be Nico Hulkenberg’s Audi F1 team-mate?

Honourable mentions

Sebastian Vettel

Already a faded force when he retired from F1 at the end of 2022, an ill-advised return would be fraught with legacy-wrecking danger.

Daniel Ricciardo

Nothing he has done over the last three years suggests Daniel Ricciardo would be an asset to a team of Audi’s ambition. Relying almost entirely on Red Bull’s loyalty to keep in F1 beyond 2024.

Theo Pourchaire

Ever get the feeling your face doesn’t fit? After winning the F2 title as a Sauber junior in 2023, if Theo Pourchaire was ever going to make it in F1, he probably would have done so by now.

Zhou Guanyu

Just how eager are Audi – and Formula 1 itself – to exploit the Chinese market? That would be the glaring reason to retain Zhou Guanyu after failing to build on a respectable rookie season in 2022.

Felipe Drugovich

The Brazilian Zhou, only with more natural talent on the evidence of his title-winning F2 season in 2022. May have already made it onto the F1 grid had he not aligned himself to Aston Martin, ensuring he would always be stuck in the queue behind Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.

5: The unlucky Red Bull junior

Liam Lawson, we’re told, has been virtually guaranteed an F1 seat for 2025 – but with whom?

Helmut Marko hinted recently that it will be with VCARB, only for Christian Horner to raise the possibility that Lawson could instead be loaned out to a competitor.

And what of F2 Championship leader Isack Hadjar? A young hopeful cannot do more for his Formula 1 prospects than winning the title in the sport’s feeder category.

One of these two talented young drivers is likely to be left disappointed when Red Bull’s final decision is made.

Audi were linked with a move for Lawson earlier this summer and the influence of Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, who will take up the role of Audi F1 team principal in July 2025 at the latest, could be significant here.

When it comes to Lawson and Hadjar, could Audi end up taking the one Red Bull don’t?

4: Mick Schumacher

It will come as no surprise to learn that the Audi F1 project is unlikely to be an overnight success.

With Sauber currently slowest of all and still without a point in F1 2024, it will take years – and a lot of patience – to build a winning team.

One way to guarantee some patience, to make people more forgiving of your shortcomings?

Give the people what they want and make a crowd-pleasing move in the driver market.

How the F1 2025 and F1 2026 grids are shaping up

👉 F1 2025 driver line-up: Who is already confirmed for the 2025 grid?

👉 F1 2026 driver line-up: Lewis Hamilton and 12 other drivers already confirmed for 2026

Even now, almost 20 years after the last of his 91 victories, the name of Michael Schumacher continues to pique Germany’s interest in F1 in a way Mercedes and Vettel, for all their astronomical success, have been unable to replicate.

Michael’s boy could often be his own worst enemy during his previous two-year stint in F1 with Haas, yet it is more widely acknowledged now that he was also a victim of his environment, exposed to a chaotic team with an unforgiving team principal in Guenther Steiner.

As Ferrari team principal at the time, Mattia Binotto was partly responsible for that sorry affair when the opportunity was there all along to send him to the more controlled surroundings of Sauber and into the arms of then-boss Fred Vasseur.

Two years after cutting ties with Ferrari, Audi F1 represents a chance for both men to make up for their previous mistakes.

Just one problem: it was reported recently by local media that Audi are reluctant to pair two German drivers for next season.

3: Gabriel Bortoleto

It’s always a very good sign when a driver is promoted to F2 and instantly takes it by storm, requiring very little acclimatisation to a higher level.

Gabriel Bortoleto is the latest in a long line of drivers to fit right in F1’s feeder series, competing for the title in his debut season.

And even if his championship challenge eventually proves unsuccessful, there is an argument that he would be the moral winner of 2024 for overcoming his lack of experience to push the likes of Hadjar so hard – a telling sign that the ultimate potential of his talent is almost certainly higher.

Even better?

With Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri locked for the medium/long term, there is little chance of Bortoleto graduating from the McLaren driver academy to which he is currently attached, enhancing the prospect of him being loaned out – or released entirely – to take up an opportunity with Audi F1.

He would represent a long-term investment by Binotto, of course, but one worth making if Audi can get to Bortoleto before someone else does.

2: Sergio Perez

Let’s assume that Lawson is indeed promoted to a permanent seat with VCARB as Yuki Tsunoda’s team-mate for F1 2025.

Where would that leave Ricciardo?

Red Bull just like having him around the place, remember, and there would be more than a few sad to see him go after all they achieved and having gone to all the trouble of giving him a second chance in F1.

Instinct suggests those closest to him inside the team – including Horner – will do everything they can to find a place for him.

Which could be bad news for Sergio Perez, for losing the Constructors’ Championship to McLaren this year could give Red Bull a very good excuse to make a change for F1 2025.

With Audi the only non-Red Bull team yet to confirm their driver line-up, it makes sense to stand back, wait and see what exactly Red Bull do.

A driver with considerable sponsorship backing is a driver always welcome and, for Perez, a return to the team where it all began in 2011 would be a more fitting way to finish his career after the damage to his reputation at Red Bull.

And don’t forget that Perez established a very productive partnership with Hulkenberg at Force India back in the day too…

1: Valtteri Bottas

Do you feel it too, that feeling that everyone is just a bit bored of Valtteri Bottas?

Now 35, and highly unlikely to add to his tally of 10 wins, there is a perception that he is now just a seat warmer, a driver making up the numbers on the grid and blocking a way in for the next generation – hence some rather cruel comments from certain F1 pundits this year.

Yet what if the driver who occasionally beat Lewis Hamilton in identical machinery is still in there, just without the car to express himself fully?

His near-total domination of Zhou Guanyu in qualifying this year suggests Bottas is still worthy of a place on the grid in F1 2025, even 12 years after his debut with Williams.

His experience with the Sauber team in its current form gives him the edge over Perez when it comes to Audi’s more experienced options.

And the knowledge from his Mercedes days of what it takes to build a winning F1 team is not to be so easily dismissed.

Flavio Briatore, the Alpine adviser, was on to something recently when he remarked that driver choices are largely irrelevant until a team is in a position to provide a competitive car.

A Bottas/Hulkenberg line-up would be fine and functional – exactly what Audi will need to navigate those tricky early days to come.

There is no need to overcomplicate things at this stage of the team’s development.

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