F1 Q&A: Who will be future world champions?

Formula 1 heads to Canada this weekend for round nine of the 2024 season.

Last time out in Monaco, Charles Leclerc converted pole position to win his home race.

BBC Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your questions before the Canadian Grand Prix.

Why aren’t the driver’s names on the cars, eg BTCC? It’s difficult to work out who is who. It would help following driver/helmet/livery changes – Anonymous

The drivers names are on the cars – they are required to be by the sporting regulations. Clause 9.1 e) dictates: “The name of the driver must appear on the external bodywork of the car and be clearly legible.”

Typically, teams comply with this rule by putting the driver’s name near the cockpit somewhere. But the regulation does not define how large it has to be, and the teams tend to keep it minimal so there is more room to exploit the car surfaces commercially, with sponsors’ names and so on.

This is obviously not a very user-friendly solution for people watching, but on the other hand it’s easy to see how this has been arrived at – wherever the name was on an F1 car, it would be hard to see, unless it was so big that it really would impact the finances of a team.

The best way to tell the drivers in each team apart is by looking at the camera mount above the cockpit. In every team, one of these is black and the other yellow, to help broadcast commentators. You just have to remember which way round it is. Think of it as a test, if you like.

Fernando Alonso has had three poor weekends as per his standards. Is this a car problem or do you feel this is where age is catching up? – Nishchay

In all matters such as this, you have to look at the underlying situation. Yes, Alonso has had three difficult weekends in a row. But is there any convincing, consistent evidence that he is beginning to dip in performance? No.

At all three race weekends, until things unravelled for him, his typical pace advantage over team-mate Lance Stroll was intact.

Alonso himself has explained what happened in all three cases.

On the Thursday before Monaco, he said of Miami and Imola: “In my case, I was not perfect in those two races, I was not driving well enough in Miami, and in Imola it was more the search of answers that drives me sometimes on a weekend where I know the goals will not be good enough to satisfy us or myself.

“When you are not fighting for top five or seven or whatever, sometimes you switch into a set-up or test weekend, because (if the best we can hope is) to finish P9, I prefer to fix the problems of the car, give up that weekend and start from scratch on the next one.”

This, admittedly, does suggest frustration had somewhat got the better of him at Imola in what is becoming quite a difficult period for Aston Martin. But equally you can see where he is coming from.

Monaco seems to have been just plain bad luck. Alonso caught traffic in the first part of qualifying and failed to progress. “I found myself in the wrong place, wrong moment, lost 0.3secs out of Turn 11 with a car just in front of me and then lost another 0.2secs in the last corner,” he said.

When less than half a second is the margin between the fastest time and the cut-off, this sort of thing can happen in Monaco. Alonso said he should have qualified around seventh or eighth, and there is no obvious reason to doubt that assessment.

Should George Russell be feeling worried/unloved with Toto Wolff so publicly being keen on Verstappen and Antonelli? – Tom

Absolutely not. Mercedes have made it clear they see Russell very much as their driver for the future – and he is performing at a level to fully justify that faith. He is one of the absolute elite drivers in F1 and his performances prove it.

For example, the margins between him and Lewis Hamilton in qualifying have been vanishingly small in their three seasons together. They were separated by 100ths of a second on average in both 2022 and 2023, with Russell ahead one year and Hamilton the other.

And the same remains the case this year, even though Russell is ahead a striking 7-1 on the head-to-head.

Wolff has made no secret of his intention to attract Verstappen to Mercedes. That is extremely unlikely to happen for 2025, but a definite possibility for 2026.

If Mercedes do secure Verstappen for 2026, that means 2025 would be effectively a head-to-head between Russell and Antonelli if the Italian is promoted, which is not yet a given.

Talented as Antonelli is, it would be hard to bet against Russell in that situation, given that he has been in F1 since 2020. Which would leave Wolff with something of a headache for 2026. But I suspect he would say that was both hypothetical and a nice problem to have.

If you had to guess, who are the current drivers who will be future F1 world drivers’ champions? – Stephen

The answer to this question depends so much on which driver ends up in which team and which team best adapts to the rules at the time. F1 seems, after all, to be stuck in a period where one dominant era is followed by another. That’s certainly been the case since 2010.

But if what you’re asking is who are the absolute elite drivers in F1 right now who are not already world champions, the answer is Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Lando Norris and, increasingly, Oscar Piastri.

A lot of talk about Antonelli & Bearman in F1 next year, but neither are setting F2 alight this year. Should they stay in F2 for next year? – Anonymous

Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Oliver Bearman do indeed look set for full-time F1 seats next year – in Antonelli’s case at Mercedes and in Bearman’s at Haas.

And it’s also true that, on the face of it, they are not having great seasons in Formula 2 – Antonelli is sixth in the championship and Bearman 13th after five rounds.

On top of that, they are team-mates at the Prema team, which has been one of the most successful in F2 in recent years.

But it’s all about context. For a start, F2 introduced a new chassis and engine package this season, and it is very clear that Prema are struggling to get on top of it.

Secondly, both are on the young driver programmes of leading F1 teams – Antonelli at Mercedes and Bearman at Ferrari. As part of these, they run in simulators and various on-track testing programmes. These give the teams a much clearer picture as to whether the driver is at the required standard or not than an F2 season in such circumstances.

Antonelli, in particular, is being prepared for a potential F1 debut – either with Williams in place of Logan Sargeant later this year, or Mercedes next year, or both – with an extensive series of test in previous years’ Mercedes.

The latest one is in Barcelona in a 2022 car this week, alongside reserve driver Mick Schumacher. The one before that was at Silverstone, alongside Schumacher and George Russell.