Hello again and welcome to Part 2 of my 2024 F1 Season Review. In the last part, we poured cold water on a bogey-coloured Sauber, Williams and the Colapinto send, RB still making up for two years of dodgy driver decisions, and giving Haas a set of flowers.
Time for Part 2, as I like the nickname this section: “God bless this mess”. Teams that were kinda good, but were messy as all hell. Alpine, Aston Martin and Mercedes. Incase you’ve forgotten the running order, or you want to go back/forward, click down here:
Part 1 – Sauber, Williams, RB, Haas
Part 2 – Alpine, Aston Martin, Mercedes
Part 3 – Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren
On with the show…
Alpine F1 Team
Constructors Position: 6th (65 Points)
Head-To-Head Stats: 12-11 Gasly in Qualifying / 13-10 Ocon in Races
Best Finish: 2nd (Brazil)
Season In A Nutshell: What the Fuc-
In a season where Red Bull… *gestures wildly* existed, do you know how hard you have to work to come across as a messier team than them?
Before the season even started, the cracks began to show. Pre-season testing is never the truest of indications when it comes to outright pace, but Team Enstone looked slow as heck there. And as the dust was settling after the opening round in Bahrain, it was revealed that two senior members of the development team – Dan Harmon their technical director; and Dirk De Beer in charge of aerodynamics, both resigned over the off-season. We soon found out that Alpine’s chassis had to be strengthened between seasons and had gained 10 kilos in weight. Just like that, Alpine were the worst team in the field.
Their second chassis was a big improvement, removing the excess weight and getting them back towards the midfield, but then we got a classic case of “Honey, the girls are fighting!”
An ugly Lap 1 crash between Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon at Monaco was seemingly the final straw for a relationship between drivers that always seemed frosty at best and straight Tumblr conspiracy theory at worst. Talk of an Ocon suspension wasn’t off the table, and soon it was official that Ocon would be leaving for Haas as the season went into Europe.
This also led to another problem, because Ocon was leaving for Haas and Alpine only had one revamped chassis available, Gasly got priority. Thankfully for them, Gasly was good enough as defacto team leader to hold up his end of the deal with a good season, but you do have to wonder how much they left on the table by compromising the rest of Ocon’s season.
And it’s not an Alpine season without massive mismanagement at the top. Flavio Briatore, who turns 75 in April, was invited back into the fold as “Special Advisor” because nothing says positive PR than inviting a former race fixer back into what’s totally not a management role. It led to a late push in the Carlos Sainz sweepstakes and lost. What does it say that Sainz rejected the objectively better team and went to Williams instead?!
And with rumours surfacing at the time that Renault was abandoning F1 power-unit production, Bruno Famin fell on his sword and left as team principal almost a year to the day that Otmar Szefnauer did the same. Oliver Oakes came in as team principal and the second youngest ever in that role. And even that looks rather sus given his background running Hitech and its clear Russian influence and ties to the Mazepin family. Yeesh.
Towards the end of this season, they were genuinely great. Pierre Gasly was cracking the Top 5 in Qualifying, the race pace was better, points in four out of the final five races. And of course, Brazil. A perfectly executed survival job in awful conditions, keeping track position, scoring a double podium and 35 points on the weekend. It was a weekend worth $30,000,000 in prize money and essentially saved their season to get them back into sixth and where they were in 2023. Through the skin of their teeth, Alpine survived the chaos.
This is what makes them all the more frustrating. It feels like Alpine can be so close to looking like a solid overall unit. They need a leader, but instead of the enthusiasm of Oakes’ leadership, it feels more than ever that Flavio Briatore is pulling the strings, which… eww. Gasly and Ocon’s warm embraces after their double podium felt like they could have co-existed rather than me at loggerheads, and now Ocon, the loyal soldier through their tough times, is gone. I like Jack Doohan more than most, but that’s a pretty clear downgrade.
They’ve always had good aero and chassis, but their two talismans in their technical department are gone. If that first chassis had worked, what could they have salvaged, given they weren’t a million miles away from Aston Martin?!
The end of the season showed genuine promise with their latest front wing and chassis package despite a power unit that might be down as much as 35 horsepower… But Renault dropped out of the development race and gave up its manufacturer status as it takes on Mercedes power and gearboxes for 2026, only increasing anxiety for the hundreds of employees in Viry. Big sighs all around for what ultimately was a salvageable season, but one that leaves me uneasy for what comes next. And with Alpine no longer a factory team… just what are they now? 5/10
Esteban Ocon – 14th in Points (23) / Best Finish – 2nd (Brazil) / Average Finish – 13.7 (23 Races)
Este Bestie, pudding and pie, kissed Monaco’s wall and made Alpine cry. His season was never the same after that Monaco crash, even if I suspect it was a racing incident more than anything else. And that relationship had turned so sour and there was so much bitterness from Flavio Briatore, he told Ocon to go home before the final round in Abu Dhabi early for seemingly no good reason.
Ocon was always getting a pass from this writer for a season that clearly felt like mismanagement from the powers that be. Arguably, he was still the better performing Alpine to that point, and after that putting Gasly as the #1 driver was an anchor on Ocon’s season, figuratively and literally. And despite all those struggles, the man won the head-to-head on race finishes against Gasly. Lowkey, quite impressive.
For most of the season, Ocon was around 18th in the standings, and that is laughable for a driver with that much proven quality. I’m delighted he got another huge Alpine moment in Brazil with that second place. Seriously, how many drivers are better in the wet than him?
Ocon heads to Haas, who seem like the perfect team with its new culture and team boss to nurture a driver of his quality like they did with Hulkenberg, and the partnership with Bearman is exciting. This is a man in his prime and I sincerely hope it doesn’t go to waste. 6/10
Pierre Gasly – 10th in Points (42) / Best Finish – 3rd (Brazil) / Average Finish – 12.9
Dre’s Top 10 Drivers of the Season – #9
This is a genuinely tough season to evaluate. Gasly has largely held his own against Ocon in the two years together as teammates, but he rode the Alpine favoritism and upgrade train all the way to the end of the season, and reaped the rewards.
Gasly had 42 points for the season. 34 of them were in the final five races. 17 of them were during the Brazil weekend. Gasly was definitely the more consistent scorer at Alpine and the lead car for more of the season than Ocon was, but how much of that was down to him, and how much of that was down to Alpine’s preferential treatment?
In any case, it pushed him up the board from a decent but underwhelming season as part of Alpine being crummy as a whole, into a Top 10 scoring finish and some genuine hope for the future. Gasly had multiple, legit, deep Q3 qualifying results to close out the season. As we’ve said about Alpine so many times before, the chassis and aero can often be very solid in the right circumstances, and Gasly showed that on the more technical tracks down the stretch.
The circumstances may be sketchy, but Ocon has accidentally handed the French team baton to Gasly. Barring a shock of the ages, it’s his team now as I don’t expect Doohan to be much in terms of short-term competition. I’d be a lot more enthusiastic for Gasly in this role if it wasn’t for the fact that this isn’t a factory anymore. Alas. Bonne travail, Gasly. 7/10
Aston Martin Cognizant F1 Team
Constructors Championship: 5th (94 Points)
Head-to-Head Stats: Alonso 19-5 in Qualifying / 17-7 in Races
Best Finish: 5th (Saudi Arabia)
Season In A Nutshell: “We’re going to forget Dan Fallows EVER happened!”
Oh dear. There’s a reason I nominated them for the biggest downfall in Motorsport in 2024. Last year, this time was a breath of fresh air at the top of the standings. Eight podium finishes, a Monaco Grand Prix they should have won, only losing out to the following year’s Constructors Champions in McLaren by 28 points, and Fernando Alonso was 4th in the Championship ahead of Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris.
But there were already signs something wasn’t quite right and they only got worse as 2024 rumbled on. The formula’s now more well known than the Will.I.Am single. Aston built a superb initial 2023 car that excelled when teams weren’t sure about the regulation shifts, but as the season went on and teams figured it out, Aston couldn’t find ways to make their quick car faster. It reminded me a lot of Williams when the turbo-hybrids began – Strong initial car and challenging for wins, but as bigger known factories got to grips with the series, William’s lack of spending power and developments had them slowly slip down the field, and it appears this is what’s happened to Aston Martin.
Again, they didn’t start too bad, Fernando Alonso started the year with six-straight point finishes. When he said that his sixth-place finish in Japan was a Top 5 drive of his career, we all thought it was classic Alonso over-egging the pudding, but given how much the car was seemingly struggling for development behind the scenes, he may have been onto something.
But like in 2023, they struggled in the middle of the season as Haas, RB and Alpine started to clog up the fight for the minor points, making Aston’s scoring a bit more inconsistent. It didn’t help that Lance Stroll fell off a cliff in the back half of the year either, but Alonso scratched and clawed for points wherever they could and did enough to keep the team in P5 overall reasonably comfortably. But it wasn’t convincing – Just 26 points in the back half of the season. If that pace had held up for the whole year, they would have finished seventh overall, not fifth. Goes to show you how important Alonso’s early form was.
But we all know where the excitement is with Aston Martin. Andy Cowell has moved over from Mercedes to take Martin Whitmarsh’s old role as Group CEO, the man who steered Mercedes’ incredible power-unit department when the turbo-hybrids began. Dan Fallows has been removed from his technical post and I assume, stuffed in a locker somewhere within Silverstone.
And we all know they snagged the biggest non-driver fish of all in Adrian Newey for early 2025, leading the technical department via one of the biggest technical staff contracts in F1 history, an alleged £25m a year with shares in the company and free reign over the department, which also includes Ferrari’s former technical director Enrico Cardile. It’s a Football Manager-esque Tycoon Takeover. Say what you will about Lawrence Stroll, but you have to respect the fact he has no problem shelling the big bucks if he thinks it’ll give him a chance for his son team to win. And have we even mentioned Honda power units coming for 2026?
As I’ve said many times since the Newey purchase, Aston Martin now has no excuses. New windtunnel, a new technical department with some of the biggest names in the business. An elite driver in Fernando Alonso, even if he’s 44 next year. New power units and one of the best in the sport. It’s getting harder to ignore the nepotism in the room as a significant weakness now. Is the insistence on Lance Stroll going to be the hurdle that stops the team from succeeding? But for now, this is a team that needs a lot of work. Luckily for them, the cavalry is coming. 4/10
Fernando Alonso – 9th in Points (70) / Best Finish: 5th (Saudi Arabia) / Average Finish – 10.2
Dre’s Top 10 Drivers of the Year – #10
It made me chuckle a little bit when Fernando complained to the press that F1 TV was making him out to be a bit of a grump. A preposterous thought given he called his Aston the “worst car” ever during an Abu Dhabi practice session. I’d take the piss further but he had a point, Aston was massively front-loaded in terms of team performance. They had Top 5’s on merit over a single lap to start the season but by year’s end, making it out of Q1 wasn’t guaranteed. They felt more like the seventh or eighth-best team by the end of the year.
It’s a little too easy to get wrapped up in F1’s version of CM Punk; because when you step back and look at his season, it’s still pretty good. Cashed in well when the car was good, comfortably beat Stroll on all fronts again, and one of the biggest Supertimes margins across the season, half a second faster in race trim and over three-tenths in Qualifying. And as much as I was harsh in that stat about the 28 points scored in the back half of the season, all 28 came from him. At worst, he’s still the class of the midfield, even if the early strength is doing a bit of the heavy lifting.
Fernando Alonso is still a quality driver, who dug deep to get whatever he could out of a car that drifted between so many specs as his team struggled to figure out what was wrong with the AMR24. But I do wonder if he has the patience as he enters his 45th year of life, to see just what the next set of regulations have in store. Aston needs to be great immediately to get the best out of him, and I’m not sure how many grains of sand are left in the hourglass. Want a hot take from me? I’m not sure he will make it to 2026, even with the contract extension. 7/10
Lance Stroll – 13th in Points (24) / Best Finish: 6th (Australia) / Average Finish – 13.4 (23 Races)
*sighs* – What are we doing here?
Lance Stroll is so incredibly frustrating to follow. I try to bat for him and he’s not always terrible. He genuinely did start decently this season, sixth in Australia, seventh in his home race in Canada and the teams at Silverstone. There was a patch in the second quarter of the season where I genuinely thought he was turning a corner.
But when the team’s performance dropped off, so did his. Massively. Eleven straight weekends out of the points to close out 2024 when his teammate is still in the points isn’t ideal. And it’s hard not to talk about Stroll without his two embarrassing gaffes behind the wheel this year – Driving into the back of Daniel Ricciardo in China while under a Safety Car, and driving into the gravel intentionally during the formation lap of Brazil. It’s an unfair tag, but sometimes I do understand why some people think Stroll seems disinterested in the sport, it’s because of moments like that where it feels like his brain is switched off.
A reminder that Stroll is eight years in. He has more starts than Villeneuve, Senna, Herbert and Hakkinen and Brundle. We shouldn’t be talking about him in this kind of context, and it’s frustrating because as I’ve said before, there’s no sense of jeopardy or consequence when talking about Stroll because we’ve not seen a crumb of evidence that his seat is at risk. If Aston wants a Championship, it has a Sergio Perez-esque anchor in its second seat its needs to offload. 3/10
Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team
Constructors Position: 4th (468 Points)
Head-To-Head Stats: Russell 19-5 In Qualifying / 15-9 in Races
Best Finish: 1st (x4)
Season In A Nutshell: The Winds of Change Be Blowin’
Let me begin the Mercedes section with a question – Is it better to have a quick car you don’t understand, or a slow one that you do? Because it sums up Brackley’s year pretty well.
Mercedes started the year as the sports clear fourth best team and were hovering around the fight with Fernando’s Aston Martin and early-stage McLaren for middling points. But then they hit this incredible purple patch in the middle of the season, right around the summer break. Fortunate in Austria when Norris and Verstappen collected each other, but Hamilton and Russell were brilliant in Silverstone and Spa respectively, even if Russell was later DQ’ed.
But it was form that was inconsistent, as they struggled to much those heights across the season, and this was with them breaking policy to not upgrade cars equally to see if they can find any kind of edge, such as Monaco, more on that in Hamilton’s section.
We had a better idea of the situation at year’s end. Mercedes performance was often based on temperature, excelling on colder tracks where they best utilise the W15’s field-leading ability of getting heat into the tyres quickly and staying in that window on lower-grip surfaces. When those tyres were on hotter tracks and at greater risk of overheating, that’s where they struggled.
But in a role-reversal, George Russell was the one leading the team and he excelled. A comprehensive beating of Hamilton on all major metrics with a pair of wins and a third taken away from him in the scrutineering office, with Hamilton close behind but also struggling a little more to extract the maximum out of his car across the season.
It’s time for change in Brackley. They have a £70m investment into their team facilities being built over the coming years and it’ll be Russell leading the charge with Kimi Antonelli as his new teammate. He’s still just 18-years old with talk of Verstappen-level upside from his karting days and FRECA dominance. But can he excel at the very highest level that Mercedes will be aiming for right away?
There’s signs of a potential challenger in the W15. Four wins, are still four wins. But they need to make their car a more consistent challenger if there’s any chance of them not getting their shins kicked in by a customer on their own power-unit. 6.5/10
George Russell – 6th in Points (245) / 2 Wins, 4 Pole Positions, 4 Podiums / Average Finish – 6.8
Dre’s Top 10 Drivers of the Year – #4
This is where I had the hardest time ranking my Top 10 drivers of the season. Four through seven was really difficult, especially given Hulkenberg’s brilliance for Haas and how you stack up a midfielder against the top end of the sport. But George Russell won the overall fight because Mercedes on average, was the slowest car of the Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren trifecta.
George still leaves a little bit on the table I don’t like. He left what was for me a winnable race in Canada, and at home, he struggled in the rain before his water system failed. And he chatted a lot of shit depending on who you ask in the Qatar stewards office, only to lose the lead 400 yards in (Even if it was clear Mercs weren’t winning on raw speed alone).
But the upside in George’s campaign was clear to see, and when it was around, it was massive. Again, he was fortunate to inherit the Austria win, but Vegas was his best F1 weekend to date. Fast from the outset, qualified on pole, ran off a 10-second lead and completely dominated. That Spa weekend was exceptional, the only driver in the field who had the awareness on the fly to call his own shot for the 1-stopper, hold off a quicker Hamilton at the end and cross the line first was supreme racing intelligence. Such a shame that the team didn’t see it coming with the extra tyre wear, and Russell being lighter than usual due to battling illness.
The stats paint the picture. 22 points ahead of Lewis despite two DNF’s that weren’t his fault on both weekends Lewis won with huge point swings. Across Qualifying sessions (and the Sprints), 24-6 in his favour with a tenth and a half in hand on average. 15-9 in races head-to-head. Not sure Lewis has ever been beaten that badly over a single season. Maybe 2011 when he and Felipe Massa continously got into beef.
Anyway, George is ready to lead this team in life after Lewis. If he can iron out the few temperament holes in his game, he can take that next step into the Norris/Leclerc/Verstappen Championship contention category. 8/10
Lewis Hamilton – 7th in Points (223) / 2 Wins, 5 Podiums / Average Finish – 7.0
Dre’s Top 10 Drivers of the Year – #8
*says a prayer to the F1 Twitter Gods before I start typing this*
I’m going to be brutally honest to start here and get nicer about this, because this is more based in how legendary his overall career has been, but I think this has been the worst year of Lewis’ tenure in F1.
Abu Dhabi last weekend was a microcosm of Lewis’ 2024 season. In qualifying, Mercedes left it too late to set a competitive time, and by pure accident, Kevin Magnussen hit a bollard getting out of Lewis’ way and it landed underneath Lewis’ car, knocking him out in Q1. It was the fourth time this season he’d been eliminated in Q1.
Hamilton having an average starting spot of 8.8 this season is startling. It’s less than a position better than Fernando Alonso and SERGIO PEREZ. For perspective, George only failed to make Q3 once this season, had four pole positions, and had an average start of 5.6. At this point it’s hard not to call it a weakness in the seven-time World Champion’s arsenal. The man himself has been candid about it, struggling for confidence over his usual ridiculous late-braking due to this generation of the turbo-hybrid’s porpoising and tyres that lose performance when not in the temperature window. Drive over the limit, and the tyres don’t like the extra stress, and you lose lap time. It clearly dented his usually positive attitude, unclear to himself where he was losing pace towards the back end of the season.
And then like that Abu Dhabi weekend, on Sunday, he drove his ass off and went from 18th to 4th, going round the outside of Russell on the final lap. That’s what makes Hamilton’s season so annoying to review, because you can see the race pace is clearly still there. He’s become Valentino Rossi, the Sunday man, but he’s spent most of 2024 giving himself too much work to do.
Why do you think so many of his diehards have vented their frustrations at Mercedes’ social team, their Twitter followers and anyone else who’s prepared to listen? In my opinion, part of it stems from the inconsistency Lewis showed in putting a complete weekend together. Sometimes he’d be quick in practice, and/or race extremely well, but then have to start from the back end of the Top 10 and lose too much time making up spots to get back to “par”. The only other full-timer on the grid that averaged a race finish two spots higher than where he started, was Zhou Guanyu.
And chuck in the poor finish to the season in general, and people have a valid reason to get the knives out. Austin, Brazil and Qatar were all uncharactistically bad from Lewis. Crashing in Austin, massive struggles in the wet in Brazil, and speeding in the pit lane in Qatar after jumping the start (His 2nd violation of the pitlane rule this season). It’s why I understand that some people thought he was mentally checked out of the season.
But when Lewis was on it, he was still so, so good. His British Grand Prix triumph, using his wet weather skill and tyre management when Verstappen came roaring back was arguably the highlight of the 2024 season, his ninth win on home soil to extend his record. At Belgium, he handled the train excellently of those on the two-stopper strategy and was good value for his win, even if it felt somewhat inherited due to Russell’s misfortunate.
I said it on my DRR Season Finale, it became pretty clear that like Marcus Rashford at Manchester United, a divorce is necessary. Toto Wolff had zero hesitation moving on and prepping Kimi Antonelli for his seat and didn’t even try to keep Lewis onboard when Ferrari made a serious approach last year. He’s doubled down on it by venting to Jack Humphrey about it on his podcast for “Alpha Men”.
To me, I think Toto doesn’t want to lose out on a Verstappen-esque talent for the second time in his tenure as team principal. He lost out in 2015 because Red Bull offered Max an immediate seat and if he did it again with Kimi Antonelli, someone else would have.
Lewis has played a huge role in taking Mercedes to unprecedented heights, on and off the track. But I think it’s time for something different. Time to go to the biggest name in the business, get a fresh start and a fresh car, and see if you can win over the Tifosi. If you can do that, and complete the story that Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel and so far Charles Leclerc have failed… you’re the greatest of all-time. Good luck. 7/10
In Part 3, the title fight. Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren. See you then.
