CONTENT WARNING: The Red Bull Section contains a story you may find upsetting. Skip down to the Christian Horner picture if you do not wish to read it. As always, look after yourselves, Dre
And welcome back to the third and final part of my F1 2024 Season Review. In this section, we break down the title battle as we saw it (Sorry, Mercedes). Red Bull, and their annus mediocreus (Sort of), Ferrari and how they came so bitterly close to the big one, and finally, McLaren and their first Constructors title since the late 90’s. If you missed any of the previous editions of the series, the links are down below:
Part 1 – Sauber, Williams, RB, Haas
Part 2 – Alpine, Aston Martin, Mercedes
Part 3 – Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Vibes
Oracle Red Bull Racing
Constructors’ Position: Third (589 Points)
Head-To-Head Stats: Verstappen 23-1 In Qualifying and Races
Best Finish: 1st (x9)
Season In A Nutshell: Ain’t So Fun When The Rabbit’s Got The Gun
It’s hard not to look at Red Bull without at least a degree of contempt. They’ve always been rather graceless with their conduct, even when they’ve won. And this year, was no exception.
It might feel like an age ago, but let’s not forget how this season started. Christian Horner turned the sport into a finale of The Kardashians, rolling up to the season opener in Bahrain with wife Geri arm-in-arm and defiant in the face of sexual harassment allegations made by one of his employees. Everything about this story was ugly. An internal investigation that was completely opaque to the outside world, was thrown out, as was a subsequent appeal.
FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem was reported to have asked Max Verstappen to publicly show his support towards his team boss, while Max’s father Jos was openly calling for Horner to stand down to avoid a rift in the team, ironic given his own lengthy history of abusive behaviour.
Marina Hyde and Jonathan Liew, some of the biggest heavyweight journalists in the country, chimed in on F1 for the first time. F1 TV’s Laura Winter, who has openly talked about her horrendous past as a victim of domestic violence, had to give a rousing speech on women within Motorsport, just to remind everyone that women had earned the right to be there… in Saudi Arabia of all places. And after the dust settled, little happened. You can loosely attach a certain key member of staff’s departure with it, but Horner’s accusations were dismissed by two separate third parties.
His alleged victim, like so many who have gone through similar and even worse, likely had to dodge the headlines as the team kept it moving like clockwork. And as I write this, Horner just collected a CBE from the King for “Services to Motorsport”. On any human level, it’s fucking grim.
I just wanted to remind you of that before I talk about the actual Motorsport.
This wasn’t the year the wheels fell off for Red Bull as the start of the turbo-hybrid era began, but it certainly found a spanner in the tailpipe.
For the first quarter of the season, it looked like it was going to be business as usual for Milton Keynes. Max Verstappen continued to be excellent in front-running form. He won four out of the first six races, only coughing up Australia due to a jammed brake that caught fire, and a badly timed Safety Car in Miami after Max damaged his floor driving over a bollard.
Little did we know, that was the first indication that Red Bull was under genuine threat. A dogfight began with McLaren over the rest of the season that due to McLaren occasionally hitting gold, in combination with the poor form of Red Bull’s second car, led to them losing their Constructor’s crown. By the time we got to the end of the season, 15 wins were split almost evenly between the chasing pack of McLaren, Ferrari and even the purple patch of Mercedes.
The field had closed in, with Red Bull having to later admit that they had gone down the wrong development path with their floor, dating back to the middle of 2023, and Sergio Perez had warned them about this during the Spanish GP. But it’s hard for you to be taken seriously when Max Verstappen was and still is so good that it didn’t matter. By the time Red Bull was able to steer itself back in line, it was just in time for Max to pick up the last major results to defend his driver’s title, but too late to defend the Constructors, which they lost to Woking. A familiar tale for the Bulls, Max more than pulls his weight, but he’s such a freak that he’s impossible to replicate unless you go all-in for another elite driver. And as we’ve seen, Red Bull wasn’t prepared to upset that apple cart, especially after there were genuine talks between Verstappen and Mercedes and the possibility of losing their talisman driver.
This team, as much as we praise it for its operational excellence, had cracks appear all over the organisation. The pit crew won the title again but had many more errors in the box. The strategy wasn’t quite as clockwork as it was in 2023. We didn’t speak on it much, but Rob Marshall went from Milton Keynes to Woking and immediately won a title.
The big departure, Adrian Newey, allegedly saw the Horner scandal as the final straw after 18 years with the team and wanted a new challenge by heading to Aston Martin. Jonathan Wheatley is now gone, the string puller in the team and widely regarded as the sports best Director, heading to Audi to be their principal in 2026. Strategy chief Will Courtenay is becoming McLaren’s Sporting Director that year too. Pierre Wache running the day-to-day within the team is now about to face his fiercest test as he steers the development of the RB21 without Newey’s guiding influence.
And that’s not all the question marks regarding the team. The unbranded Hondas are gone for 2026 as Red Bull develops in-house, and no one has complained more about the 2026 power-unit regulations than them, not a good sign of confidence. Just what is Ford bringing to the table beyond a badge? And can they keep Verstappen into this new regulation set and beyond, with potential suitors up and down the grid now acknowledging him as the best driver in the world?
Max was pushed to his limit and sometimes beyond to win the title due to his excellence, but it may be a case that this happens again if Red Bull wants to keep winning. The final year of this regulation set, with the convergence the grid now has, will be fascinating to watch. 7.5/10
Sergio Perez – 8th in Points (152) / 4 Podiums, 2 Sprint Podiums / Average Finish – 9.6
Oh dear.
It was a sadly familiar tale for Checo. He started great. Six straight Top 5 finishes to start the season, including three-second places. We thought he’d finally turned the corner after how distant he was to Max Verstappen in his incredible 2023. Then the bad results started creeping in again. Nowhere in Imola, followed by an unfortunate Monaco crash that wasn’t his fault but off the back of another embarrassing Q1 elimination that put him out of position in the first place.
Horner rolled the dice and gave Perez another two-year extension ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, thinking the public backing would install some confidence in the Mexican. It failed. Catastrophically. For perspective:
Perez’s First 6 races of 2024: 103 Points / Perez’s Remaining 18 Races: 49 Points (9 in the last eight)
Now, as much as we like to rinse drivers we think are cooked on the Internet, I believe Checo is kinda right. Red Bull’s form dipped, so he was always likely to sink back into the midfield and that’s on his team, the same team that had to apologise to him for ignoring his feedback. But the harsh reality is, that Perez had done nothing to demand priority from within the team.
For three-quarters of his season, he drove like a midfielder. If the Championship started in the second half, Perez would have been thirteenth. An average finish barely in the points, even if you placed Red Bull as the third-best car (Which is hard to do given the disparity between him and Max), is still nowhere near what Red Bull needed. He got knocked out in Q1 six times, and out-qualified by Logan Sargeant four times. He was outscored in the last five races by Zhou Guanyu. There’s a fleet of stats you can pull to make Perez look like he was the worst driver in F1 this year, which pound-for-pound… isn’t a million miles away.
And Horner gave Perez every chance. He gave him a completely undeserving extension, could have sacked him mid-season but didn’t, admitted wrongdoing on development, and none of it ultimately mattered. Perez is the embodiment of everything wrong with Red Bull and its driver management, going back to 2018. From Gasly and Albon to the hiring and firing of Nyck De Vries, the failed return of Daniel Ricciardo, and now Liam Lawson being the next lamb to Verstappen’s slaughter.
Red Bull needs to lower its expectations for the second seat or Lawson will receive the same scrutiny that Perez got. Your second seat is a poisoned chalice, created by kneeling at the altar of Verstappen. Unless you can mould a driver into Max’s style over time, you’re going to continually face this problem. And given what we’ve seen from Gasly, Albon, Tsunoda and others outside of the Red Bull umbrella… maybe the call should be coming from inside the house.
Checo can leave F1 with his head held high. He’s F1’s modern-day Ricardo Patrese. 281 starts, six wins, 39 podiums and a Championship runner-up spot. And while his team at Red Bull was tough, he was a genuinely brilliant midfield racer who earned his shot at the top via excellent driving and being an alchemist for podiums in cars that shouldn’t have been there. He’s had a great career, and I hope his time at Red Bull doesn’t distract from that. 2/10
Max Verstappen – Champion (437 Points) / 8 Poles, 9 Wins, 4 Sprint Wins, 14 Podiums / Average Finish – 3.6
Dre’s 2024 Driver of the Year
Turns out, Max Verstappen is still the best in the world. Who knew?
As said earlier, when the car was dialled in, Verstappen was still completely untouchable. But it wasn’t those first four race wins when the car was at its most dominant. Verstappen won this Championship in the skirmishes when the field had closed in on him.
Take Imola. Red Bull couldn’t get its hard tyres in the optimal performance window, but just about held on from a resurgent Norris. Took advantage of a great start in Catalunya to set up the win there in similar circumstances. Canada was a messy race in terms of conditions and racecraft and Max came through. And even when he went 10 races between wins, he stuffed the stat sheet and didn’t concede any big shots. Every GP Max finished this season, was in the Top 6. His final two wins were Verstappen at his very best. Brazil, carving through 14 cars in the wet, managing the very worst conditions the sport can throw at you and then destroying the field by 20 seconds was immense. One of this era’s finest wet-weather drives.
And if you disagree due to the convenience of that red flag, Qatar will be one of those races that will go under the radar on Max’s win list. He was nowhere after Saturday’s Sprint, but to then qualify on pole and then hold off Norris and Leclerc in far faster machinery while having the awareness not to fall into the trap of the double-waved yellows was incredible. Verstappen at his ultimate, unbeatable best.
It doesn’t mean there weren’t issues. Verstappen was pushed and he cracked on multiple occasions, making an uncharacteristic amount of errors. When I claimed in Vegas that this was his greatest title, in hindsight, I’d still probably take 2023, and maybe 2021 ahead of it for those reasons.
Norris might have had him beaten (Barring the time penalty) in Austria, but Max pinched him too hard and he was very lucky to have gotten away with a still functional car when Norris didn’t. He clattered into Lewis Hamilton in Hungary for what could have been a podium, and again, got very lucky his car survived.
Austin and Mexico were the antithesis of Verstappen. His running of Norris off the road there single-handedly led to a regulation change on rules of engagement because he exploited the rulebook. How? By turning defence into attack by gunning for the apex. It was dirty work by the “spirit of the rules”, but in a sporting context, you save that shit for cricket. It was genius. It forced Norris into passing Max illegally, Norris got a time penalty and Max swung the scoring back in his favour at a critical time in the season.
A week later, he goes too far and runs Norris off the road twice, the second of which should have arguably been a drive-through for how egregious it was. It was shades of his 2021, where the red mist descended as the pressure from Lewis Hamilton reached its climax.
Do you know what it reminded me of? TeamFourStar’s Dragonball Z Abridged. The Final Flash episode upon Perfect Cell’s first appearance. Cell taunts Vegeta into hitting his new Perfect form as hard as he can, and it leads to one of the coldest back-and-forths in the series:
Vegeta: “In a few moments, all you’ll be feeling, is OBLIVION!”
Cell: “That or disappointment. Go ahead, flip that coin.”
Max, like Vegeta, flips that coin. That’s what separates him from pretty much all his peers in current F1. He’s prepared to take that risk and let the stewards make the call. It’s one of his greatest strengths, but also one of his few weaknesses. I’d be lying if a part of me didn’t respect the lengths he’s prepared to reach to win, it’s what elite sport is all about. It’s the same ruthlessness that made many fans love and hate Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher, legends of their respective eras.
It’s hard to get a true read on performance this season with such a huge gap between Max and Checo, but it says a lot about the state of play for the season when even if you give McLaren their optimum window from Miami onwards, Max would have still won the title in Qatar a race early. Add in his early form and he won it with two races and a Sprint to spare.
With my gut thinking Red Bull was closer to third (sometimes even fourth on tracks like Monza) in the back half of the year, I can see why some have said it’s his greatest title. It wasn’t perfect. At times, it was downright messy on, and off the track. But throughout the season, Verstappen won far more than he lost pushing the very limits of his RB20 and his skill. And that’s why he’s now a four-time Champion. 9.5/10
Scuderia Ferrari
Constructor Position: Second (652 Points)
Head-To-Head Stats: 14-9 Leclerc in Qualifying, 14-8 in Races
Best Finish – 1st (x5)
Season In A Nutshell: “We’re all going on a Summer Holiday…”
Oh, this is going to sting for the Scuderia. In a sense, this was a great season. I walked into 2024 off the back of Red Bull’s dominance thinking being a solid second and the odd win here or there would be a good campaign. They ended up with five wins and barely missed out on their first Constructors title since 2008. If Sainz got out in front in Abu Dhabi, they take it on countback.
They were a plucky bunch in Maranello this season. Carlos Sainz came out swinging off the back of his imminent firing for Lewis Hamilton and was taking Charles head-on, including taking the Australian GP for the first win of the year. Beyond Sainz missing Saudi Arabia via appendicitis, Ferrari didn’t have a car finish outside of the Top 5 through Monaco.
But after Leclerc got his dream home win, the middle of their season was where the wheels fell off. Just 23% of their points were scored in the middle eight rounds of the season. A double DNF disaster in Canada with Leclerc’s engine failing and Sainz spinning into the wall. Leclerc broke his front wing in Austria and then was guinea-pigged in Silverstone while Sainz spent several rounds hovering around the bottom of the Top 6.
They got stronger towards the end of the season. Leclerc out-strategised McLaren to take another special win at Monza, and then both he and Sainz dominated Austin and Mexico respectively. But with McLaren still in and around the top, they did just enough to win the Constructors by just 14 points.
As I said, that’s gut-wrenching for Maranello to come so close. So many little flashpoints could have swung it for them – Sainz and Perez crashing into each other in Baku could have swung it. The Abu Dhabi pitstop. Leclerc’s rough patch in Europe. Run a Monte Carlo simulation and I think Ferrari wins the Constructors more than half the time. But alas, here we are, and I think them making their car slower in the middle of the season via an upgrade package gone wrong and the two months of dead time associated with it, is likely the culprit. That’s where McLaren was arguably at their strongest and it came back to bite them.
They’re not far away, and they have Lewis Hamilton, Loic Serra heading over with him as their chassis engineer, and Jerome D’Ambrosio to be Deputy Team Principal. That small difference in driver quality might be the difference in 2025. It’s a great season, but the minor honsing will sting that much more as a result. 8.5/10
Carlos Sainz – 5th in Points (290) / 2 Wins, 9 Podiums, 1 Pole / Average Finish – 5.7 (23 Races)
Dre’s Top 10 Driver’s Of 2024 – #5
This is another weird season to evaluate in a vacuum. And it’s hard not to be a little cynical when looking at it. I’ve always said that Carlos Sainz always ranks highly on the “Why do guys give him the benefit of the doubt?” list and this might be another year where we have to go down that rabbit hole.
Pepperidge Dre remembers the start of this season. Sainz walked into it having already been sacked from the team after the Lewis Hamilton announcement. He raced Charles hard in Bahrain and beat him, even if it wasn’t straight up as Leclerc had a more severe brake balance problem that neutered his pace. Despite that, Sky was the first to gas up the Sainz revenge arc and come out with completely false narratives that Sainz is the “more intelligent” driver and that he looks after the car better. Sainz then missed Saudi Arabia due to appendicitis, came back for Australia and then won the Grand Prix due to Verstappen’s one mechanical DNF for the year, then beat Leclerc to the podium in Japan (Again, mitigation – Leclerc was off strategy and managed his tyres brilliantly) only hammered that point home.
…Except it wasn’t. That was the purple patch of Sainz’s season, once we got into the meat and potatoes, Leclerc being Ferrari’s talisman came through again. As mentioned earlier, Leclerc very quietly racked up a brilliant start of the season in his own right. Nine Top 5’s in the first 10 races, five of which were podiums and it included the Monaco win. Once we got into the meat and the potatoes of the season, Sainz was a great “floor” driver, consistently around 5th-6th place, but not punching as high as Leclerc was across the full season. There were a couple of howlers in there too, like Canada where he couldn’t crack the points, then spun out and took Alex Albon with him, or Baku where he has to bear at least some of the responsibility for the Perez crash.
Now in Sainz’s defence, if you dig a little deeper into the numbers, the advanced analytics do tell a slightly different story. On Supertimes average – In races, he was a little quicker than Leclerc over the season (Barely, the average was about three-hundredths of a second, the closest of anyone on Sundays), and if you look at the Qualifying version, he’s within a couple of tenths of Leclerc, which is no disgrace at all on the sports best qualifier. On sheer raw speed, Sainz is close, but I think just being a bit short here and there has added up throughout the season. The 66-point shortfall to his teammate is significant no matter how you want to slice it.
Sainz got the headlines because he started the season strong, and finished it strong. The Mexico win was probably his best weekend in F1 to take glory over the hard-charging Lando Norris, and he closed out the season with four podiums in the final six races. Those are always going to stick in the memory a little more.
Was this a great season? It was Sainz’s best under Ferrari pound-for-pound. But I think some of the rankings I’ve seen elsewhere have been very favourable towards the Spaniard, and I want to pour a little cold water on that front. If you think this review is harsh, I admit it is, but if we want to evaluate Sainz at this point, it’s against the very best, and he’s just a little short of that. I still think Williams should be thanking their lucky stars. 8/10
Charles Leclerc – 3rd in Points (356) / 3 Poles, 13 Podiums, 3 Wins / Average Finish – 4.5
Dre’s Top 10 Drivers of the Year – #2
Now this is podracing. One of the biggest debates I’ve seen this season has been who was better between Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris in terms of “best non-Max driver”. And for me, spoiler alert, it’s Charles.
Leclerc is still the ceiling of the Scuderia and he’s still absolutely one of the best drivers in the world, and for a guy often typecast because some of his most high-profile moments are mistakes, this was the year where he limited them and for me, looked more impressive in red, than Norris was in orange.
He had three pole positions this season, including a critical one at Monaco, which for me is impressive given the car he was in. Leclerc’s a demonic qualifier but the Ferrari had trouble keeping their tyres in the performance window via warmups all year long. Leclerc was a bit more human here than he’d like to admit, he made a fair few qualifying errors across the season, Australia, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi were the ones that stuck out most to this writer. But he was still faster than Sainz on average by just over a tenth of a second. While close, praise is still worthy given this was probably the best all-round Sainz we’ve seen in F1 to date.
And what I loved about Leclerc most this year, was his versatility. When he needed to manage his tyres, he could do it. Japan and Monza were two of his best drives this season and he was an alchemist to get something out of nothing. Given the Ferrari used to have a reputation as a tyre destroyer, this was unheard of. Combine that with excellent consistency and the speed to dominate when rare chances presented themselves like in Austin, he’s still as fast as anyone on his day. Had some superb racecraft across the year.
Clean, yet defiant. George Russell in China, holding off Verstappen in his Brazilian triumph, holding off Oscar Piastri in Zandvoort. He’s still a bit naive at times, he gave up the Baku lead too easy, and his outburst at Vegas explains why many put Sainz down as the 200 IQ man at Ferrari, but overall, I don’t think there’s a huge hole in Leclerc’s game. And when 2024 was an F1 season defined by mitigating errors and pushing advantages, Leclerc’s floor was amongst the highest in the sport. In the back half of the year, where Ferrari was at their strongest, Leclerc out-pointed everyone else in F1, including eventual Champion Verstappen by 19.
And as a sports fan, if you weren’t emotional when he won at Monza and Monaco, the two places he’s always wanted to win most, then I don’t think you’re an F1 fan. It was beautiful to watch.
An average finish of 4.5 is awesome. It would be enough to challenge for a Championship in some years. And while Ferrari never really gave Leclerc a package to realistically do it (Again, that Barcelona upgrade was a season killer), Leclerc is one of the best two or three drivers in the world. I’ll be fascinated to see he handles another member of that list come March. Between you and me, I think the Monaco man is the favourite. 9/10
McLaren Formula 1 Team
Constructors Champions (666 Points)
Head-To-Head Stats: Norris Up 21-3 in Qualifying, 16-8 in Races
Best Finish: 1st (x6)
Season In A Nutshell: Making A Horlicks Of It
For the first time since the days of Ron Dennis, Adrian Newey, David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen, McLaren are Constructors Champions, their first in 26 years.
It’s easy to poke fun at the Papaya brand because they’ve always talked a good game. Zak Brown as CEO has always promised this day would come, and he’s had his sketchier moments as the man in charge (Again, see IndyCar for more on that). But last year, we saw the foundations come into place that led to this push. James Key was quickly removed after the horrible early development of the MCL37, including brakes on fire in testing and midfielder levels of early performance. A technical reshuffle, a move for Red Bull’s Rob Marshall, an early upgrade package, and McLaren were immediately the second-best team. By 2023’s end, they’re challenging Red Bull.
A similar tale struck the MCL38 this year, when, in the early rounds, McLaren duelled with Mercedes and Ferrari for mid-level points. Just two podiums in the first five weekends. Then, Miami happened. People love a narrative, and if you want an easy one, well here it is.
Your coincidental “sliding doors” moment for 2024, Adrian Newey is unplugged from Red Bull’s day-to-day by announcing his departure, Verstappen runs over a bollard and damages his floor, and the timing of the Magnussen/Sargeant crash, all leads to Lando Norris’ first win, and the torchpaper was lit.
It set off the real arc of the season, McLaren challenging Red Bull for their crown. And there were a lot of teething problems here for the team that suddenly had to “learn how to win again”. I’ve never believed in that arc because this is a team that’s inherited a lot of winning people, as well as still having staff from their days in chromed silver, but again, narratives. They had opportunities pass them by. Losing Imola by less than a second, losing the lead in Barcelona and letting Verstappen dictate the terms of engagement. Leaving the dry tyre switch one lap too long in Canada, missing the pit box and being on the wrong compound in Silverstone.
Despite having proven to the world that McLaren had the best overall package in the field, they still went six races without a win in the middle of the season. Even as a neutral fan, it was frustrating to see a team finally reach its potential and still find ways to fumble the bag. Even when they broke the streak in Hungary, it came as a result of desperate team orders because they accidentally put Norris back in front of Oscar Piastri, with race engineer Will Joseph begging and pleading the Brit to concede his second win to grant the Australian his first.
It led to the cringe christening of Papaya Rules, which Piastri conveniently put into question immediately when he dove at Norris on the opening lap at Monza to take control of the race, which ultimately didn’t matter because both were caught hotdogging by Ferrari on strategy. Yes, I did just type that. It was an unnecessary distraction from the team’s strongest run of form. Hungary led to a run of them winning four from six, including Piastri’s brilliant second win in Baku, and Norris dominating Zandvoort and Singapore. But at the time, it almost felt like McLaren didn’t want to admit they were in a Driver’s Championship fight down the stretch when they were. They seemed like they were trying to protect the harmony of their driver pairing rather than pull the trigger on having a #1 driver, even if that driver was blatantly Norris on the stat sheet. It was incredibly frustrating and struck me as a team being unserious.
Again, it ultimately didn’t matter. Red Bull had no rear gunner in the Constructors fight, Ferrari left it too late for a comeback, and Norris had his pants pulled down in Austin rightly or wrongly. So when Brazil landed and both McLaren’s were left at sea, Verstappen ripped the Drivers’ title fight out of their hands. And no, you don’t get to claim they were never in this fight – Yes, the chase-down numbers were big, but a better-executed middle of the season and Norris is right in play. Playing the convenient excuse of “We were never in it” doesn’t match up with Papaya Rules, a last-minute switch to playing team orders, only to give up immediately after Brazil. Actions speak louder than words.
McLaren survived the late rush from Ferrari to win the Constructors title by just 14 points, but I can’t help but feel like they should have won this far more comfortably. Their mismanagement of their drivers, the opportunities they dropped and the mistakes made by their drivers made them vulnerable and they potentially could have left 2024 with nothing, a potentially embarrassing outcome. For 2025, they need to tighten up. Ferrari will be pissed they just missed out and Lewis Hamilton should be a driver’s upgrade. Red Bull won’t take this lying down either with the extra windtunnel time, and a potential X-Factor in an adaptable Liam Lawson. They can’t afford to have an uncompetitive car for a chunk of the season too, or else they will be punished.
But you have to take the wins where you can get them, and McLaren developed an incredibly quick car with the best sweet spot of any on the grid. Low fuel, hard-tyres, they were virtually unstoppable and that’s a good combo to try and win races with via modern-day Pirelli’s. They were also the only team that didn’t make their car slower across the season via a bad upgrade package to the floor, the development headache that defined the 2024 season. McLaren promised they would do “whatever it took” to win the title. They did and they didn’t, all at the same time. Luckily, it worked. Just.
PS: If you want the benefit of the doubt from more fans, don’t invite horrible people like Donald Trump and Joe Rogan into your garages. Cheers. 8.5/10
Oscar Piastri – 4th in Points (292) / 2 Wins, 1 Sprint Win, 8 Podiums / Average Finish – 5.1
Dre’s Top 10 Drivers of 2024 – #6
An interesting sophomore season from the deadpan Australian. This isn’t the insult that some people may think it is, but I think he’s still a bit of a “Goldilocks” driver, where you need everything to come together to get the best out of him. Allow me to explain.
When everything is dialled up, Piastri is as good as anyone in the world. He was fortunate his team was behind him in Hungary, but he was good value for his first win. But that Baku performance was one of the drives of the year. A bold and brave send on Charles Leclerc into Turn 1 gave him the lead, and then superb defensive driving to hold the Ferrari back lap after lap was outstanding. It’s why I do genuinely see the promise and why so many people gas him up, because of the flashes of his brilliance I can see. It was the first time I watched Piastri and I was saying to friends: “Okay, I see it.” 292 points, beating Carlos Sainz in similar machinery over the season and eight podiums is a significant contribution towards McLaren’s Constructors title and that deserves credit.
He gave Norris some pressure more often across the course of the season. The iconic Monza overtake and controlling that race was proof that on his day, he could claim to be McLaren’s big dog. As much as he’s gentle with the press and rightly well-liked as a slick operator and witty young man, there’s absolutely a ruthless steel to his driving that it’s hard not to admire.
But I’ve warned people about how we evaluate Piastri for some time now, and while this was still a really good second season, if we’re judging him on the “Future World Champion” timeline projections some people have, we need to calm down. There’s no getting around it, losing the Qualifying head-to-head 21-3 isn’t great. It wasn’t by a huge margin, around two-tenths of a second on average, but at the highest level that’s significant and it shows Norris was far better in extracting that final quarter of a second out of a car over a lap. Starting further back on the grid week in and week out, isn’t ideal. He too had his fair share of poor starts, even if I feel that was more of a problem with McLaren and their clutches.
And while I think Piastri’s race pace and management have improved compared to last season, there were still too many weekends, especially down the stretch, where I felt the Australian was anonymous. Singapore for example, when Norris had a 20-second lead, Piastri should have been in that gap between his teammate, and Verstappen. He shouldn’t have been beaten by Leclerc in Zandvoort either with Norris rampant. A greater challenge to the Constructors and I suspect people would have talked about this more. In any case – 55 points in the final six races is a little tame for someone in his package.
Again, like with Sainz, this may come off as harsh, and I can accept that, but I tend to evaluate the big hitters against themselves, and you’re always going to be limited to how high you can rate someone when they were comfortably a step behind their teammate. I hope he keeps climbing and that this isn’t the ceiling, he’s not far away from giving Norris some genuine grief. But for now, he’s not quite there yet, and that’s what my rating reflects. 8/10
Lando Norris – Runner-Up (374 Points) / 4 Wins, 8 Pole Positions, 14 Podiums / Average Finish – 4.3
Dre’s Top 10 Drivers of 2024 – #3
And finally, Lando Norris, F1’s newest title challenger. (And yes, he was.) I had a feeling the day would come when he’d be thrust into a fight at the very highest level, but after half a dozen races of 2024, I didn’t think it would be this year. But as said with the way the development race played out this season, I think we were all a little surprised by it.
Were the lights a little too bright at times for Lando? Definitely. But this was still by a distance, his best season in F1 and proof that the Brit can take that next step.
His qualifying? Best in the field this year. While he maybe didn’t have Verstappen’s peak given arguments about the strength of the car, Norris had eight pole positions this year and had the best overall average starting position of anyone in the sport – 3.4 to Max’s 3.5. What we called a weakness for Lando a year ago is now one of his genuine strengths and that deserves some serious credit.
He can be a serious front-runner if the car allows it, even if there were some issues with that. Singapore he dominated, but he lost concentration multiple times and nearly crashed out twice. Zandvoort and Miami had problems of their own, but we’ll get to that. Abu Dhabi was the only one of his four wins on the season that looked comfortable, where you don’t worry about the man up the front as he drives off. You get that comfort with Leclerc, Verstappen, Hamilton, heck, even Russell and Sainz, but I’m not there with Norris yet.
And that’s because there’s no getting around it, he made a fair amount of minor mistakes that throughout the season, added up to a season that could have been a genuine threat to Verstappen’s streak. Norris is now 2-11 on leading Lap 2’s after starting from the first grid position in his career. He was far too tentative off the line this year and he was punished for it. Races like Barcelona, Brazil and Monza he made life so much more difficult for himself by not being able to dictate the terms of engagement. Controlling races are a huge part of winning and Norris, dropped himself in it far too much.
The over-egging of his brakes in Brazil. The 5-second penalty for track limits in Austria even before *that* crash, the pit box in Silverstone, Lando choosing to stay out on Inters in Canada, poor starts in Belgium, the double-waved yellows in Qatar, etc… these all add up. Do I think if I played the Marc Marquez game and gave those back to Norris, he would win the title? No, but I think he could have gotten within a race of Max down the stretch and if you can force either he or Red Bull to handle those final races differently, who knows how it plays out?
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that between him and McLaren, 30-50 points were left on the table. That’s a big swing if you’re able to put Max on the back foot more frequently. It’s these mistakes and their frequency that led me to give Leclerc the #2 spot instead of him.
As I said, not all of this is on him, McLaren needs to foot a degree of accountability, and Norris did respond well to some of the pressure. He did bounce back against Max immediately in Mexico and took him out of contention via cracking him under pressure. The starts got better as the year went on. But it’s a season that will always have a whiff of “what could have been”. And that’s a shame because, on the face of it, it’s still a brilliant year.Remember, Lando Norris didn’t have a win, Sprint or Grand Prix, entering this year. He’s gone from one pole position to nine. He didn’t have a Championship finish higher than sixth. He leaves it as runner-up. That’s a huge step forward for the Brit and why I look forward to seeing what he’s learnt from this and takes into 2025. There’s a reason why some bookies have him as the favourite. 9/10
And that’s that, the 2024 F1 season is done. How do I feel about it all? Slightly above whelmed.
Amazingly, out of all the series I covered on M101 this year, I felt the best about F1. It still lacks the overall drama and spectacle that IndyCar had in 2024, but F1 had a compelling storyline and surprised a lot of people by the way it played out. It looked like another year of Red Bull dominance, until very suddenly, it wasn’t. We had four genuinely competitive teams. Seven multiple race winners, something the sport had never seen before. Verstappen was pushed to his limit and beyond at times and it was fascinating going into race weekends again NOT knowing how it was going to play out. If you don’t find that compelling, I’m not sure why you’re watching F1 anymore to be completely honest.
I’d be lying though, if I said the on-track product is great. It isn’t. We had a handful of great abc and forth races, and dramatic moments like Spa, Silverstone and Canada, but on a race-to-race level, the racing product still isn’t great. And it’s hard not to be fearful of what lies ahead. We’ve got the sport in a great competitive position right now with four teams in and around the top and the potential for a fifth to join that fight in the future, and we’re a year away from a major regulation shift.
F1 will always go down that round every half-decade or so in fear that they’re losing “road relevancy” and to avoid someone dominating for too long, but most of us are here after a seven-year spell of Mercedes going largely unchallenged. We’ll be fine. More priority needs to be given to the entertainment value of what we’re doing. And that may come as a shock to some people given many think there’s too much pomp and pageantry around F1 as it stands. But there’s every chance someone nails the new regs in 2026 and they’re a second in front of the field. Do you want that again?
This was my first 24-race season to cover as a journalist and I felt it down the stretch. I think part of the reason Russell and Verstappen got into rehashed beef in Qatar and Abu Dhabi was just because everyone is fucking tired. You will never convince me that an F1 season needs to start in early March and finish two weeks out from Christmas. Ever. I’m glad everyone’s agreed that 24 races seem to be the hard limit and that biannual rotation is inevitable, but even that feels excessive. And I’m not the one getting on planes to cover the sport, working in the paddock. A salute to everyone involved, I don’t know how you do it.
And it’s still hard to ignore the poor political optics surrounding F1 right now. Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s tenure as FIA President is going down faster than a lead balloon. From banning political statements within the sport to waltzing Donald Trump around the Miami paddock. From firing some of the most trusted people from within the organisation to the continued poor stewarding and officiating (Including Johnny Herbert taking bookie money while being an active steward). His incredibly poor handling of the Christian Horner scandal at the start of the year and his thinly veiled jab at the sport’s swearing and its rapping comparisons, laced with racial undertones. I fear, given the strong support he has from local Motorsport councils, he’ll run unopposed in 2026. Goodie.
I hope the sport continues to push to become more global. I would like to see Thailand and South Korea make the calendar so we have stronger Asian representation. Whether it be via Kyalami or Rwanda, a race in Africa is a must and something the sport has ignored for far too long. Chasing the American dream is always going to be appealing to F1, it has been since the Bernie days, but that can wait. You’re a World Championship, we don’t need half the calendar to be in Europe.
Will 2024 go down as a classic season? It’ll probably be just underneath the greatest of the modern era like 2016, 2021 or 2012. A lack of a true crescendo for the title will probably hold it back, but it did give us a nice idea as to what the sport can be, and what the future could bring. The sport’s juggernaut is vulnerable. Ferrari is back and pushing hard in the here and now, and just snagged the biggest name in the sport. Mercedes has a new chapter brewing in life after Hamilton. And a new McLaren, one that least doesn’t take itself quite so seriously, is back on top. That’s at least, an interesting concept to take into a new sport in a year or so’s time, right?
I’ve been Dre Harrison, thanks so much for reading all of my F1 content in 2024. And as it’s my last post until then, have a wonderful Christmas and all the best for 2025. And if this is a hard time for you, I wish you a very peaceful one. Love you all, and take care. See you then.
Dre x
