The 2024 Formula One season marks an important moment in the sport’s history.
This year is the 75th edition of the championship which started in 1950 and will be the longest, with 24 races on five continents.
After the recently concluded Belgian Grand Prix, more than half of the season is over after 14 races, and the team is now entering a much-needed summer break.
So, now is a good time to analyze the past season, and in this mid-term report card, The Hindu look at big wins and losses.
Winner: The Fans
Interest in F1 peaked in 2021 when Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton were locked in a fierce championship battle that went down to the last lap of the year’s final race and was decided in controversial circumstances.
Since then, fans have been hungry for a championship battle in the previous two years when Verstappen cruised to his second and third drivers’ championships at a canter.
In 2022, Charles Leclerc and Ferrari offered some fights at the beginning of the year before their challenge failed. But 2023 saw the most dominant campaign in the history of the sport: Verstappen won 19 of 22 races, and Red Bull won 21.
So when the Dutchman stormed out of the blocks in commanding style at the start of the year, winning four of the first five races, fans feared another boring year.
However, McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari – on the odd occasion – have closed the gap to Red Bull and come back strongly in the last few months to make the race entertaining. After winning seven of his 10 races, Verstappen has yet to make the podium in three of his last four events. Rivals Red Bull have been removed, and the field has been cleared. The result of the race is not a foregone conclusion, and the fact that three teams can fight to win means that there are many variables in play, which makes it unpredictable and exciting.
McLaren: The second most successful team in sports history has had a challenging decade.
Since 2012 – the last year the team struggled to win the regular season and the title – they have had to overcome many setbacks, on the track and off. After years of under-performing, the Woking-based outfit have finally bounced back this year. The former champion started 2023 poorly but made significant progress mid-season and finished the year strongly by regularly competing for the podium.
The team continued that trajectory in ’24, and McLaren has been a thorn in Red Bull’s side to have the best car at the various circuits.
The team’s journey was the opposite of Red Bull’s as it started slowly in the first few races, and a significant upgrade in Miami helped it become a consistent contender. Over the past two years, it has been impressive that each team has brought new parts, it has improved the performance of the car. It refers to an outfit that can be used in factories and can use resources efficiently.
In Miami, Lando Norris won his first F1 and McLaren’s first since 2021. Since then, the Papaya-colored car has often been the fastest on race days. However, the team was not operationally sharp enough and left some victories on the table due to strategic mistakes and driver mistakes. In a short period of time, McLaren has reached the stage where it can actually fight for the constructors’ title this year, where Red Bull is only 42 points behind. The strong line-up of Norris, second in the drivers’ standings and Oscar Piastri, who won his first F1 in Hungary, could give Red Bull a run for their money.
If the form guide from the last six races holds, the team will surely win their first constructors’ title since 1998.
Mercedes: The German marquee dominated the sport from 2014 to 2021 but struggled in the last two years since the start of the new regulations that came into force in 2022. The team started 2022 with a revolutionary concept for the car, but failed to produce results. .
The car suffers from bouncing, making it uncomfortable for the driver and suffering from a lack of consistency between different tracks. Mercedes has a very narrow operating window that looks competitive, but if it falls out of some of them, it is stuck in no man’s land to be the third or fourth best car.
Mercedes started the year behind Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren. However, a mid-season upgrade, including a new front wing, has allowed the Silver Arrows to be competitive and fight at the front. The result is that the former champion has won three of the last four races. While Mercedes does not have the fastest car on the grid, it has two drivers, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, who can expand everything and bring the results to the front.
Hamilton showed why he is still considered the best in the business when he won the British GP in different weather conditions where he was almost faultless. In Belgium, Russell showed he can be good at tire management to pull one stopper and win the race on the road. Although he was eventually disqualified because his car was under the minimum weight limit in the post-race inspection, the pace he had should give him confidence.
Lose:
Sergio Perez: The most challenging thing in F1 is when a driver, however good, is paired with generational talent in the same machine. The incredible world champion can make even a Grand Prix champion look run. This is what Perez experienced at Red Bull. The Mexican was not the fastest through the laps in qualifying but the driver was very good on Sunday, and the ability to manage the tires is a trait that can pay rich dividends over the 300 km distance of the race.
However, since being paired with Verstappen, Perez’s form has taken a turn for the worse over the past four years. If 2023 was bad, where he won only two races and almost finished second in the standings, this year has been disastrous.
When Red Bull have a huge advantage, as they have in the last two years, they don’t have to worry about Perez’s performance. However, this year, the poor form of the 34-year-old began to cost Red Bull valuable points in the title fight. Red Bull is often a one-car team, with the three-time champion doing the heavy lifting while Perez doesn’t qualify high enough to be in contention for the podium.
Of the top four teams, they are the weakest among the eight drivers. In June, team leader Christian Horner extended his contract and hopes to help the driver’s form. But it hasn’t happened yet. There were suggestions that the team considered dropping him after the Belgian GP, where he started second and finished seventh, but have now decided against it. But whether he sees out the season is still a question mark.
Alpine and Aston Martin: Beyond the top four teams, Alpine and Aston Martin are the best in terms of resources and manpower. Alpine, owned by the Renault group, is the entry of the works of the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), while the ambitious billionaire Lawrence Stroll owns Aston Martin. Stroll has poured a lot of money into new infrastructure in recent times. Last year, Aston started the season by being the second fastest car, and Fernando Alonso took the podium. However, throughout the year, Aston’s upgrades failed to deliver and dropped to fifth place. The team has been even worse this year, struggling for minor points placements and suffering a major setback to their aspirations of becoming championship contenders.
Alpine, meanwhile, is a dysfunctional hot mess starting from the top. The team has gone through football manager syndrome, hiring and firing team heads, and is now in its fourth leadership change in as many years.
It has also been hemorrhaging senior staff and key technical people, showing it is not a good place to work. On Wednesday, the team announced a new team principal, Oliver Oakes, to replace Bruno Famin, who has been in the job for less than 12 months. To make matters worse, disgraced former Benetton and Renault F1 boss Flavio Briatore has been named Renault CEO Luca de Meo’s adviser on F1 operations.
Briatore was banned from the sport for his role in the 2008 Singapore GP scandal, but was later overturned on appeal. As the boss of the Renault team, he was accused of asking his driver, Nelson Piquet Jr., to crash intentionally to trigger the Safety Car early, which would help his teammate Fernando Alonso, who then won the race. Renault pulled out of the sport after the scandal broke in 2009 before returning in 2016.
Alpine is one of three F1 teams working alongside Ferrari and Mercedes, and its performance, eighth in the standings, is an indictment of its management.
The Enstone-based squad has a rich history, winning titles as Benetton in 1994 & 1995 with Michael Schumacher and as Renault in 2005 & 2006 with Alonso. But the Renault / Alpine stewardship of the outfit has made a mockery of the sport by not taking the project seriously.
