At the start of the 2024 season, there was little reason for excitement. Nothing really suggested that Max Verstappen’s dominance over the last few years was set to do anything other than continue. Even after the first couple of races, it looked very much like business as usual.
But now, as the teams take a well-earned rest for the summer and we look back on the first 14 races of 2024, it’s turning out to be an exciting and intriguing battle. Nobody can really be sure who will be champion at the season’s end.
Red Bull’s Dominance Is Over
We’ve had seven different winners in 2024 so far, an outcome that would have yielded wild odds at the bookies at the start of the year. Red Bull and Max Verstappen still lead the constructors’ and drivers’ championships, but their iron grip on races has faded dramatically.
Part of the reason could be the natural closing of the gaps between teams. The current technical regulations have now been in place for a long time and all the top teams are now closer to fully exploiting the inherent pace of their cars.
Red Bull’s political wrangling hasn’t helped either – the early season drama about Christian Horner’s conduct may have eased a little, but things have been tense between Horner and Max Verstappen’s dad Jos, and Horner and influential team advisor Helmut Marko haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, either.
While it seems the internal strife has diminished slightly in recent weeks, Verstappen has now gone four races without a win, and teammate Sergio Perez’s continued underperformance is starting to really dent Red Bull’s efforts in the teams’ title race.
Last year the Mexican driver was way off Verstappen’s pace, but such was Red Bull’s overall dominance that it didn’t matter. Now that the gaps between the top teams have narrowed, Red Bull really needs Perez, not just on track to help Verstappen fend off attacks, but to bring in points of his own for the championship. Although a solid qualifying from Perez at the last race in Belgium suggested that perhaps he was finding form, he was again lacklustre in the race.
Red Bull now has several weeks over the summer break to decide whether to cut their losses and jettison Perez. Right now it’s hard to imagine that a replacement – likely to be Daniel Ricciardo, Liam Lawson or Yuki Tsunoda – could be any worse.
The Rivals Are Charging Back
Meanwhile, McLaren – a team that was firmly at the back of the field at the start of 2023 – is smashing it out of the park, sitting second in both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships, with both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri notching up wins. There’s a solid argument that the Woking team’s car is the fastest overall.
Ferrari, which early on looked likely to be Red Bull’s closest rivals, seems to have tailed off slightly mid-season, but Mercedes has been on an unexpected charge of late, with George Russell and Lewis Hamilton winning three of the last four races. Mercedes would have had a one-two at Belgium had Russell not been disqualified for an underweight car.
We’re In For An Awesome Title Battle
All this means that we head into the second half of the season with a three-way fight for the title between Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes, and a very good chance that Ferrari could join in that battle if they can rediscover their early season form.
Verstappen is now fighting solo against strong charges from Norris, Piastri, Russell and Hamilton, all of whom are capable of winning races. The Dutchman still has a healthy 78-point lead, but he’s on the back foot and watching his mirrors as those behind him pick up pace.
Norris, Lerclerc, Piastri and Sainz are very close to each other for second in the drivers’ title race, but Hamilton isn’t far behind. Russell is further behind, but save for the team’s 1.5kg error at Spa he would be right up there, too.
When was the last time, during the F1 summer break, that you genuinely had no idea who was going to be champion by the time Abu Dhabi comes around? We’re in for a belting second half of the season.
