2024 F1 Season – The Best in the Turbo-Hybrid Era?
The 2024 Formula One season might not have had the down-to-the-wire championship battle of 2021, but it will still be remembered as one of the turbo-hybrid era's best. With a variety of victors, pole positions being impossible to predict, and continuously evolving driver market subplots, F1 treated fans to so much. And if you liked what you saw this year, there's a high chance that 2025 will have more of the same from day one.
F1 2024's Sensation-filled Start
Being excited for next season's beginning is not to say 2024 wasn't in good shape from the off. The drama began weeks before the season's opening round when Lewis Hamilton stunned the sport by announcing he would leave Mercedes.
The seven-time champion might've had a tough time since controversially losing the 2021 title, but nobody had expected Ferrari to announce that Hamilton would join Charles Leclerc for '25. It was a coup for the Scuderia and a blow for the Silver Arrows, but F1 was the biggest winner for having guaranteed entertainment in the driver market for the remainder of the season.
The question of who'd replace Hamilton at Mercedes could've been the main off-track focus. Indeed, Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing began the season similar to how they cruised through 2023 — by dominating. A pair of one-two finishes with Sergio Perez following his champion teammate over the line made it seem this would be another year with the Milton Keynes squad in control. Yet something was distracting the team from their racing, and that shift of focus contributed to everyone else closing in.
Christian Horner was battling for his career, a job usually reserved for the Team Principal's drivers. Allegations of misconduct and a leak of private WhatsApp messages spread through the Bahrain paddock over the opening weekend. An email containing screenshots of conversations allegedly between Horner and a female employee soured the champagne celebrations of the team's Middle Eastern wins. Geri Halliwell-Horner, Horner's ex-Spice Girl wife, joined her embattled husband in Saudi Arabia to show solidarity and counter rumors of factions emerging at the team.
We may never know the truth about who shared the WhatsApp conversations or whether a plot to oust Horner from his position was at play. Yet there's no doubt that the sideshow won't have helped Red Bull's eventual World Constructors' Championship loss or Adrian Newey, the team's CTO, deciding to leave. No matter what else would happen during the 2024 season, F1 was showing that there were plenty of storylines, even if the racing would be another year of Verstappen control.
F1's Year of Fierce Competitiveness
Australia, however, showed that the on-track action might be as exciting as what was unfolding behind the scenes. A mechanical failure halted Verstappen's early-season march and opened the door for Carlos Sainz and Ferrari to win. Not only was the Spaniard's victory unexpected, it was a remarkable comeback story after Sainz withdrew from the Saudi Arabian GP with appendicitis. And although Red Bull fought back over the next two weekends in Japan and China, 2024's season of unpredictability had begun.
Lando Norris was the next driver to beat Verstappen, and the McLaren driver's first F1 win didn't require any Red Bull problems. Yes, Fortunate Safety Car timing did assist the Briton, but McLaren had continued their trajectory from mid-2023 of developing a front-running car. Norris had broken his duck, and it looked as though he might double up in Imola when the sport reached its European leg but settled for P2, just 0.725s adrift Verstappen. It was clear that 2024 wasn't another year of Red Bull domination.
The field continued tightening as the races ticked by. Reaching Q3 was far from certain for the 'big' teams, and drivers were separated in Qualifying by hundredths of a second, not tenths. This closeness was unlike any F1 year we had seen before, and Canada displayed this the best. George Russell took pole position from Verstappen with the exact same time.
That 0.000s split for P1 on Saturday progressed to Sunday, too, where Norris joined the pair in a three-way fight for victory. Timing of rainfall on the circuit helped Verstappen win around Montreal, and the Dutchman took another P1 one race later in the Spanish GP, but that was the last Red Bull win for 11 races.
Mercedes, who had sat behind Red Bull, Ferrari, and McLaren in 2024's opening third, suddenly leaped forward to be the summer's most successful team. Russell benefitted from a Verstappen-Norris crash in Austria, but Hamilton won on merit around Silverstone, and he inherited P1 from his teammate in Belgium after Russell's disqualification. The years of F1 having a 'big three' teams were over, and 2024 was a move to four top constructors - each with the prowess to win.
A Record-breaking F1 Season
Oscar Piastri made it seven winners for the season after a contentious Hungarian GP where McLaren botched pit stops to leave the Aussie behind Norris. Team radio begged the British driver to return the place, which he eventually did, and even this peerless 1-2 win in 2024 was entertaining. Four teams celebrated 1-2 wins over the year, and each of them, after Japan, would've pleasantly surprised their fans.
Regardless of your opinion on whether Norris should've let his teammate through in the closing stages, one thing was irrefutable: F1 hadn't seen so many victors for over a decade. Even better, by the Las Vegas GP, where Russell led a Mercedes 1-2, 2024 became the first season in history where seven drivers had taken multiple wins. Tuning in on a Sunday to watch a race would see fans without any idea who would win.
Leclerc, for example, took a surprise P1 in Monza to delight the delirious Tifosi. He helped Ferrari close the gap to McLaren and Red Bull in the teams' standings, too, and he led the Scuderia when they swept away all other teams at the USGP.
Sainz took his last win in scarlet one week later in Mexico City, and Red Bull dropped to P3 to show how far their competitors had come. Though McLaren would eventually triumph by the season finale, seeing the papaya team duel with Ferrari for the title evoked F1 nostalgia for fans of a certain age after years of Mercedes vs Red Bull.
Although the media tried to suggest Verstappen's championship lead was under threat from Norris, the reigning champion showed he was still the best in class in a soaking-wet Sao Paulo. Verstappen's sublime P17-to-P1 drive in the rain was incredible, and he soon wrapped up the title with a Las Vegas P5. Verstappen's ninth 2024 victory came at the Qatar GP to show Red Bull still has what it takes to win during a standard F1 Grand Prix without fortunate Safety Cars, red flags, or rain. Fans are in for a tremendous time if the 2025 season starts as 2024's ended.
F1's Bright Future
To add to the excitement for 2025 is the depth of quality in the grid right now. Driver illness, bans, swaps, and demotions let 24 different names enter the championship in 2024. Ollie Bearman impressed on his Saudi Arabian GP debut when he stepped in for Sainz, and the Briton took a P7 finish with only a day to prepare for the race. He returned twice more, deputizing for Kevin Magnussen at Haas for his ban in Azerbaijan and sickness in Sao Paulo, securing a top-10 finish in Baku. It's little wonder the American team signed him for the 2025 season.
Yet Bearman was only one of four additional names to adorn the 2024 grid to acclaim. Logan Sargeant's point-less run for Williams ended after a costly crash in the Dutch GP weekend, letting relative unknown Franco Colapinto get a chance to step up. The Argentine promptly outscored Sargeant's entire F1 career in just two races by taking P8 in Azerbaijan, with further points coming in the USGP.
Colapinto's Baku heroics coincided with Liam Lawson's return after his 2023 cameos. The Kiwi driver again replaced Daniel Ricciardo, as he did one year earlier, but this time for good. Lawson's ferocious fighting with Perez suggested that the VCARB racer knew a seat even higher up in F1's food chain was possible, too. Perez ended the year as the only one from the top four teams not to take a race win, and many believed Lawson would replace the Mexican in 2025.
Finally, Jack Doohan started his F1 career one race and three months early. The Aussie racer surprisingly replaced Esteban Ocon at Alpine for the Abu Dhabi GP after the French team announced he'd take over for 2025. There wasn't much chance for Doohan to make his mark on F1, but he avoided the multiple crashes and spins that befell other experienced names to get competitive laps under his belt ahead of his first full-time season.
2025 will look markedly different from 2024, with F2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto stepping up to Sauber and highly-rated Italian Andrea Kimi Antonelli replacing Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes. Sainz is dropping down the grid to Williams, Nico Hulkenberg is swapping Haas for Sauber, while Ocon heads the other way from Alpine. Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou join Magnussen and Ricciardo on the exiting driver pile, further rocking F1's established order.
That's a lot of change for the final season of the current rule book. Considering that Formula One often sees the best and closest racing in the last year of the regulations - see 2021 for an example - there's plenty to be excited about. Whether it's new drivers to support, established names driving in new colors, or the already close grid tightening even further, 2025 looks set to be F1's most competitive season in its 75-year history.
