F1 2024 Midseason - Competition resurfaces in F1!

At the midseason mark, the 2024 Formula One season has surpassed all expectations for what the sport could be in its current era. Four teams and seven drivers have claimed victories. Even better, each winner has reason to believe they'd be a worthy champion with their performances this year. After years of Red Bull and Mercedes dominance, it's a welcome change that has reinvigorated competition in F1.

Of course, a cursory look at the championship standings suggests a different story. Max Verstappen, the reigning champion, looks far clear of the chasing pack. He heads into the final ten rounds after the summer break as a clear favorite to turn his three titles into four.

Yet the reality is his Red Bull Racing team is on the back foot as their rivals have chipped away at their advantage all year.

Dealing with a load of Bull

Infighting at the top of Red Bull in the wake of the Christian Horner harassment scandal had their 2024 start in acrimonious style. Adding insult to injury, their CTO and F1 aerodynamic genius Adrian Newey handed in his notice after 18 years in a bitter blow to future developments. Speculation about opinion differences between Horner, Newey, key advisor Helmut Marko, and Jos Verstappen, Max Verstappen's father, have subsequently dogged Red Bull all year.

Whether the rumors are true and whether it is all connected to their vast gulf in performance between 2023 and this year may never be known. Yet there's no hiding that something has changed from the team who lost just six races over the previous two seasons to losing seven in the first half of 2024.

Sergio Perez's woeful results aren't helping either. The Mexican is the only driver in the top eight spots without a win. Bad news for Red Bull and Max Verstappen fans, but the competitiveness is massively invigorating for everyone else.

Of course, it'd be unfair not to mention that McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari have made sizeable gains to reach the front. F1, after all, is a constantly evolving development race between all constructors, not just the one leading the way.

The push and pull of technical advancements has led to having no idea which three drivers will stand on the podium in any race, let alone the order. The time of the "HAM-BOT-VER" top-three finishers seems long ago now.

Papaya dreams

McLaren, in particular, has much to smile about from their 2024 efforts. Their young drivers are now both race winners and Zak Brown's team arguably has the most futureproof pairing in F1 with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. Norris is fulfilling his long-admired potential now that he has a car underneath him that matches his talents.

Luck hasn't always gone his way, but it's often easy to mistake preparation for fortune. The times when Red Bull beat McLaren head-to-head at Imola, Canada, and Spain demonstrates the difference between a driver and team used to victory and those needing to relearn how to.

How Team Principal Andrea Stella handles the two drivers' relationship as the Woking outfit returns to winning ways will be a subplot to follow over the upcoming races and beyond. The Hungarian GP's public radio broadcasts, where Norris and Piastri negotiated who would win with their engineers, might be a sign of things to come.

Regardless, Norris is Verstappen's closest challenger for the title, and McLaren's recent form should have them ahead of Red Bull by the time the European rounds end.

Two other teams have had both their cars take wins. Yet it’s Ferrari and Mercedes, rather than Red Bull, who have had their two drivers on the top step in 2024. That’s positive steps for each constructor, though neither has had sustained consistency in their performances like Red Bull’s early rounds and McLaren's post-Japan resurge.

Yet there is much to suggest that they have learned how to extract more from the current generation car than they could in 2022 or 2023. That's not the same as making the most from the regulations, but their baseline is far higher than their frustrating recent years.

Simply looking at the gaps in qualifying shows how close Ferrari and Mercedes are to joining or beating McLaren at the sharp end. We're no longer measuring the gap behind the pole position driver in tenths but hundredths at most races.

A slight slipstream or tailwind might be all that stands between a front-row start or P6. Both the Scuderia and the Silver Arrows have two pole positions to their names since May, and they'll be looking to turn that Saturday single-lap speed into Sunday performance in 2024's remaining races.

Changing of the guard

There is also the fascinating, almost forgotten story that connects Mercedes and Ferrari, too. Lewis Hamilton is leaving the Silver Arrows in favor of the Scuderia for 2025. The news that stunned the F1 world in February triggered perhaps the earliest silly season in recent memory. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari's golden boy for so long, will have the driver with the most wins, pole positions, and world championship titles alongside him next year.

His Monaco win finally got that home-win monkey off his back, but the rest of his year hasn't fared as well to signal his bosses they should favor him in 2025, not Hamilton.

On the other side of F1's most sensational driver move is the empty seat at Mercedes. George Russell was delighted to become the Silver Arrows' first victor of the year in Austria. Yet, he will know his win was thanks to the dramatic collision between Verstappen and Norris rather than his speed.

He was close in Canada, too, but it hasn't been his year. Belgium was by far his best drive, choosing a one-stop strategy to beat Hamilton to the checkered flag, but his subsequent disqualification summed up his 2024.

If he hoped to be the heir to Hamilton's legacy at Mercedes, his P8 placement in the standings doesn't suggest he's at the superstar level he must be. With Toto Wolff reportedly courting Verstappen to jump from Red Bull to Mercedes, it doesn't seem Russell is the golden child the German manufacturer believes can fill Hamilton's boots.

He'll need to find something akin to Hamilton's superb Silverstone drive before the Abu Dhabi finale to establish himself as the driver Mercedes can back for the future.

There is so much to talk about and many memorable races from a season that still has plenty of life left. After two relatively lackluster years following the titanic Verstappen vs Hamilton fight, 2024 has the hallmarks of a great year.

It's not too late to jump on board if you haven't watched the pre-summer rounds; it might not look like it from a distance, but there's no telling who will be the champion at the end of this year. What a fantastic time to be an F1 fan.