Last Updated on December 17 2024, 1:12 pm

Max Verstappen joined an exclusive club amongst the 778 Formula One drivers who have competed across its 74 year history. Just he, Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton have won four consecutive F1 titles.

Yet the road to clinching the title was long and arduous this year following his rout of the competition back in 2023. Then Verstappen claimed nineteen victories from the twenty rounds of the season, the most ever recorded by a drive-in a single calendar year.

Max’s win rate was also a record in the sport and his ten wins on the bounce surpassed the domination shown by Sebastian Vettel with his nine. Only mechanical failure in Australia this year prevented Verstappen from matching and beating this record, although the rest of the year proved far from fair sailing for the world champion.

 

 

 

Red Bull stopped in their tracks

Red Bull and Verstappen’s dominance evaporated before the season even reached half way as McLaren introduced a huge performance upgrade for the Miami Grand Prix. Meanwhile Red began bringing their own upgrades, but as technical director Pierre Wache admitted during the summer, they had broken their “golden rule” and were floundering.

When the new ground effect rules came into effect in 2022, Red Bull mastered the art of building a stable platform for their drivers. Whilst others porpoised and bounced their way through gruelling races, the RB18 was more often than not the most stable of the F1 team’s platforms allowing their drivers to exploit the car to its fullest potential.

By Silverstone this year, Red Bull had tried six different types of floor design, where some 50% of the downforce for the car is created. In Monaco the car was not com pliant and jumped off the kerbs costing valuable lap time which saw Max Verstappen qualify just sixth for the race.

As McLaren and Ferrari closed in, Verstappen was to have a winless run of some ten Grand Prix before his ‘drive of the century’ in a monsoon soaked Interlagos. There he came from starting position of seventeenth to win the race hands down, a feat last achieved by Kimi Raikkonen at the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix.

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Then came Azerbaijan… and the F-bomb

This all but clinched the championship from Max who had been feeling the pressure of Lando Norris closing him down since the summer break. Yet prior to his win in Brazil, the world champion appeared to becoming more desperate as a host of on track incidents and visits to the stewards evidenced.

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix has not been a happy hunting ground for Max with two retirements, a P18, a P4 before his inaugural win during the 2022 campamign. Last year it was Checo who claimed the glory in the shadow of the Ural Mountains which divide Europe from Asia.

Verstappen qualified poorly in sixth and would have finished the race a position lower had it not been for the penultimate lap crash between Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez which wiped both the Red Bull and Ferrari out of the race.

“My wheels were literally coming off the ground,” Max told assembled reporters. “Then of course you lose contact patch with the tarmac which you don’t want. That then caused me to slide a lot more, overheat the tyres more and there was no way to drive around it so the pace was just a bit all over the place.”

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Max made an example by the stewards 

At the pre-weekend FIA press conference next time out in Singapore, Verstappen was questioned about the difficulties he’d had last time out in Baku. He described his car as being “fucked” and within 24 hours he was summoned to the stewards.

Just thirteen minutes later Verstappen was hit with a rarely used penalty for having used language which was “coarse, rude or may cause offence”. The stewards said he would be expected to “accomplish some work of public interest” yet to be defined.

Max was furious at being made an example of by the stewards and at the subsequent post race FIA press conference he gave either one word answers or refused to comment. A war of words then developed between Dr. Helmut Marko and driver steward Johnny Herbert who was accused of operating with bias towards British drivers and against a number of others.

In the run up to the FIA end of season gala in Rwanda, Verstappen did perform his ‘community service’ by engaging with junior motorsport drivers in a new grass roots campaign.

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Johnny Herbert singled out

Yet his displeasure at being singled out by the FIA, when Charles Leclerc used the same F-Bomb in the same FIA press conference a week later and was but fined. Clearly the saga remains a source of frustration for the world champion as he tells Dutch media outlet, Viably.

“Of course, I understand that you can’t curse in a press conference, but it was language; it got out quickly. We all grew up like this, the people sat there as well. And certain people are saying: ‘My five-year-old grandchild is also watching this’. When I was 5 years old, I also sat between adults cursing. My parents didn’t curse at me, of course,” said Max.

Even more moot is how many five year olds watch an FIA press conference, yet this was the argument Herbert used to justify the decision of the stewards.

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Verstappen: “Punished like a toddler”

“Of course, you have to watch your language, but to be punished like a toddler has me wondering, what are we doing in this sport?” Max concluded.

Despite his protestations, Verstappen served his swearing violation punishment in Kigali ahead of the annual FIA awards ceremony. He spoke to members of the Rwanda Automobile Club about his motorsport journey, engaging with the younger members of the organisation.

“He really fulfilled his promise,” eulogised FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem. “He was there. He was with the young girls and boys who built the car. Also, there were girls who were the first time for them in karting.”

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Why Checo turned down his F1 “farewell

Sergio Perez has been racing for most of the 2024 Formula One season under a cloud yet it didn’t start like that at all. Checo claimed four podiums in the first five races and after just five rounds he stood on 85 points and was in second place, just 25 behind his team mate Verstappen.

Just 67 points across the next 19 rounds saw the Mexican driver finish eight amongst the top four teams drivers and he failed to make it out of Q1 a shocking 6 times across the second half of the season.

Yet come early June and the Canadian Grand Prix, Red Bull announced a new one year extension to Checo’s contract, later claiming they hoped this would renew his confidence. Retirements in Monaco and Canada were followed by nothing better than a single P7 in Belgium as F1 headed into the summer break… READ MORE