Last Updated on December 18 2024, 10:48 am
Much has been made of the latest epic F1 duelling pair of drivers which have filled our screens across the 2024 Formula One season. Some believe Max Verstappen and Lando Norris are set to give us an era where the fierce on track battles resemble that of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.
Despite Verstappen winning four of the first six races, the signs were already there that McLaren had a fast car. Having won his maiden F1 race of his career in Miami, next time out Lando Norris was to experience a Max ‘wonder lap’ in Emilia-Romagne qualifying which saw him start the race in second place.
The world champion made a good start to the Grand Prix taking the lead at the first corner and on a track which is questionable suitable for the huge modern F1 cars, Max retained his lead throughout the race. That said a rampant Norris over the closing 15 laps slashed the 6 second lead to finish just 0.75s behind the winning Red Bull driver.
No single challenger to Max emerged
Two more wins from the next three rounds saw Verstappen at the zenith of his points lead which was 69 points over Lando Norris after the Dutchman’s win in Spain. Even though Max failed to win for a ten race streak, the ever shifting pecking order between Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes meant Max faced no challenge from a single competitor.
His lead over Norris prior to the epic drive in Brazil remained at 43 points which proved sufficient with wins for Verstappen in Interlagos and Qatar concluding the 2024 F1 drivers’ championship. It is almost universally agreed amongst the paddock observers that for much of the season, Max Verstappen in his RB20 was not driving the quickest car each weekend.
They key to Verstappen claiming his fourth consecutive title prima facie is the fact he won nine races and his closest competitor stood atop the podium on just four occasions. Yet mistakes by the McLaren team who are back at the sharp end for the first time since Lewis Hamilton drover for the Woking based squad proved costly. ‘Papaya rules’ were invented to allow the McLaren drivers to race hard, but were intended to put the team’s interests first.
Yet in Monza, ‘papaya rules’ were exposed to be a fantasy, as an opportunistic move from Oscar Pistri whose team mate was on pole, allowed the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc to take the lead of the race and come home amongst a sea of red in the grandstands to claim a magnificent home victory for the Scuderoa in front of the adulation of the tifosi.
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RB20 was not the quickest car
So Red Bull did not have the quickest car, yet Verstappen’s dogged efforts finishing no lower than P6 when the RB20 was poorly balanced was what saw the champion join an exclusive club of three other drivers with four consecutive F1 titles.
The skill of Verstappen was plain for all to see this year and at times he appeared to drag every last drop of performance of his car to claim critical pole positions and a total of eight for the year. Norris marched the world champion, but his eight pole positions were so different as Lando only led the Grand Prix twice after turn one.
On the other side of the garage, Sergio Perez was imploding with the same machinery as Verstappen. The Mexican proved across the year to be the worst of the eight drivers in the top four teams, which of course cost Red Bull their seventh constructors’ title.
The comparison cannot fail to be made. Max v Checo. Is the Mexican driver really now this bad, or is Max doing something superhuman with an F1 car that other mortal can deliver?
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Chandhok: “There’s no such concept”
The win in Brazil from 17th on the grid with other rain meister drivers on the grid set Verstappen apart from his peers and the conversations again came around how the world champion had outperformed his car.
Ex-F1 driver and Sky F1 reporter Karun Chandhok is incensed by the idea that a driver can outperform the car. Speaking on this weeks Sky podcast he said: “You can’t say that [Verstappen outperformed the car]. There is no such concept as outperforming the car. He maximised the full potential of the car.
“The other driver failed to maximise the potential of the car. You can’t physically outperform the car. People say this in podcasts all the time. It drives me nuts. It is not possible.”
Chandhok’s pedantic observation deserves a closer look. Of course there is a maximum potential to any piece of human made machinery and its definable limits in many cases are often known. Yet an F1 car is more of a living breathing entity, it requires highly complex setup changes from weekend to weekend and race track type to race track type.
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RB21 needs to be revolution
The potential of an F1 car is ever changing and even of we concede there is this absolute perfect setup that can be found which will deliver the optimum performance of any F1 car. How do we know how far along that measure the driver actually is, when the optimum is a theoretical construct?
Speaking to Autosport at the start of the year about the RB20, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner had this to say when asked about the changes from its predecessor. “Evolution not revolution,” he declared. “All areas have been revisited in the car, and we can’t afford to have any complacency. So the car is very much an evolution of a theme.”
The achilles heel of the 2024 Red Bull F1 car proved to be the responsibility of the teams guru designer of nineteen years. What had been the crowing glory of the 2022/23 cars – the suspension which Newey designed – was to prove extremely problematic of their drivers this season.
In Monaco the car bounced off the cars, showing little compliance as it did at other tracks where the kerbs were aggressive. The once stable platform became unpredictable and now for Pierre Wache and his team a rethink will be required for the campaign ahead.
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F1 champ says Hamilton is “very very worried” about Ferrari
Lewis Hamilton will head to Ferrari for the 2025 Formula One season having suffered his worst campaign in the sport in eighteen years. While the seven times world champion was just 22 points behind his younger team mate come the year end, this followed a 32 point swing in Belgium when Russell was disqualified for his car being underweight.
Even the 54 points the gap could have been is not of most concern for Hamilton it is the 19-5 drubbing in qualifying he will rue the most given his future team mate is one of the best one lap pace drivers in the field.
Speaking on this week’s Sky F1 podcast, the 2016 F1 champion has shared hi concern that should Lewis fail to find his qualifying pace with the Scuderia, it may well become a “quite a painful adventure” for him… READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
