The 2024 Formula 1 Season
Another year of midfield battles and sponsorships galore
I’m coining 2024 the “Ceaseless Season.”
With 24 races spanning over just 10 months, fans are in for a lengthy Formula 1 season. If Red Bull’s Max Verstappen pulls out a performance matching last year’s 19 wins out of 22 races, that stretch of time may drag on even more for viewers.
Thursday marks the first official day of the 2024 F1 season with two free practice sessions at the Bahrain International Circuit. Last week, all 10 teams hit the track for tests ahead of the first grand prix.
Preseason testing means little in the long run.
Last year, Verstappen ended the week ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix 11th overall. His teammate, Sergio “Checo” Perez, took first with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas trailing behind. The first two were somewhat indicative of what the upcoming season would hold: Perez finished second ahead of Hamilton in the driver standings.
However, team storylines stretched past preseason expectations and even the first few races. Aston Martin started the season strong and managed to boost Fernando Alonso past both Ferrari drivers in the standings with eight podiums. Towards the end of the season, performance dropped off.
The opposite occurred for McLaren. Lando Norris finished the first race of the season two laps down while rookie driver Oscar Piastri’s car called it quits just 13 laps in. By the end of the season, Norris had accumulated seven podiums and Piastri won a sprint race.
Between teams weighing down their cars to conceal true speed and gusty conditions like on last week’s weather radar, preseason testing doesn’t predict the championship podium.
But what the three days on track can tell spectators is who clocked the most mileage on track, or rather who didn’t.
On the sporting side, it’s difficult to place a driver above Verstappen — beginning the 2024 season in pursuit of a fourth consecutive World Championship title — when predicting the driver order. With a dominant show last year, a Wednesday morning testing session that put Verstappen over half a second ahead and a car that had the internet gossiping over its menacing test drive, Red Bull still seems to top the charts.
Holding the record for the most wins and most consecutive wins in a single season, the most podiums in a season, the highest number of wins from starting on pole position, the most points scored, the largest championship points separation, the most sprint wins and the highest percentage of laps led, it’s likely Verstappen will continue to break more records this season.
However, there are a few teams that are sneaking up on the Red Bull driver, albeit slowly.
Ferrari led the last day of testing, but more importantly, showed little sign of tire degradation — an issue the team faced last year. Mercedes, completing 361 laps in testing, also seemed to fix a few snags in car design. Hamilton was less competitive than George Russell in overall standings. Russell finished third overall behind both Ferraris and Hamilton fell behind Zhou Guanyu, Perez, Verstappen, Yuki Tsunoda, Alex Albon and Piastri.
It’s no surprise that Ferrari with $3.9 billion, Mercedes with $3.8 billion and Red Bull with $2.6 billion in value not only top the charts in F1 team revenue but are also likely to top the charts on track.
Finishing fourth in the 2023 Constructor Standings, it doesn’t feel quite right to group McLaren with the midfield, especially since Norris and Piastri spent time last season battling it out on track with Verstappen.
Although Piastri finished with 97 points and a ninth-place position on the grid, a routine fight from the bottom of the pack to the upper half showed massive potential. However, compared to Norris, Piastri was inconsistent when it came to finishing position. Norris’ seven podiums dwarfed Piastri’s two. On paper, Piastri’s 9.64 average qualifying and 9.63 average finishing positions are nearly identical, but he continued to go from podium positions to crossing the checkered flag in the mid-teens even after the car improved in performance.
Consistency aside, Piastri outperformed the expectations of his naysayers. The Australian driver beat out his teammate in qualifying position across seven races and finished above Norris five times. He also concluded the season with two fastest-lap titles.
Norris, without a win to his name in the five years he has competed in the sport, and Piastri, with his cool demeanor when the chaos sets in, seem like top-step contenders for 2024.
Aston Martin’s Alonso also seems primed for a win after an 11-year dry spell. In 2023, the two-time World Champion started last season off on a high note. As the oldest driver on the grid at 42, the Spaniard isn’t letting anything slow him down, and even other drivers, like Norris, want to see him finish first this upcoming season.
Another Midfield Battle
While viewers bemoaned last year’s lack of a title fight, the real action commenced just a handful of positions back. The midfield battle was close last year with just 27 points spanning the difference between Piastri, Lance Stroll, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon. Higher up the grid, six points separated Alonso, Charles Leclerc, Norris and Carlos Sainz.
While hopes remain high for Albon — bolstered by his ability to score points in seven races in 2023 — even he is realistic about the development process.
“I don’t think the positions have changed so much,” the Williams driver said in a Wednesday press conference. “I don’t think the order is going to be so different. But the grouping has tightened up massively, so there really is not a P10 team anymore. Obviously, Red Bull might have a little bit of an advantage and there is still a top midfield section and bottom midfield section, but that is our hunting ground.”
Similarly, Alpine F1 Team’s Ocon said earlier this week that he expects the team to start the season “on the back foot.”
“Obviously it is testing, you don't have real race situations,” Nico Hulkenberg, a Haas F1 Team driver, said on Wednesday. “No cars around, no wheel-to-wheel racing and [no] action where sometimes your tire temperature can get out of control. So it is still early days to make bold calls or statements”
Hulkenberg outscored his teammate in 13 of the 22 races and finished six points above Kevin Magnussen in the championship standings last year. Despite running the most laps at 441, the team still falls short. As F1 pointed out, the majority of the team’s resources — both financial and material — went into upgrading the car for the 2023 U.S. Grand Prix rather than prepping for 2024.
With a shakeup in team principals at Haas and Alpine, the results from new leadership will likely be far-off rather than immediate come Sunday.
Another team, however, is gaining attention with a rebrand and its star driver.
All eyes seem to lie on Visa Cash App RB’s Daniel Ricciardo. Ricciardo, who competed in only seven grands prix last season due to a hand injury, managed to score points in one race. Liam Lawson, who filled in for Ricciardo, also scored points in one race during his five-race stint and had a better average finishing position than Ricciardo with an average of 12.2 versus 12.7.
Of the seven races Ricciardo participated in, his teammate, Tsunoda, outscored him in four of them. Visa Cash App RB (then AlphaTauri) resigned Ricciardo. With over a decade of experience in F1 and a car that is supposedly cut from the same cloth as Red Bull, Ricciardo would be the obvious choice to come out on top among the two teammates, yet last year’s performance leaves his future championship standing uncertain.
Sponsorships Will Take Center Stage
While performance expectations for Alpine are slim, the team’s new investment model — complete with money pouring in from actors, athletes and entrepreneurs — will continue to demand returns.
In previous years, the Netflix show Drive to Survive has focused on drivers, glimpsing into hometowns where their speedy dreams began and diving into the internal drama between teammates. The most recent season, dropping last Friday, focused on team principals, with Alpine axing Otmar Szafnauer halfway through a race weekend, Haas’ larger-than-life personality Guenther Steiner leaving the team and Williams’ new ship captain James Vowles lifting the team to seventh place. Without mentioning the accusations, the docu-series also prodded Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner’s alleged inappropriate conduct towards a female employee. On Feb. 28, Red Bull concluded the investigation and dismissed the allegations.
However, with a new crop of investors and sponsors, some tied up in legal battles, team partnerships are anticipated to be a driving force of the drama this year.
Even before the season had begun, Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber (formerly Alfa Romeo) found itself on the receiving end of legal proceedings filed by the racing team’s home country. With strict gambling advertising laws, Switzerland is expected to become the latest on a growing list of countries where crypto sponsorship is banned. Kick, sharing the same founders as the team’s crypto casino title sponsor Stake.com, will now become the team’s namesake throughout the 2024 season in race-host countries where cryptocurrency advertising and/or online gambling advertising is outlawed.
The team, referred to as Stake F1 Team just weeks ago, will now be called Kick Sauber. With both Kick Sauber drivers suited up in new team colors and the 2024 livery reveal completed, where the team goes from here is unknown. Both driver pictures are the only two missing from the F1 Fantasy roster as the team name is sorted.
In an effort to further entrench itself in the American zeitgeist, F1 and its teams have already signed on a collection of American-based sponsors, like Ferrari’s new Florida-based energy drink sponsor, Celsius, and Visa Cash App RB’s San Francisco-based title sponsor, Visa. A growing relationship between F1 and the fashion industry — from Hugo Boss to Tumi — with a specific focus on streetwear will likely ramp up in 2024.
Driven by the largest sponsorship pool in the sport’s history and an increase in wheel-to-wheel racing, I don’t think momentum will go anywhere.
Sure, U.S. viewership may dip here and there and Verstappen’s pursuit of more trophies may dissuade spectators. However, Hamilton’s surprise 2025 switch to Ferrari will likely bring more watchful eyes to the sport. The eventful off-season just acted as a preview of what is likely to come over the next 10 months.
When the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix hit the Strip in November, I said the race looked “more and more like a tipping point for Formula 1.” The highly-anticipated and dreaded addition to the U.S. calendar seemed to be a culmination of years’ worth of prioritizing production value over race product. That was before the Las Vegas race was widely deemed a success (despite a rogue drain cover) and the Grand Prix resulted in a $1.2 billion economic impact.
If I had to guess, the entertainment value will only be that much more blinding and brilliant in 2024.