2024 F1 Season Preview: The Race for Second Place

Zafir Nagji, Staff Writer | 

The 2024 Formula One (F1) Season started on March 2 of this year with the Bahrain Grand Prix. Red Bull Racing picked up right where they left off at the end of the 2023 season and posted a 1-2 finish. Max Verstappen cruised to victory, finishing 22.4 seconds, or the equivalent of 224 car lengths, in front of his teammate, Sergio Perez. 

However, the nine teams behind Red Bull were in close competition for most of the race. There’s a serious chance that, from second place onwards, the 2024 F1 Driver’s Championship and Constructor’s Championship will finally have some parity. Don your helmets and start your engines, racing is back and here’s your preview guide for what is set to be a highly entertaining and competitive 2024 F1Season.

8: Moneygram HAAS

After team principal and Drive to Survive fan favourite, Guenther Steiner, left the team just before the season started, HAAS is a decidedly less interesting team to keep track of. That being said, Nico Hulkenberg managed to qualify his racecar into the top 10 at Bahrain and it’s clear that the VF-24 has a terrific single-lap pace. This will help them secure small-point positions in sprint race events and put their drivers in position for P9 and P10 race finishes for even more points.

7: Visa Cashapp Racing Bulls

The third rename for Red Bull’s junior team was not well-received, but at their car reveal, all was almost instantly redeemed. The VCARB 01 looked eerily similar to the RB19 that Verstappen took to 17 race wins in 2023. With 8-time race-winner Daniel Ricciardo and his hot-headed teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, the car has the potential to score points every few races, even if only in small quantities.

6: Williams

Last season, Alex Albon had his fair share of impressive on-track performances and points finishes, using the straight-line performance of his Mercedes-AMG-powered FW45 to secure seventh place in last year’s Constructor’s Championship. With team boss James Vowles promising more aggressive development, there’s a serious chance that Williams will improve its end-of-the-year standing, but this will only happen if Logan Sargeant can make significant improvements. Last year, Sergeant caused $4 million in damages to the FW45, but if he can simply secure some P10 finishes with the FW46, combined with Albon’s excellence, Williams will continue on their upward trajectory.

5. McLaren

McLaren’s youthful drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are under contract for multiple years, and this has allowed them to focus on upgrading their racecar. Last year, the McLaren MCL60 went from being one of the three slowest cars on the grid at the beginning of the season to arguably the third-fastest car by about halfway through the season. Norris and Piastri were competing with the likes of Verstappen, Perez, and Hamilton for top-three finishes at a series of last year’s races, thanks to their excellent car control and impactful mid-season car upgrades. They are guaranteed points finishers and should tally enough of them to finish in the top half of the Constructors’ Championship. The only question is, will Lando Norris finally get his first race win?

4. Aston Martin

At first glance, it would make more sense for McLaren to finish in front of Aston Martin. Whereas McLaren gets a fair share of points from both of their drivers, Aston Martin depends on Fernando Alonso to be so exceptional that he scores enough points to hide his teammate Lance Stroll’s lack of high-end skill. Stroll’s crashes, underwhelming finishes, and inability to extract his car’s full potential weighed Alonso down last season, who managed eight podiums in 2023 and scored over 70 per cent of his team’s total points last season. Expect a repeat in 2024, as Stroll’s father owns the team and is highly unlikely to fire his son, even if it means a better point tally by the end of the year.

3. Mercedes-AMG

For the past two seasons, Mercedes-AMG’s sidepod-less design compromised their ability to consistently generate high-point-scoring finishes. After ditching that element for a more conventional design and firing the technical director that implemented them in the first place, though, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell found themselves consistently fighting for high point totals and even fighting for wins, as Russell nearly secured one in 2023 at the Singapore Grand Prix until a last-lap crash took him out of the race. In Bahrain this year, the Mercedes-AMG W15 encountered issues with its battery regeneration system, so its performance is still unproven. That being said, fans should expect Hamilton to end his Mercedes tenure with a band and for Russell to start proving himself worthy of filling Hamilton’s shoes as the #1 driver.

2. Ferrari

As a tandem, Charles LeClerc and Carlos Sainz can make an argument for being the most talented driver pairing on the grid. LeClerc has been known to steal pole positions from Verstappen in qualifying over the past two years and Sainz was the only non-Red Bull Racing driver to beat the flying Dutchman in a race in 2023. There’s reason to believe the new SF-24 will bring out even more impressive finishes from the Italian team, as LeClerc set the fastest overall time in the three qualifying sessions in Bahrain this year. Plus, with Sainz being replaced by Hamilton for 2025, it’s likely the Spaniard will make every effort to show the other championship-contending teams why they should consider signing him for next season.

1. Red Bull

Hot take? Maybe not, but it’s hard to argue against the inevitability of Verstappen winning an obscene number of races. Perez is also likely to pick up at least one win during the season, along with points finishes in just about every race. Plus, with the best chief aerodynamicist in the sport, Adrian Newey, Red Bull’s race car will be the fastest, most aerodynamically efficient car on the grid for the third year in a row. The only question is, will Verstappen top the single-season record of 17 wins he set last year? 

With 24 races on this year’s calendar, the 2024 Formula One season is going to be long, grueling, and, ignoring the impending Red Bull Racing dominance, closely competitive. Second place in this year’s Constructor’s Championship will be hotly contested, which should have even the most casual F1 fans salivating at the potential for wheel-to-wheel racing.