1. Max Verstappen.
A fourth title, won in another very different way to the others for Max Verstappen who continues to cement his place among the all-time greats, and in my opinion moves into fifth spot with the conclusion of 2024. For pure, outright pace, I think he has a clear advantage over the rest, even Norris who comes closest, as I just can’t see how anyone else on the grid could destroy Perez by the margin that Verstappen does. He then extends this advantage further with his strong and forceful wheel-to-wheel driving, which is also clearly the best on the grid, and far superior to that of his closest rival this year, Lando Norris, which perhaps made the difference between them so large. In 2024, Verstappen won the title in a car that overall was not the best on the grid. I think this happens fairly often, but is still a very impressive achievement considering the margin of his victory, and the fact that the second-best driver was in the best car.
The large points lead that Verstappen built up over the first few races was handy, but that was not where he won the title, as he still outscored Norris by 11 points if the first five races are ignored. Verstappen won this championship by maximising the points when he didn’t have the best car, and a few masterful victories against the odds were mixed in there too. Brazil stands out most of all of course, where he was in a class of his own and delivered his finest drive, carving through the pack in a way that no others could and then leaving them standing in wet conditions. Canada was another special drive in the wet where he made fewer errors than Norris or Russell. And then Imola and Spain, both in the dry, were races where Norris and McLaren perhaps had a slightly better car, but Verstappen made the difference by being the slightly faster driver to win. Only once was he off form all year, in Baku. The gap to Perez in some of these races which Verstappen really had to fight to win, was astonishing and shows just how much he was dragging the Red Bull to places it shouldn’t be. It was good to watch Verstappen having to drive like this to get the best out of the car, as in 2023 he almost never looked like he needed to push the limits.
It wasn’t a totally flawless season from Verstappen, with a few incidents which drew criticism and comparisons to the dirty driving of Senna and Schumacher, although it wasn’t really that similar. The incident with Norris in Austria was totally on Verstappen trying to intimidate Norris into backing off. He also threw away points with the lunges on Hamilton in Hungary, Norris in Mexico, and the stupid crash with Piastri in Abu Dhabi. But elsewhere, this aggressive driving helped Verstappen as he understood the racing rules perfectly with his fantastic defensive drive against Norris in Austin, and the uncompromising dive against Russell in Qatar. For these reasons, I don’t think it was his greatest season, with 2023 still standing out for its uniqueness. But it was a different and far more interesting Verstappen to witness in 2024. Next year, I think the Red Bull is likely to be at a further disadvantage compared to its rivals, and Verstappen will have a tough job retaining his championship, but it will be fantastic to watch him likely dragging results out of an inferior car all season.
2. Lando Norris.
It is clear that Verstappen is in a tier of his own among the best F1 drivers currently, and that the tier below him consists of Norris, Russell and Leclerc, all on a very similar level but not close to Verstappen. It may seem generous to place Norris at the top of this tier, considering he had the best car this season and fell so far short of the title, winning the same number of races as Leclerc, and Russell on the road, in clearly weaker machinery, and only just beating Leclerc in the points. But I think that the plethora of races that went begging for Norris, and the lost points compared to Verstappen and Leclerc, were more a result of team errors than his own, and I don’t think he made more mistakes than Leclerc or Russell, his were just more obviously in the limelight due to the championship battle. Ultimately, I think Norris has more outright pace than either Russell or Leclerc, both in qualifying and for race pace, where Norris’ tyre management skills are perhaps the best on the grid. His weakness compared to those drivers is his racecraft, with Norris throwing away all sorts of points by being weak in battle, but I think that outright speed is more important in F1, hence why Norris ranks second.
Of the races went begging, it was sometimes Norris’ racecraft that let him down, with his strike rate for leading the first lap after a pole position particularly alarming. This arguably cost him in Spain against Verstappen, and most notably at Austin where he left the door wide open for Verstappen to exploit at turn one, as well as Hungary and Italy against Piastri. But it was just bad luck with the safety car in Canada, making up for Miami, and in Baku with the yellow flag, while it wasn’t his fault that Verstappen drove into him in Austria, and strategic errors in Silverstone and Interlagos are more on the team than him. Norris had a few off-days such as Jeddah, Monaco and Belgium, but these were less frequent than those of all his rivals bar Verstappen, and Qatar was the only catastrophic error, after the title had been won. Meanwhile his defeats in Imola and Spain can only really be explained by him not being quite as good as Max Verstappen, and I think he came closer than anyone else would have done. Norris also took two brilliant wins in Zandvoort and Singapore, both times in a car that Piastri didn’t finish second with, and his consistency in outqualifying his quick teammate at every qualifying session (bar Baku which is unrepresentative), after Monaco was highly impressive and sets him apart from Russell and Leclerc. He dealt with the pressure of the constructors’ title expertly in the season finale in Abu Dhabi. I think the weaknesses wheel-to-wheel can be ironed out in the future, and would currently have Norris as favourite for the 2025 title.
3. George Russell.
While Lando Norris copped a lot of flak for being weak in battle with Max Verstappen, perhaps qualifying in Qatar suggested that Russell would be the most worthy opponent to Verstappen in a title battle. His tactics of driving up behind Verstappen while not on a flying lap in order to penalise his rival could be considered akin to a footballer throwing themselves to the ground in the box, but it worked, as the penalty was given, and Russell started on pole that day. But Verstappen vowed to pass him into turn one, and did that on the day as he dived down the inside and took the lead with ease, suggesting that there is no equal to Verstappen even in a straight battle on track, let alone if they actually had equal cars. Russell ranks behind Norris here because I think that he is missing a tenth to Norris in both qualifying and race pace. But if we call that outright pace the ‘natural talent’ of a driver, Russell converted a higher proportion of his natural talent into on-track results in 2024, with the notable exception coming in Spa-Francorchamps, his brilliant, opportunistic win on track going unrewarded.
His teammate may not have been the same Lewis Hamilton that won all his titles and is among the greatest of all time, but there were flashes of the old Hamilton in 2024 and so the fact that Russell so conclusively and consistently outperformed him all season is testament to his ability, and I would also note that, in my opinion, he beat Hamilton by a greater margin than Leclerc did the driver Ferrari have dropped for Hamilton. Russell’s performance in Brazil was particularly impressive because of how much his teammate was capitulating on the other side of the garage, as were the poles in Canada and Las Vegas for the same reason. Russell’s victory in Las Vegas, where he forcefully fended off the brief challenge from Leclerc, was dominant, while the inherited one in Austria still required him to beat Piastri in an inferior car. Russell mostly put to bed the accusations of his making errors under pressure, stemming from the Singapore mistake last year, and supported by the messy run to third in Canada, which also included one of the passes of the year on Hamilton. Another of those was in Spain where he recreated Alonso’s 2011 start to take the lead into turn one. But his best drive came in Spa-Francorchamps where he chose an alternate strategy, as he often likes to ponder on the radio, and it appeared to pay off perfectly with some brilliant tyre management to take a victory out of nowhere that was cruelly taken away as he was underweight. Russell did still have some off-days in 2024, but in general it was a marked improvement on his patchy 2023. Even if Kimi Antonelli turns out to be the generational talent he has been touted, he will have a tough job getting the better of Russell in 2025.
4. Charles Leclerc.
Of the three drivers contending to be Verstappen’s closest rival for driving performance, Leclerc ranks bottom of the three because I think he is the least consistent, being outperformed by Carlos Sainz more often than either Norris or Russell lost against their teammates. Sainz may have been the best-performing second driver, but more due to his consistency compared to Piastri and Hamilton who both have higher highs, so while this perhaps explains to an extent why the difference in the supertimes between the Ferrari drivers was so much smaller than at McLaren or Mercedes, it cannot account for the sizeable number of races where Leclerc was behind Sainz. Having said this, Leclerc did continue the trend of the last three years of being clearly the better Ferrari driver on the majority of weekends, and was more decisively so in 2024. On a good day, Leclerc is still the fastest driver over one lap, but those extraordinary laps have dried up since the 2022 generation of cars came in and I think Verstappen and Norris both had more of those really special laps this year, Leclerc’s only real notable one coming in Monaco.
This season was still an improvement from 2023 for Leclerc, as he stood out more. In Monaco in particular, Leclerc was in a class of his own all weekend, and never looked in doubt for pole position, while the race was then a routine win. His second win in Monza was equally impressive for different reasons as he expertly took on the role of tyre whisperer to hold off the charging McLarens in a way that his teammate couldn’t. Zandvoort was another standout weekend for Leclerc, holding off Piastri’s faster McLaren for a podium. There were also no random shocking weekends where he was nowhere, like there had been the previous season, his bad weekends coming as a result of a bad strategy call or mistake, and mostly all in the same part of the season in Canada, Austria and Silverstone. He was behind Sainz in many of the early races, and sporadically later in the season but these were just minor off-days unlike some races last year. Baku looked like a repeat of Monaco with Leclerc in command throughout, but he was outsmarted by Piastri wheel-to-wheel and then cooked his tyres, as he also did against Russell in Las Vegas. Leclerc, like Norris and Russell, could be world champion if he has the best car in 2025. I think the battle with Hamilton could be fascinating and very close, Leclerc clearly faster over one lap and Hamilton still with the race pace and the potential to revitalise his career in a new car, but I would currently have Leclerc as favourite to win that battle. He is clearly in the tier just below Verstappen of drivers who are potential world champion-calibre, but I don’t think he has reached the level of performance he was at in 2020 again since.
5. Carlos Sainz.
Although I have placed him just one position below Leclerc, there was a clear tier gap between the Ferrari drivers this season, with Leclerc comfortably getting the upper hand. However, while I am not sure he is the fastest, Sainz was the best-performing second driver, outperforming Leclerc more often than Piastri or Hamilton outperformed their respective teammates, and also having more consistency with fewer terrible races than either of them. That Sainz places ahead of Hamilton on this ranking makes his sacking by Ferrari appear incredibly harsh, but I would still stand by that decision as Hamilton had higher highs and the potential to be faster if the Ferrari suits him, while Sainz is a known quantity and is not quite a world championship level driver, unless under very unusual circumstances. That a driver of his calibre, who has matched up so well to Verstappen, Norris and Leclerc in the same car, has ended up at Williams for 2025, fresh off the back of finishing ninth in the constructors’ title, almost beggars’ belief, but it appeared that Sainz chose the team that would give him the easiest route out if a seat in one of the top cars becomes available. That Red Bull extended Perez’s contract instead of signing Sainz can only be explained by his feud with Verstappen during their time at Toro Rosso, and Red Bull rightly doing everything they can to keep Verstappen, but I would suggest that is the seat that could open up for Sainz in 2026 if Verstappen were to quit.
Sainz had a fantastic start to the season in 2024, outperforming Leclerc in his first three races and winning in Australia, while his best drive of the season was probably the win in Mexico. All season, he would sporadically have races where he would beat Leclerc and was close to him in the more ubiquitous occurrences that he was behind, but he is still just missing that tiny bit of performance. He had two horrendous races in Canada and Brazil, crashing twice in the latter, and was a little more crash-prone than the drivers above him on this list. But Sainz is clearly among the most talented drivers on the grid with perhaps the most race intelligence among the top drivers, as demonstrated by his trick of protecting drivers behind with DRS now becoming commonplace. I think the Williams is faster than its current drivers make it look, and drivers can make a greater difference currently due to how close all the teams are, so Sainz will finish in the top ten in the championship next year.
6. Lewis Hamilton.
The most successful driver-team combination in Formula 1 history couldn’t have come to a much more disappointing end, with Hamilton conclusively beaten by Russell all season and ending the year with some particularly awful races that led to speculation that he might not even finish the year. Brazil and Qatar were particularly woeful performances, and Hamilton mentally did not seem to be in the right place in the closing stages. Whether or not this is an example of Hamilton simply having reached his ‘shelf-life’ will be revealed next year with his move to Ferrari, and I suspect that he will improve, with the fact his departure from Mercedes was announced before the season contributing to his lack of form. His very commendable drive back to fourth in the season finale in Abu Dhabi, however, was an encouraging sign.
Amidst the worst season of Hamilton’s career were some high points, with his victory in Silverstone the clear standout moment, and one of the drives of the year as he fended off the challenge from faster McLarens, and Verstappen on better tyres in the closing stages. He won again in Belgium, after Russell was disqualified but having controlled the race of those on the conventional strategy, while he also took impressive podiums in Hungary and Spain. But while he looked more like his old self in that mid-part of the season, the early races where the Mercedes was uncompetitive, but he consistently finished behind Russell, and the later races where he made significant errors and threw away many points were what defined Hamilton’s season. Despite this, I don’t think the Ferrari years will be quite akin to Schumacher’s time at Mercedes, and think there were signs in 2024 that he could still give Leclerc a good run for his money next year, even late in the season when he made up for his qualifying error with a great fightback to second in Las Vegas. Although it is qualifying pace that disappears first when a driver starts to decline, and so Hamilton’s many comments throughout the year that he just isn’t fast enough anymore are not so encouraging.
7. Oscar Piastri.
Going into this season, both McLaren drivers were considered potential future world champions, and were suddenly given the overall best car on the grid but failed to make full use of it. While most of the attention was on Norris and his various errors preventing him from getting properly into title contention, Piastri was even further away, because he just wasn’t as fast as Norris, and was also inconsistent, and this caused him to fade into the background. He had a strong run in the middle of the season, beating Norris in Hungary, Belgium and Italy which caused suggestions that he could replace Norris as the lead driver in the team, but the fact that he failed to outqualify Norris at all after Monaco and often found himself a long way behind him in the races, means I cannot see Piastri ever getting the upper hand in this head-to-head. He could be the ideal second driver, but amidst all the controversy surrounding whether McLaren should use team orders in the period of the season when Norris still had a chance of the title, Piastri actually never finished ahead of Verstappen but behind Norris all season and so if you removed him from all the results, Norris would end up closer to Verstappen.
The main advantage that Piastri has over Norris is his superior racecraft, and he did pull off some special overtakes this season, around the outside at Austria, mugging Norris both in Hungary and Italy, and most notably in Baku, one of the best drives of the year as he opportunistically passed Leclerc at the first opportunity and defended brilliantly thereafter. But his weakness compared to Norris is just that he isn’t quite as fast, and also had a lot of off-days such as Zandvoort and Singapore where he couldn’t beat Verstappen to second even when Norris dominated, or races like Mexico, Spain and Austria where qualifying errors left him nowhere in winnable races, while his Abu Dhabi error with Colapinto could have cost the team. Piastri is well worth his place at the front of the grid and could improve on his consistency, but I think he will remain around Sainz’s level for his Formula 1 career, as he doesn’t quite have the outright pace of the top four to be world championship calibre.
8. Pierre Gasly.
The Alpine drivers are difficult to rank because, while the season seemed to go the same way as 2023 with Ocon holding the upper hand in the early stages and Gasly reversing that in the second half, the advantage Gasly had after the summer break was so extreme in 2024 that I cannot believe they were driving equal cars. If they actually were, then I would have Gasly above Hamilton and Piastri as it was very impressive to have such a significant advantage over a driver as accomplished as Ocon, but I simply don’t believe that was just down to pure driving ability. However, even if we treat Alpine as a one-car team, it is clear that Gasly was doing an excellent job over the second half of 2024, getting the maximum points available with some particularly impressive races like Zandvoort, and the big points hauls in Brazil and Qatar, the former behind Ocon but having been unlucky to start so far behind him. Gasly also didn’t cost his team any money for accident damage all season.
He was, in many ways, the standout driver of the midfield, but didn’t quite have the same level of highs as Alonso in the first few races, and also the fact that he spend the start of the season, when the Alpine was at its worst, being consistently outpaced by Ocon hurts his ranking, particularly as the tide only really started to change after Ocon’s departure from the team had been confirmed. But the final period of the season was absolutely outstanding. I also think Gasly is now considerably better at racecraft than in the past, this being his biggest weakness in his ill-fated Red Bull stint. Gasly generally had far better consistency than Hulkenberg or Tsunoda and his one-lap pace is as good as theirs, so he ranks comfortably in the top ten. It is a shame that the Ocon vs Gasly rivalry in the same car was never really resolved due to the seemingly unequal equipment, but both are very accomplished midfield drivers and Gasly is the perfect driver to lead Alpine currently.
9. Fernando Alonso.
Surely, by now, Alonso must be declining and appeared a long way from his peak in 2024 as his advantage over Stroll was cut compared to last year. Perhaps the comparative lack of competitiveness of the Aston Martin could be blamed for this, as when the car was at its best at the start of the year, Alonso put in his best drives. His fifth place in Jeddah, holding off Russell, and sixth in Suzuka with three faster cars behind, were the best moments of his season, along with qualifying third in China. But as soon as the Aston Martin lost competitiveness, Alonso found himself stuck in the midfield and often struggled to stand out, with some messy races during the season like Imola, Austria and Brazil. The brake test in Australia was also not his finest moment although it made for good entertainment.
Apart from one brief period in the early season, however, he was almost never challenged by Stroll, and there continued to be examples all season of Alonso maximising the points, with Baku a particular highlight as he beat the seemingly faster Williams cars, and Singapore and Belgium also strong drives to points finishes. I think Alonso is now missing a few tenths to the top drivers for outright pace and, although Stroll isn’t the best benchmark, is probably now a midfield-level driver unlike during his similarly unsuccessful time at McLaren. Like Hamilton, I think Alonso would up his game if given another opportunity in a top car, and hopefully he will still have enough performance to make the most out of an Adrian Newey-designed Aston Martin in the next few years.
10. Nico Hulkenberg.
Although his return to the grid with Haas raised eyebrows at the time, it has been absolutely justified in the last two seasons and Hulkenberg has considerably extended his career since harshly dropping off the grid in 2019. In 2024, the Haas was among the best cars in the midfield and so Hulkenberg was lauded for his excellent points tally and often getting the best out of the car, but he ranks below the likes of Alonso and Gasly here because I think he was more inconsistent, and also had some very underwhelming and in some cases disastrous races that went under the radar because he didn’t have a top car. Brazil and Qatar were both races he crashed out of by himself, while Monza was error-strewn, Bearman outqualified him in both their races as teammates and there were earlier races like Belgium or Mexico where he was simply outperformed by Magnussen.
But Hulkenberg makes the top ten because there were far more good races than bad ones, particularly during the first half of the season, and he was unlucky not to score more points, having broken the record for the most finishes in a season one place outside the points. The two sixth place finishes in Austria and Britain stand out, particularly his defence against Perez in the former, while he put in other top qualifying laps all season, like in Singapore, Spain and China. He also was considerably better than Magnussen who is very experienced himself. Hulkenberg was chosen to lead the Audi team going into the future, which initially looks like a downgrade for him given Sauber’s poor season, but he is the ideal driver to get points in that car when the opportunity arises.
11. Esteban Ocon.
The hardest driver on the grid to place is Ocon, even more so than Gasly, because of the potentially unequal cars at Alpine. There can be no doubt that Gasly was driving very well in the second half of the season, but it is unknown how much of the gap between the Alpine drivers was down to Ocon underperforming, and how much was just the different specs of cars. Jack Doohan’s underwhelming debut in Abu Dhabi in that car supports Ocon’s case. There is precedent for drivers collapsing under Flavio Briatore once their departure was confirmed, most notably Jarno Trulli in 2004, and if this was a factor then it is hard to measure how much Ocon should be blamed. Certainly, the first period of the season was very impressive for Ocon, when the car was at its worst, as over the first five rounds he consistently qualified and finished ahead of Gasly, and continued to be among the best in the midfield wheel-to-wheel.
The season changed in Monaco with the incident which I think Ocon was overly vilified for. The move was absolutely on, and didn’t show he had a poor attitude, but he ultimately messed it up. This is also his first such mistake with a teammate since Baku 2017, as the intervening incidents with Perez and then Alonso were always the fault of the other driver. But thereafter, Ocon dropped further and further away from Gasly, ultimately not even driving in the season finale in Abu Dhabi as he chose to test for Haas instead. It is possible that Ocon should be top eight on this list if his form from the early season was continued and just masked by the car, or maybe the Alpines were in fact equal and the huge gaps to Gasly were him underperforming, in which case he should be three places lower. But he did manage to put in one last, really special drive in Brazil at the end of the year with that remarkable second place, and that series of laps where he was briefly leading and dropping Verstappen when it was at its wettest. I think that Ocon’s 2024 results did not reflect his true ability, and contrary to what this ranking would suggest, I think Haas have upgraded with their driver lineup for next year.
12. Yuki Tsunoda.
Similar to Hulkenberg, Tsunoda was fast on his day in 2024, and rewarded accordingly because the RB was often the best car in the midfield, but his weakness, too, was inconsistency, and to a greater extent than Hulkenberg as his season flipped between races when he was top of the midfield and when he was nowhere, behind his underperforming teammate Ricciardo. Overall, Tsunoda did very well to outperform Ricciardo over the season, but at times it almost looked as though one RB was faster than the other and the drivers were taking turns driving the better one. Similarly, against Lawson, he blew hot and cold, generally outperforming his inexperienced teammate but sometimes being clearly slower.
The best form of Tsunoda’s season came in the early races, when the RB was at its most competitive and he was usually there, at the top of the midfield, to pick up the scraps when anyone from the top five teams, usually Stroll was outside the top ten. Imola was perhaps the standout drive in this period. But he had a poor run of races just before and just after the summer break where Ricciardo consistently got the better of him. When Lawson came in, he immediately outperformed Tsunoda in Austin to stake a claim to the Red Bull seat, but Tsunoda got the better of him in the following rounds with a particularly nice drive in Las Vegas. It is very harsh that Tsunoda is constantly overlooked for the Red Bull drive, as although he is unlikely to be a great success and they would be better off looking outside their stable, Tsunoda has staked a far greater claim than teammates Ricciardo and Lawson, as well as Perez. The fact that Red Bull are so reluctant to promote him, but keep him in the second team due to Honda, is causing them a lack of suitable replacements for Perez.
13. Valtteri Bottas.
For most of 2024, I thought Bottas was having an excellent season that was going under the radar because of the uncompetitive Sauber, as he consistently dominated Zhou in qualifying by gaps larger than between any other teammates on the grid, bar Red Bull. and got the absolute best out of the car, while he was unlucky with his best chance of points getting squandered by a mechanical failure in China. I would still attest that he should be well inside the top ten if this ranking was purely done on outright qualifying speed. However, the way that he failed to take any of Sauber’s best chances to score points in the closing rounds, even when Zhou managed it in Qatar, hurts his ranking and I think justifies Sauber’s decision to drop him in favour of Hulkenberg for 2025, and when you have the worst car on the grid and one experienced driver, you might as well put a rookie in the second car.
In Brazil, he qualified brilliantly but just let the entire pack drive past him in wet conditions, perhaps the most potent example of Bottas’ underwhelming racecraft, always his biggest weakness costing him this year. While in Qatar he was unlucky to be hit by Lawson and sustain damage, but all season, and just like in 2023, seemed to totally fall away whenever he had the slightest damage and finish well adrift at the back, more often for it to just be bad luck. He ended the season, and perhaps his career, with a brilliant qualifying in Abu Dhabi and then a disappointing and messy race. Of all the many drivers losing their seats for 2024, Bottas is the only one who can claim to have been hard done by as he is still extremely capable, particularly over one lap. I actually think he is the best available choice for Red Bull to replace Perez, now that they have lost the chance to sign Sainz, Gasly and Hulkenberg. But a first pointless season, while not entirely his fault, would suggest that Bottas dropping off the grid will not be a great loss.
14. Alex Albon.
The statistic that he was never outqualified by Logan Sargeant throughout their time as teammates is the best one going for Albon as it demonstrates his extraordinary consistency, but I would suggest that those consistent results are probably coming a little way off the potential of the Williams over the last few years. In a car that was so inconsistent in 2023, Albon did a brilliant job at maximising the points whenever there was an opportunity, but in a more typical car in 2024 he was disappointing, crashing a little too often, although not nearly as much as the other side of the garage, and generally being matched for pace by Franco Colapinto once he replaced Sargeant. There is currently considerable doubt over Albon’s true level, given that he has had uncompetitive teammates for so long, and so I could be severely underrating him, but my prediction is that Sainz will quite comfortably get the better of him next year and show that there has been more pace in the Williams this last few years that was not unlocked by the drivers.
When Albon replaced Gasly at Red Bull in 2019, the biggest upgrade for Red Bull in that switch came in racecraft, as Albon was much better at cutting through the pack than his predecessor. And I think that strength in Albon’s driving remains, as was most demonstrated in Canada, his best drive of the year, when he threaded the eye of the needle between Ocon and Ricciardo to pass both into the chicane. But overtaking is easier now than it was then so that advantage for Albon is dwindling, and Gasly’s slightly superior raw pace is what I think now makes him the better driver. Albon generally just about had the edge over Colapinto, but I would have expected him to have a greater advantage, and he was sometimes behind. Having gone into 2024 off the back of his best season, with links to the vacant seats at Red Bull and Mercedes, Albon’s previously sky-high reputation has taken a hit this year, and being teammate to Sainz will be a great test to see if he can rebuild it.
15. Daniel Ricciardo.
The whole point of the team currently known as RB is to develop drivers who have the potential to drive for Red Bull in the future, and by that metric, they were absolutely right to give Ricciardo a significant number of races in the car. Having totally collapsed at McLaren, Ricciardo’s level was too unknown to put straight in the Red Bull, but if they could get him back to how he was driving in his Renault and Red Bull days, he would be the perfect replacement for Perez. This test probably should have happened in the second half of 2023 but was ruined by Ricciardo’s injury, so they persisted with him until it was clear that the Ricciardo of old is well and truly gone. A worthwhile experiment, but one that ultimately didn’t pay off.
Ricciardo did have plenty of races when he outperformed Tsunoda across the season, and he did appear to be improving with his best run of races coming just before the summer break. Both drivers in the team were extremely inconsistent. But there can be no doubt that Tsunoda was the better driver in that team overall. Perhaps all Ricciardo needed to do to get the promotion was beat Tsunoda and he didn’t manage it, meaning they needed to give Lawson an opportunity time to do the same thing, and that meant Ricciardo being unceremoniously being dumped out of Formula 1 mid-season. His final race in Singapore was among the most underwhelming of all, and it was interesting that his final act was to controversially rob Lando Norris, the driver who had ruined his career, of the fastest lap point. I doubt we will see him back in Formula 1, and it is a shame that one of the top drivers of the mid 2010s has gone out on such a whimper.
16. Liam Lawson.
Just like in 2023, Lawson did a similar job than Ricciardo in his time at the junior Red Bull team. But while that cameo was good enough to make it harsh that he didn’t get a permanent seat for this year, like practically every rookie since the new generation of cars, he has not kicked on in his second part-season with the team, and if reports that he is more likely than Tsunoda to replace Perez at Red Bull are correct, then that would not be justified by their respective performances, particularly considering Tsunoda outqualified Lawson six times out of six.
Lawson’s finest drive of his six-race cameo was the first one in Austin, where he scored points despite starting at the back with a grid penalty and comfortably outperformed Tsunoda. His drive in Mexico was also good, despite making enemies along the way, and he scored good points in Brazil after shadowing Tsunoda. But Las Vegas and particularly Qatar were underwhelming and error-strewn performances. Lawson’s season was decent enough to warrant another go in the junior team for next year, but if he is at Red Bull, I think he will be destroyed by Max Verstappen in much the same way as Gasly and Albon were, and will subsequently be forced to rebuild his career elsewhere like they did.
17. Kevin Magnussen.
Magnussen’s 2024 season will be best remembered for his novel blocking tactics to help out teammate Hulkenberg, most notably in Jeddah as well as Miami. But overall, this was a very disappointing final season, albeit with glimpses of the brilliant pace he showed in his earlier career. Magnussen became the first driver to get banned via 12 penalty points in Formula 1, after a gluttony of silly incidents towards the start of the year, and was generally just lacking in pace compared to Hulkenberg, both in qualifying and the race. It is hard to argue against Haas’s decision to replace him with Ollie Bearman.
Magnussen did have the odd race where he was still right on form, most notably in Mexico where he dominated the midfield battle, and he was also very fast in Monza to overcome his penalty and scored good points in Austria and Qatar. These races where he was the leading Haas driver were few and far between. The Miami weekend was a disaster with all the incidents, and he later stuck his nose down the inside of Perez at Monaco for a needless, enormous accident. It is strange that Magnussen will end his career with just one podium, that coming on his debut back in 2014, and while he continues to be among the most exciting drivers to watch, I think that his time in F1 had run its course.
18. Franco Colapinto.
Never has a driver been more ridiculously over-hyped in their first few races in Formula 1. It was very surprising when Colapinto was announced as a replacement for Logan Sargeant, given his solid but not spectacular junior career. But the main reason why Williams appeared to have lost patience with Sargeant was his tendency to find the walls, and the extortionate repair bill that came with it. As a result, expectations for Colapinto appeared to be driving around slowly, outside of the points, to keep Williams under the budget cap, as he had no chance of remaining on the grid come the end of the season, what with Sainz already having been signed. But after a quiet debut in Monza, a fantastic Q3 appearance and points finish in Baku where he went toe-to-toe with Albon throughout, followed by a spectacular dive at turn one in Singapore followed by another strong drive just outside the points, made many people sit up and notice, and suddenly Colapinto looked like he might be F1-level after all.
But, since the 2022 generation of cars, there has been a theme of rookies coming in and looking very competent in their first race, leading to massive hype that is never fulfilled as the driver then stays at that level. Maybe simulators are just too realistic nowadays. So while links to the second Sauber drive were justified by his performance, rumours that he may join Max Verstappen in Red Bull, just a month after he had never looked likely to make F1, were crazy. In the following races, Colapinto appeared to become the new Sargeant, albeit a faster version, as he repeated totalled his car, including twice in Brazil, once under the safety car in a miserable weekend. All in all, Colapinto was a positive replacement for Sargeant because of those four points, but he didn’t help with Williams’ repair bill, and they would have been better off with a safer pair of hands. It was a rollercoaster ride for Colapinto in 2024 as he went from nowhere to briefly looking like he might drive for the reigning world champions, back to now seeming unlikely to make the F1 grid again.
19. Lance Stroll.
Every driver in the bottom end of this ranking is going to be out of Formula 1 for next season. All except one, as Lance Stroll still appears to have a seat as long as he wants it at his father’s team. Stroll’s underperformance wasn’t as glaring in 2024 as in the previous year, but probably just because the Aston Martin wasn’t so competitive a car and Alonso wasn’t performing at the same heights. In the first part of the season, when it looked like a repeat of 2023, Alonso was battling the top cars while Stroll was crashing or getting trapped in the midfield, but then the run of races preceding the summer break was his best form for some time, outqualifying Alonso on quite a few occasions and scoring good points in Montreal and Silverstone, the latter his best drive of the year.
But then he slipped back into the theme of qualifying and finishing a long way behind Alonso, and had his most embarrassing moment in Formula 1 in Brazil, where he spun on the formation lap and then just drove into the gravel and was stuck there, having also crashed in qualifying. In his earlier years, Stroll had a reputation for occasionally pulling something special out of the bag but being very inconsistent. By his eighth season, you would have thought this weakness would have been ironed out, but it remains, while the random good races also seem to be drying up, perhaps due to having a stronger teammate now than in the past. I expect Stroll to remain at this level into 2025 and beyond, although with all the other tail-enders out of a drive and replaced by a fleet of promising rookies, his run of always just avoiding last place in my rankings could well come to an end.
20. Sergio Perez.
He has the caveat of being up against an all-time great who makes the car look better than it is, but even so, Perez’s season was nothing short of dismal. The early races were okay, because the Red Bull had enough of an advantage for him to finish second to Verstappen, but it felt inevitable that he would fall apart again as he did in 2023, and this year it was to an even greater extent, and magnified because the Red Bull wasn’t good enough to allow him to recover from his mistakes like he often could last year. The most pressing problem for Perez in 2024 was simply a lack of pace, with a chasm between him and Verstappen’s finishing times in the races on many occasions. Meanwhile he also made many mistakes, with the only good race of the season in Baku getting spoiled by a totally avoidable collision with Sainz, as Perez inexplicably put his car inches away from the Ferrari and allowed it to drift into him. Similarly, in Monaco, Magnussen shouldn’t have put his nose there, but Perez saw him and made no attempt to widen the closing gap that led to another huge crash.
The worst part of Perez’s season was the run of races before the summer break. Monaco with the Magnussen incident, followed by Canada where he ran around at the back and then crashed under no pressure. Spain and Austria were perhaps most alarming of all because Perez just had no pace, finishing a minute behind Verstappen in the former despite no real bad luck, and being beaten on merit by Hulkenberg’s Haas in the latter as Verstappen had a puncture, extra pitstop and penalty and still came out ahead of him. He got closer to Verstappen in the following races but even to the end of the season continued to be stuck in the midfield all season with just 13 points after the summer break and particular disasters in Mexico and Qatar. Red Bull’s decision to extend his contract by two years was unfathomable at the time considering how the 2023 season played out and the form he was in at the time, and it appears they have finally come to terms with this. I doubt Perez will appear on a Formula 1 grid again, as while he was a decent midfield driver for most of his career and was initially the perfect second driver at Red Bull, he has totally capitulated these last two seasons.
21. Zhou Guanyu.
After giving Bottas a decent run for his money in 2023, and the second half of 2022, Zhou went backwards considerably in 2024 and had his worst season in Formula 1. The Sauber was the worst car on the grid, so he could mostly only be judged against Bottas, and the gaps between them in qualifying were often shocking, the largest on the grid bar Red Bull, and this against a driver who isn’t considered among the best on the grid. Zhou didn’t have too many significant errors, but he was just too slow in qualifying and the races, and was frequently cut adrift at the back of the pack.
However, to Zhou’s credit, when the Sauber showed signs of improvement at the end of the season and there were opportunities for points, it was him rather than Bottas who took them. He qualified well in Las Vegas and came close, while in Qatar he took a slightly fortunate eighth place, but was ahead of Bottas on the day and claimed Sauber’s only points of the season. But this was rightly not enough to save his drive.
22. Logan Sargeant.
I am not really sure why Williams decided to retain him in the first place. It was clear from the start of the season that they had very little faith in Sargeant, from the moment that he was asked to give up his car for Albon in Australia when it was his teammate who had totalled the other Williams. But for the remainder of the season, Sargeant continued to never outqualify Albon, who himself is an average qualifier in Formula 1, while he gave his team a hefty repair bill with numerous crashes, the pair of crashes in Zandvoort the final straw. Silverstone was his most respectable drive of the season finishing close to Albon, but after a decent qualifying session in Montreal, he had a horrible race.
Eventually, Williams lost patience and dropped Sargeant before the season was out, his replacement Colapinto immediately looking like a significant improvement despite not having looked likely to make it to Formula 1 at all before that point. It called time early on a short and underwhelming career.
Awards (possibly should be a separate thread?)
Driver of the season – Max Verstappen. Won the title without the best car. Honourable mentions to Lando Norris and George Russell.
Team of the season – McLaren. Even though they threw away so many race wins, they still unexpectedly created the best car and won the constructors’ title. Honourable mentions to Ferrari and Haas.
Most improved driver – George Russell. After a shaky 2023, he totally turned the tables on Hamilton and looked a far more assured top driver and potential world champion again. Honourable mentions to Hulkenberg and Bottas.
Biggest disappointment (driver) – Lewis Hamilton. It was a very underwhelming swansong year at Mercedes. Honourable mentions to Albon and Ricciardo.
Biggest disappointment (team) – Aston Martin. A huge drop in form compared to last year and zero podiums. Honourable mentions to Mercedes and Sauber.
Best designers – McLaren. They had the best car, and considering they started 2023 with the worst car, that is somewhat astonishing.
Best strategists – Ferrari. Against all the odds, they had a very assured season with the win in Monza being the highlight.
Best mechanics – Williams. What a ridiculous number of cars they had to repair this year.
Best race drive – Max Verstappen, Brazilian GP. Perhaps his finest drive, as he battled past the entire grid from 17th, then left them standing once leading. Would have won on any strategy. Honourable mentions to George Russell, Belgian GP and Oscar Piastri, Azerbaijan GP.
Best qualifying lap – Charles Leclerc, Monaco GP. In a class of his own all weekend. Honourable mentions to Max Verstappen, Emilia Romagna GP, and Lando Norris, Hungarian GP.
Best race lap – Esteban Ocon, the lap in Brazil before the red flag where he dropped Verstappen by five seconds in super wet conditions. Honourable mentions to Max Verstappen’s defensive laps against Norris in the United States GP, Charles Leclerc, Abu Dhabi GP lap one.
Best overtake – Oscar Piastri on Charles Leclerc, Azerbaijan GP. A crucial move from a long way back that had to be done right then and won him the race. Honourable mentions to Alex Albon on Ocon and Ricciardo, Canadian GP, and George Russell on Lewis Hamilton, Canadian GP.
Biggest blunder (driver) – Lance Stroll, Brazilian GP. Driving into that gravel trap on the formation lap was so bad it was funny. Honourable mentions to Lando Norris, Qatar GP and Sergio Perez, Qatar GP.
Biggest blunder (team) – Mercedes, Belgian GP. Ruined Russell’s best win with an underweight car. Honourable mentions to McLaren, British GP strategy and Red Bull for extending Perez’s contract.
Best race – Brazilian GP. A historic victory, shock podium, and excitement throughout the race. Honourable mentions to Canadian GP and British GP, but there were so many classic races this year.
Worst race – Monaco GP. When nobody has to change tyres at all in Monaco, you get zero changes in the top ten for the entire race. Honourable mentions to the Bahrain GP and Saudi Arabian GP.
Best moment – Not really one moment, but the run of nine races between Canada and Azerbaijan where every single one was exciting from start to finish. After such a boring 2023 season, it was nice to not know who was going to win again, and so many times. Honourable mentions to Leclerc’s win in Monza and Hamilton’s win in Silverstone.
Worst moment – Andretti getting denied a place on the grid. There wasn’t much wrong with this season but that was the only thing that left a sour taste, but was helped by Cadillac now getting that entry. Honourable mentions to Russell’s disqualification in Belgium and the terrible racing rules in Austin.
Edited by F1Frog, 08 December 2024 - 19:45.
