Formula One desperately needed a season like the one 2024 delivered. After back-to-back years of Max Verstappen and Red Bull dominance, this season marked one of the most competitive campaigns in the sport’s history. Verstappen may have emerged as the world champion for the fourth year in a row, but seven different drivers from four different teams won multiple races. Not a single race was a foregone conclusion.
While Verstappen won another piece of hardware, there’s still one championship left to hand out. McLaren enters the final race of the season at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with a 21-point lead over Ferrari in the constructors’ standings, making this just the second season in the last 15 years to be decided during the final weekend.
All eyes will be on McLaren and Ferrari, but there’s also a drivers spat that’s boiled over and a number of personnel story lines to watch at Yas Marina Circuit over the weekend.
Constructors’ championship comes down to the wire
For the first time since 2021, the team title isn’t decided going into the season finale. There are plenty of similarities between that season and this one. Verstappen won a close drivers' championship in ’21 only to see his Red Bull team beat out by another constructor. However, this time around, McLaren and Ferrari are the lead challengers instead of Mercedes.
McLaren has been the more consistent team dating back to Lando Norris’s maiden win in Miami, but the Prancing Horse hasn’t gone away. That’s largely due to a few massive weekends in Monaco, Monza, Austin and Mexico City. In fact, since that dominant performance by Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz at the United States Grand Prix in late October, Ferrari has outscored McLaren 178 to 124.
The odds are still stacked against Ferrari winning the championship for the first time since 2008. If McLaren has both drivers finish in the top five, Leclerc and Sainz would need to score the maximum 44 points (finishing first and second with the fastest lap) to win the championship.
That task got even more difficult early Friday as Charles Leclerc waited in the pit lane for the opening 20 minutes of the first practice session due to a suspected battery issue with his Ferrari. To fix the problem for the weekend’s more consequential rounds, he was forced to take a new energy store, resulting in a 10-place grid penalty.
The mountain is steep for Ferrari to climb, but if this season (and particularly races like the ones in Austria, Belgium and Brazil) has reminded us of anything, it’s that there’s no sure result in F1. Should Leclerc manage to salvage his unsavory starting position and help deliver the Tifosi a championship, he will instantly enter the team’s hallowed halls.
Russell and Verstappen go head-to-head after heated exchange
Leave it to Verstappen, who has garnered a reputation for being brash and forthright with his words, to find himself embroiled in drama off the track less than two weeks after locking up this year’s world championship. If his exchange with George Russell this week is any indication, the fiery Red Bull driver won’t be pulling any punches when it comes to navigating the final race of the 2024 season.
The pair of drivers traded barbs Thursday, stemming back to the incident in Qatar in which Verstappen claimed that Russell went out of the way to ensure that the Red Bull driver was given a one-place grid penalty for driving too slowly during qualifying. Verstappen blasted Russell in the media following the race, which he still won, calling the Mercedes driver two-faced and saying that he'd “lost all respect” for him.
Well, Russell fired back ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this week—and with a scalding accusation. The Mercedes driver alleged Thursday that Verstappen said “he was going to purposefully go out of his way to crash into me and ‘put me on my f---ing head in the wall,’ ” after he was given the penalty in Qatar. Russell continued, calling the Dutchman a “bully” and criticizing him for “lashing out” when faced with adversity.
Verstappen didn’t let the allegation go unchallenged, telling media members that Russell “invents all sorts of nonsense” and calling the Mercedes driver “a loser.” Team principals Christian Horner and Toto Wolff got in on the action too with an exchange of their own, and it looks like the Red Bull–Mercedes rivalry is back on. (Perhaps it never left and was just lying dormant until Russell picked up the mantle from the soon-to-depart Lewis Hamilton.)
Of course no one is rooting for either driver to be put into a dangerous situation. But given how hot Russell and Verstappen got this week in the press, it’s worth watching if they will race each other more aggressively should the opportunity present itself on Sunday.
A new face, an end of an era and (possible) swan songs
The end of a season always brings with it the closing of chapters, whether it be drivers finishing stints with teams, final races ahead of retirements or the end of championship runs. However, this year’s finale in Abu Dhabi will also introduce a fresh face to the wider F1 audience.
Rookie Jack Doohan, who was already set to replace Esteban Ocon beginning in 2025, will make his Alpine debut to get a head start on next year. The move will allow Ocon to begin testing with his new team, Haas, after the racing is done at Yas Marina. Though it’s a rather unceremonious end for Ocon, his replacement will get the opportunity to establish his credibility right away as Alpine looks to maintain its tenuous hold on sixth place in the standings over…Haas.
Hamilton will climb behind the wheel of a Mercedes for the final time Sunday, marking an end to the most dominant run for a single driver and single constructor in F1 history. Six titles in seven years later and the 39-year-old will make way for Ferrari, with whom he will seek to break the stalemate with Michael Schumacher for the most championships ever.
It certainly wasn’t the ending Hamilton had planned for as he’s poised to finish in seventh place in the drivers’ standings, his worst result across his 18-year career. However, there were highlights, like a record-setting eighth win at the British Grand Prix and a win to close out the summer in Belgium. On Sunday, he’ll have the chance to make his mark with Mercedes one last time before resetting in the offseason.
Finally, there’s plenty of uncertainty surrounding a number of drivers on the grid with one race remaining. Sergio Pérez’s future with Red Bull is hanging by a thread, and may already be numbered if recent reports are any indication. That leaves Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda and perhaps even Franco Colapinto pining after a spot alongside Verstappen, but nothing is set in stone. Valterri Bottas, Kevin Magnussen and Zhou Guanyu are also left without seats on next year’s grid, making Sunday the last time fans may see the three drivers—at least for a little while.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Preview: McLaren, Ferrari Duel for Title in F1 Season Finale.
