Three safety cars, a veritable smorgasbord of penalties, and a series of surprise results all defined this year's trip to the Losail circuit: a featureless expanse in the Qatari desert that has inexplicably become a favourite among the drivers. The racing might have been a little stilted at the front in the opening half of the race, but it only needed Alex Albon's displaced wing mirror to set off a chain of events that delighted and dismayed in equal measure.
The subsequent fallout from Sunday's race made everyone question if there had truly been a sprint race at all this weekend, as the McLarens had controlled everything so well in Saturday's 19-lap affair that it never really got going. Indeed, the Woking squad had let its grasp slip overnight; its perceived constructors' championship match point did not last by the time night had fallen ahead of the grand prix.
Even after the dust had settled on the race, the paddock's hum of activity continued; a flurry of late-season driver dealing here, publicly aired grievances there. Familiarity breeds contempt and, with such a long season, everybody is sick and tired of each other. Here's what we learned from this weekend's proceedings in Qatar.
1. Verstappen and Red Bull's night-shifters are second to none
It's not the first time this season that Red Bull has had more than a few loads of washing to iron out overnight. As far back as May, the team was short on pace during Imola's practice sessions, and needed to dust off Sebastien Buemi for a stint in the simulator to understand why it had missed the mark.
Indeed, after Qatar's sprint race in which Max Verstappen trundled to an eighth-place finish, it appeared that the RB20 had a comparable level of speed and dynamism as a splodge of clotted cream on a slide. Indeed, Christian Horner relayed that the team had thrown "the kitchen sink" at sorting the car out between the sprint race and qualifying for the grand prix, a turnaround that offered pole (until George Russell got involved, that is...).
Part of the issue was in firing up the tyres in cooler conditions, which led to the drivers struggling with the overall balance between the front and the rear.
From there, Verstappen pressed home the advantage that his reconfigured chariot had conferred upon him. Aside from a few token challenges from Lando Norris, the Dutchman was otherwise unfettered by the cars behind and those minor plays for the lead were easily covered off.
The only time that Verstappen was left feeling slightly hot under the collar came on the second safety car restart, when malfunctioning safety car lights left him exposed to a Norris attack at Turn 1 - but it was a short-lived storm, and one successfully weathered.
PLUS: The F1 safety car rule that nearly "had Red Bull over" in Verstappen's Qatar win
Regardless, it demonstrated the brilliance of Red Bull's engineers at base and its track team working together to solve the issues thrown up in the opening sessions; although the Milton Keynes outfit didn't arrive in Qatar on the front foot, it certainly ended it there.
2. Norris missed the yellow flags to pay a heavy price
In the wake of the Qatar race, Lando Norris had reverted to type in his public admonishment of...well, himself.
When Max Verstappen saw the McLaren a little closer in his mirrors at the start of lap 30, as a 1.8-second gap had fallen to about 1.2s, he was immediately on the ol' blower asking if Norris had slowed for the yellow flag on the start-finish straight. Race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase pulled up the GPS data and informed his charge that his assessment had been correct.
Norris thus got hit with a stop-go penalty for not slowing down, which equated to about 35 seconds of lost time. If there was a silver lining, it at least put a little bit of pep in his step; he tore through the backmarkers to clinch 10th, plus the point for the fastest lap to minimise the damage already levied upon McLaren's championship lead. This, however, was of minimal comfort.
"I've let the team down, the team gave me a great car today, easily the quickest out there, and I f***ed it up," Norris lamented. "I don't know what I did wrong. I'm not an idiot, if there's a yellow flag I know I need to slow down. That's rule number one, you learn in go-karts. For some reason I didn't do that today, because I've not seen it or I've missed it or something."
Although McLaren team principal Andrea Stella felt that the stop-go was a needlessly harsh penalty, there is at least precedent for this; Norris joins the illustrious company of Nicholas Latifi and Nikita Mazepin in copping a stop-go for a yellow flag violation - the two ex-F1 drivers did not slow sufficiently for yellow in 2021's Austrian Grand Prix.
3. Russell's stewards' room lobbying upset Verstappen
Max Verstappen went into Sunday's race with the intent to channel his anger from being given a one-place grid penalty into a first-corner lead. It wasn't so much losing pole that irritated Verstappen, but rather Russell's perceived chicanery in the stewards' room.
Let's review the incident quickly: Verstappen approached Turn 12 slowly in an attempt to gather some space for his final qualifying lap, since there was a clutch of cars ahead. Russell arrived on the scene at a vast rate of knots, stamped on the brakes, went off, and then decided he was going to pass Verstappen anyway.
It was noted in the stewards' report that Russell had seen Verstappen, but it was decided that the Dutchman was going to get a penalty for being down on his delta time. Given this happened while both drivers were on a cooldown lap, any kind of penalty was without precedent.
"I was quite surprised, when sitting there in the stewards' room, what was all going on. It was honestly very disappointing, because I think all of us here, we respect each other a lot," Verstappen explained. "I've been in that meeting room many times in my life and my career with people that I've raced. And I've never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard. For me, I lost all respect."
Verstappen told Russell before the drivers' parade that he was going to get him in Turn 1; video footage emerged of the drivers waiting for the flat-bed truck, and Russell attempting to smooth things over by being overly matey - jocular arms-around-shoulders and back-slaps were not reciprocated by a still-annoyed Verstappen, who ultimately delivered on his word.
4. Mirror call doesn't reflect well on the FIA
When Albon's mirror fell off his Williams, it laid prostrate in the middle of the circuit for around 10 laps. The race directors felt that the intermittent flutters of a yellow flag would cover it, although even that call seemed to be beset by indecision.
When Valtteri Bottas ran the thing over, it was as if he'd consciously decided to do us all a favour - or at least, to demonstrate to the FIA what happens when you leave debris uncollected. In truth, Bottas wasn't even aware that it was on the track, and that's somehow even worse.
Of course, the resulting shower of debris looked to be responsible for the punctures of Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton, even if this was not completely conclusive. Regardless, it was finally decided that the marshals needed to sweep it up, producing the second safety car period that many used as an opportunity to pit.
This put the race direction, now under the leadership of Rui Marques following Niels Wittich's removal after Brazil, under scrutiny. The FIA released a statement afterwards that "normal practice is for the safety car not to be deployed if there is a small amount of debris, and off the racing line", but that only stands up if one doesn't consider that the start-finish straight is the sole overtaking point on the Losail circuit.
At least there was an amusing topper to the entire situation: Yuki Tsunoda misheard the radio message that there was a mirror on the road - which led him to an existential crisis about global climate change instead.
"Was it mirror? I heard beaver," he said. "My engineers said: 'There's a beaver.' But why is there a beaver in the Middle East? Like how is it possible a beaver is in the Middle East? But okay, maybe there's a surprise with global warming - kicking a lot of interesting things in the Earth."
Is this the start of Yuki Tsunoda: Eco Warrior? It only takes a small moment like that to mirror - or indeed, beaver - Sebastian Vettel's conservation prowess...
5. Zhou and Sauber get something out of difficult 2024
A few weeks ago, Autosport penned a piece postulating if Sauber's forlorn C44 would go down as one of the better point-less machines to have graced F1's history. At that stage it didn't look as though the Swiss squad was on course for a top 10 finish, but improvements over the past couple of races have given it about three-tenths' advantage in laptime - a new floor in Las Vegas was paired with a new front wing in Qatar, with which the team hoped to have a fighting chance ahead of 2024's final curtain call.
Zhou Guanyu made the most of it. The Chinese driver might be out of a seat for next season, but he at least delivered a performance worthy of consideration for 2026 amid the chaos.
Per his recollections of the race, he'd endured a very iffy start - but his strong pace on the medium stint and continued good pace after stopping under the safety car ensured he was in a good position for the final phase of the grand prix.
“I had chaos lap one,” said Zhou. “I lost the gear stick before the start, was in like the last two positions on the straight and then [Lance] Stroll divebombed on me again. So I said to the team, ‘I will make up for it’. And we did.
“It was an intense race, some very important moments to overtake some people and then also, in the end, the last safety car restart. It was not easy with Kevin [Magnussen] behind, Alex [Albon] on the soft, but the pace was strong.
“It's been a relief. We knew we had the best chance this weekend throughout the season and we grabbed it.”
6. Early Ocon-Alpine split down to Abu Dhabi test release
After the chequered flag had fluttered after 57 laps, it didn't become clear that it had also fallen on Esteban Ocon's sometimes-fraught five-year stint with Renault/Alpine until the press pen. There, he spoke of his gratitude to the team over the previous seasons, suggesting that something might be amiss.
Indeed, it became clear that Alpine and Ocon were negotiating an early exit. Ocon wanted to be released after the Abu Dhabi race so that he could drive for Haas in the usual end-of-year Yas Marina test, and Alpine considered this as potential opportunity to get 2025 race driver Jack Doohan in the car in preparation for next season.
Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes explained that talks were indeed taking place post-race, stating that "it comes from all sides: I guess you could say it's good to get Jack in early. I think you could say from Esteban's side, it's good to move on early. I think it suits everybody. So I think the discussion was quite natural."
It has now been announced that Ocon will depart the team a race early, and that Doohan will make his debut in Abu Dhabi as he hopes to help Pierre Gasly finish off the team's surprise run to sixth in the constructors' championship.
7. Perez's Red Bull future in the balance, Colapinto out of the running
"I'm going to let Checo come to his own conclusions," Christian Horner mused after the Mexican endured another nightmarish weekend in Qatar.
PLUS: Qatar Grand Prix Driver Ratings 2024
Here's how it played out for Perez: eliminated in SQ1, took a sprint race pitlane start but missed the lights (and claimed it was in pursuit of clean air). He made it to Q3 and qualified ninth for the grand prix, got up to seventh, stayed there for most of the race, reached fifth during the safety car period, spun at Turn 12 under said safety car, burned out his clutch, retired.
How those conclusions are contextualised remains unknown at the minute: whether there's a pay-off deal on the table that he must reach a resolution on, or whether he's genuinely got the job security that most could only dream of in this current economy - we'll find out after Abu Dhabi. However, it appears that Red Bull is seriously considering life after Perez.
A few races ago, Red Bull looked as though it would fork out a few million smackeroos on chiselling Franco Colapinto out of his Williams junior contract, but the Argentine's less ennobling results in the North American leg of the calendar has wiped off a couple of zeros from his overall worth. RB team principal Laurent Mekies reckons that Tsunoda is ready for the challenge of partnering Max Verstappen, although the team is known to favour Liam Lawson for the second seat.
"We have a meeting after Abu Dhabi, but [Colapinto's] not very high on the list," Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko explained after Qatar. "[There's] Yuki, but Lawson as well. So we will have our meeting and then the driver decisions will be done."
Should either of the RB incumbents step up, F2 title contender Isack Hadjar is likely to slot into the second seat.
