“Top of the Class: McLaren Dethrones Red Bull, Sauber Falls Short”

During the first half of the season, when Max Verstappen was winning races by an average margin of 15 seconds, Christian Horner’s prediction that Red Bull would not be able to replicate its dominance in 2023 was questionable. Red Bull took a bold stance toward the RB20, while other teams had zipped toward its design concept following two years of losses. It seems to have altered the rules of the game once more. However, this kind of domination is no longer present. Out of the last nine races, Red Bull has only won three, all thanks to some incredible work from Verstappen while McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari closed the gap. To Verstappen’s dismay and Sergio Pérez’s dismay, Red Bull’s two significant upgrade packages have not produced the anticipated boost.

A gold star for the papaya.

To be clear, McLaren has had some rough patches this season. There have been some questionable moments involving strategy, for instance. Still, as McLaren fights Red Bull and Verstappen, its ascent has become one of the major stories of 2024. It is one of the few teams that has successfully implemented an upgrade package; at the Miami GP, for example, the package immediately improved performance.

Between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, who both won their maiden Formula One race this season, McLaren have one of the strongest and most stable driver lineups on the grid. Norris has felt that they “should have won” at several points, like as the Spanish Grand Prix. With the difference at just 42 points, it was clear that a championship fight was developing for the second half of the season as the final races before the summer break went on.

Ferrari made significant changes to its vehicle before the 2024 season. Through an uneven 2023, the car was fairly finicky, and the team did not settle into a rhythm until much later in the season. Ferrari changed the design because it was difficult to drive. And first, there was cause for hope.

Beginning the season in a highly competitive manner, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc battled for podium spots and won their individual races in Australia and Monaco. Although some of the changes were successful, Ferrari’s rate of advancement slowed in compared to the rest of the grid as they refined their vehicles and added more features. It also lacked speed. Ferrari has been surpassed by Mercedes and McLaren, with the latter having done so more recently. Following the Belgian Grand Prix, Leclerc stated, “We felt that we were on a par with” the Silver Arrows.

“It’s good to see that everybody is so close, but unfortunately, we are still the fourth fastest team,” Leclerc said, “and the top three keep changing, but we are consistently behind them or on a par with Mercedes. So yeah, we just need more pace.”

It is a close-run race, and despite having equal wins to McLaren, Ferrari has found itself on the losing end of momentum swings. Ferrari currently has pace, but not enough to win the race as Leclerc demonstrated at Spa with his pole position start.

If Mercedes had received these report cards after Monaco, she most likely would not be passing the class. As it delivered a car significantly behind leaders’ pace, it was beginning to look like just another season of delusions that it had finally come to terms with its challenges under these restrictions.

This time, Mercedes has successfully resolved its problems and is once again in the forefront of the Formula One field. The Monaco upgrade paid off at the next race in Canada, when George Russell took home the pole position.

Mercedes has never left the podium since that time. The Norris/Verstappen battle helped Russell win in Austria, but Lewis Hamilton’s victory at Silverstone and the 1-2 at Spa before Russell’s disqualification were both totally merit-based.

The Mercedes team’s season turnaround has prepared it for a good second half, which may inspire hope of a comeback to title contention the next season, just as Hamilton moves to Ferrari. It does not quite have the pace of McLaren or Red Bull just yet.

This year, RB debuted under a new moniker and under new leadership, with Laurent Mekies taking over as team principal. The team’s CEO, Peter Bayer, stated that they aim to “be a competitor on the grid at the top of the midfield” during the season start in February. They have scored points at ten of the previous fourteen race weekends, despite occasional challenges with driver performance. With several modifications enabling them to put pressure on Williams, the team saw steady growth in late 2023, although they were ultimately defeated by three points. It has maintained a competitive pace to contend for a spot in the upper echelon in the midfield this season as it continues its progressive march. The team now has a better understanding of why the most recent upgrade did not work right away. It is a close one.

When Ayao Komatsu took over as team principal at Haas in January, he was quick to play down expectations. After a dismal 2023 and with decisions for this year’s development direction made so late, 2024 was expected to be a challenging season. It adds to the surprise of Haas’s performance this year. With drivers Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen really being able to race the vehicle, it has blossomed, now sitting seventh in the championship and having amassed more than twice as many points as the previous season. The 2023 tire problems have been resolved, and the VF-24 has proven to be a reliable machine even after just one lap, especially when driven by Hülkenberg. For Haas, this was always a year of transition as Komatsu caught up and began to lay his

Alpine aggressively redesigned their automobile concept, believing that it would pay off in the long run, anticipating a challenging start to the season. Few people expected it to be as difficult as it is. After spending 2023 in a limbo between the top five and the bottom four clubs, Alpine’s sudden fall to the backfield has presented difficulties and sparked yet another round of adjustments for a team that is constantly changing. David Sanchez from McLaren joined the team after its previous technical head departed. Along with plans to discontinue Alpine’s factory engine program for 2026, the once-banned Flavio Briatore has returned to Formula One as its executive advisor and declared Oliver Oakes will take over as the team principal following the summer break. Discord on the track has also existed, most notably in Monaco where Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly’s communication exposed the difficulties within the garage. Although they are currently near their limit, both drivers are more than capable of competing for the minor points. Similar like Aston Martin, Alpine has lofty aspirations for the future, and in 2024 it will undergo the necessary suffering in order to secure a brighter tomorrow. That does not make its performances this year any less disappointing.

After Alex Albon competed in the top 10 throughout multiple race weekends last year, Williams made headlines by moving up from last place in the constructors’ championship to seventh place. However, it is not as competitive as it was last year, finishing ninth with just four points before the summer break. The team’s production of spare parts has caused a delay. Williams only fielded one car in Australia following Albon’s practice disaster, and it did not bring a backup chassis until the Miami GP in May.At Suzuka, both drivers had incidents. The accidents over two race weekends put Williams on the back foot. According to team boss James Vowles, earlier this year, they “lost a number of floors, a number of rear wings, a number of front wings.” The incidents also impacted both gearboxes and suspension components. “It will have an impact on what we do performance-wise later on in the year,” he said. “The performance components that we brought forward through hard work to Japan are unfortunately destroyed. So again, that puts us on the back foot for performance across the next few races while we build up stock of those again. So a little bit of a short-term, a little bit of a medium-term impact on where we are.” The car was overweight at the beginning of the year, and a heavier car hurts lap times. However, the team has taken weight-reducing measures, and despite the obstacles, Albon has secured three Q3 appearances and four points.

Sauber is still the only team without a point with ten races left in the season. Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas had average finishing positions of 15.4 and 15.5, respectively. Bottas has only made it to the Q3 once, in China. The team’s pit stops have been one area that has definitely improved. Compared to their near three- to four-second stops at the start of the year, Sauber’s 1.9-second pit stop for Bottas in Belgium was quite quick.According to team representative Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Sauber had modified parts including wheel hubs and bolts to optimize their pit stops, but another revision was required due to a problem with a part. However, performance that is on track just slightly improves. With 16 points at the end of 2023, Sauber came in ninth place, mostly thanks to a pre-summer shutdown. The car is slow and difficult to set up, therefore the team was unable to maintain its positive trend from the previous year. But recent upgrades on the car have moved Sauber more into the midfield battle. “We’ve made some improvement since, but more like baby steps instead of big jumps, unlike some other teams around us,” he said Thursday ahead of the Belgian GP. “So we definitely have a clear direction for the second half where we need to improve the car, but that’s just now what we need to do. We need to make it faster.”