Verstappen keeps the crown, McLaren take the team title

The 2024 Formula 1 season did not produce the kind of one-team control seen in 2023. Instead, it evolved into a much broader competitive story.

Max Verstappen still won the Drivers’ Championship, securing a fourth consecutive world title, but this time the path was more contested. McLaren rose into a genuine front-running force, Ferrari stayed in the fight across much of the year, and Mercedes returned to the winners’ circle. By the end of the season, the drivers’ title belonged to Verstappen, but the Constructors’ Championship went to McLaren, their first since 1998.

That split matters, because it captures the central tension of 2024: Verstappen remained the strongest individual driver over the full campaign, while the best all-round team by season end was McLaren.

Race Calendar

The 2024 calendar featured a record 24 rounds, making it the longest Formula 1 season to date. It also brought several scheduling changes, most notably the move of the Japanese Grand Prix to April and the return of the Chinese Grand Prix after a multi-year absence.

Unlike 2023, no round was cancelled, so the championship ran to its full intended length. Sprint weekends also remained part of the format, again appearing at six events and adding a secondary layer to the championship battle.

Drivers and Constructors

One of the defining pre-season facts of 2024 was how little changed. For the first time in Formula 1 history, the season began with exactly the same driver line-ups that had ended the previous year.

• Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, Aston Martin, Alpine, Haas, RB, Williams, and Kick Sauber all started 2024 with unchanged pairings.
• The main structural changes were on the team side rather than the driver side, most visibly AlphaTauri becoming RB and Alfa Romeo becoming Kick Sauber.
• That initial stability did not last the full year: Oliver Bearman, Franco Colapinto, Liam Lawson, and Jack Doohan all made race appearances later in the season.

2024 Season Analysis

The winners’ table shows immediately why 2024 felt so different from the previous year.

Verstappen still won the most races and did enough to secure the Drivers’ Championship, but he did not dominate the schedule in the same overwhelming way. McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes all took multiple victories, while Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri both became Grand Prix winners for the first time.

That broader winner distribution made 2024 one of the most competitive seasons of the current regulations era. It also changed the shape of the season narrative: instead of a title procession, the second half became a contest about whether Norris could pressure Verstappen in the Drivers’ standings and whether McLaren could convert their speed into a constructors’ crown.

Several individual stories gave the season its character:

• Norris claimed his first Grand Prix victory in Miami and became Verstappen’s main title challenger.
• Piastri earned his first Grand Prix wins in Hungary and Azerbaijan, confirming McLaren had two drivers capable of converting pace into victories.
• Leclerc finally won at Monaco, then added another emotionally significant Ferrari win at Monza.
• Hamilton returned to the top step at Silverstone, then was credited with victory in Belgium in the official results after George Russell’s disqualification.
• Sainz remained a major factor for Ferrari, winning in Australia and Mexico City.
• Verstappen’s wet-weather recovery drive to victory in Sao Paulo became one of the defining performances of the season and effectively ended the remaining doubt in the Drivers’ Championship.

Points, Podiums, Sprints and DNFs

The 2024 season still needs the project’s local chart layer, but the official results already make the broad pattern easy to describe.

• Verstappen sealed the Drivers’ Championship in Las Vegas, giving him a fourth consecutive world title.
• McLaren secured the Constructors’ Championship in Abu Dhabi, ending a title drought that stretched back to 1998.
• Sprint weekends again took place at six rounds: China, Miami, Austria, United States, Sao Paulo, and Qatar.
• The season produced multiple first-time Grand Prix winners under the current rules era, reinforcing how much closer the field had become compared with 2023.

For now, those visual breakdowns are intentionally deferred until the local analysis notebook is ready.

Point Progression

The championship progression in 2024 was far more dynamic than the final Drivers’ standings alone might suggest.

At the start of the season, Red Bull and Verstappen still looked likely to continue their previous level of control. But once McLaren found front-running pace, particularly from Miami onward, the balance changed. Norris began scoring regularly at the front, and the Drivers’ Championship became a live contest deep into the season even if Verstappen never fully surrendered control.

The Constructors’ Championship was even more open. McLaren gradually built the strongest two-car campaign of the year, while Ferrari remained close enough to keep pressure on them into the final round. Red Bull, by contrast, still had the strongest individual driver in Verstappen, but no longer produced the consistently dominant team total that had defined 2023.

That difference is one of the key reasons 2024 stands out: the best driver and the best constructor were no longer the same story.

Conclusions and Final Standings

The 2024 season will likely be remembered as the year the competitive order compressed again.

Verstappen remained champion, ending the season on 437 points, but the championship around him was much more contested than a year earlier. Norris finished second on 374 points, Leclerc took third with 356, and Piastri and Sainz also ended the year close enough to underline how broad the fight at the front had become.

At team level, McLaren’s title was the clearest sign that Formula 1 had moved away from a single-team monopoly. Their total of 666 points was enough to defeat Ferrari and Red Bull, turning a strong development story into a championship-winning season. Ferrari’s 652 points kept the battle alive to the end, while Red Bull dropped to third despite Verstappen’s fourth straight crown.

Note: Core season results and standings were compiled from official Formula 1 results pages.