The 2024 season has been nothing if not a giver. A red-hot slice of driver market news here, some cloak-in-dagger team personnel changes there – to say nothing of the seven different winners in 14 races, the most in a season since 2012. An F1 website editor’s dream, in short.
So with half the year in the bank and the F1 drivers all hanging out with Salt Bae in Mykonos – or whatever they get up to these days for the summer holidays – let’s comb through the five storylines that have sent our jaws to the floor so far in 2024.
Hamilton sees red
‘Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari’ has been such a frequent rumour over the years that it’s become a bit of a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation for everyone in the F1 media when it’s doing the rounds. As such, when the rumour rolled around this year, I jadedly treated it with the usual degree of wariness/weariness that I give it every year. That is, until it became clear that this year, THIS WAS NOT A DRILL!
With a certain degree of inevitability, details started trickling their way into the media, before the shock official news came that, yes, finally, Hamilton in red was set to become a reality.
It’s a decision that, as with seemingly everything associated with Sir Lewis, has proven contentious, inviting all manner of debate around whether people think it’s a good move or not – with Hamilton set to join only the third team of his illustrious career.
Steiner and Haas part ways
2024 was but 10 days old when news came from Haas that it’s totemic Team Principal Guenther Steiner was departing.
In a way, it was unsurprising. Plotting Haas’s championship results since the heady days of their P5 finish in 2018 makes for grim reading, and seemingly, tensions between Steiner and team owner Gene Haas had reached tipping point.
EXCLUSIVE: ‘It came down to performance’ – Gene Haas on Guenther Steiner’s departure and what it means for his team’s future
But despite seemingly parting brass rags from the team that he’d helped mould into a plucky midfield outfit since 2014, as our F1 Correspondent Lawrence Barretto noted at the time, “you’d struggle to find a person in the paddock who wouldn’t make time for the Italian”. And as Lawrence wryly added, in F1 “that in itself is an incredible feat”.
Haas, now under the stewardship of long-time engineer Ayao Komatsu, look to have taken a step in 2024, currently running P7, with over double the points they managed last year – and with the promise of an all-new line-up for 2025, in the form of Esteban Ocon and the promising ‘pseudo-rookie’ Ollie Bearman (more on whom later).
And as for Steiner, perhaps the people who’ll be reeling most from his departure are fans of Drive To Survive, given the effervescent Italian’s starring role in the Netflix series. Fear not though, because you can still read Guenther’s columns on Formula1.com…
Steiner’s departure from Haas was announced prior to the 2024 season getting under way
Newey off to pastures new
There have been few non-driver figures in the F1 paddock since 1950 whose departure from a team could be described as seismic. Adrian Newey is one of those few.
Like Lewis Hamilton, Newey does not change F1 teams lightly, his famous drawing board having graced the design office of just six teams since 1980. So when it was announced on May 1 that Newey would be leaving the Red Bull team he’d joined in 2006 – with rumours and whispers having swirled in the days and weeks leading up to that announcement – it came close to eclipsing Hamilton’s Ferrari move in terms of magnitude. It was that big.
EXCLUSIVE: Newey on the RB17 hypercar, his ‘amazing ride’ at Red Bull and what’s next
Newey’s stats speak for themselves, having banked 12 constructors’ and 13 drivers’ titles since 1992.
The next big news – and who knows when that will come – is where he’ll end up next, with Ferrari, Aston Martin, Williams or even permanent retirement having all been touted as possible options in recent months.
Meanwhile, Red Bull will need to assess the hole that will be left by the departure of one of the greatest design minds that motorsport has ever seen.