This, dear reader, is the companion article to The Pointy End of the Season.
Here I review some of my musings compared to what reality actually slapped us around the face with. As Forrest so sagely noted, Life is like a box of chocolates... Never more so than season 2024 which saw liquid centres, dark (chocolate) moments, (Turkish) Delight, and milking it (chocolate). I'm not going there on who got the hazelnut swirl... but let's note that Daniel Ricciardo might have gotten a box full...
V. Max assured the Drivers' Championship? Check. Box full of finest Swiss artesian chocs for him!
Lando. Finished a worthy second, looking like he'd been sucking lemon sherbets far longer than mother would allow. Yet second in the world he is. He should treat himself to a limited edition Richard Millie in celebration. Over at Ferrari, Vasseur must have broken out the liqueur chocolates early to have Leclerc and Sainz in the same room, on the same podium, and generally close to one another without either slipping an amped-up ferret into the race suit of the other. Having said that, the idea of Vasseur (like Davey Jones' famous cry) ordering from the bridge of the dark ship Ferrari, "Release the ferret!" Would be an episode of DTS I'd actually watch.
I felt Ferrari had a long shot at the Constructors' Championship, and a long shot too far it proved to be. Second and third at the final race, especially given Charles' start position, was a true fighting moment. A very well-deserved second for them. With an equally well-deserved first for McLaren.
Oscar! Well we noted he would be nervous of the Ferrari looming in his rear view mirror, and so it proved. A single point in the final race saw him finish a scant two points clear of Sainz. 292 to 290. That was a great season-long scrap. One I'm sure Sainz will miss next year.
Russell and Hamilton then flew in formation to season's end. Yes, Lewis took a place off George on the final lap of their time together, yet Russell finished the season a modest 22 points clear of Hamilton, 245 to 223. Over all their races as team-mates Lewis is still ahead by a handful of points, despite these last three seasons not being kind to him. I cannot wait to see what he does for Ferrari. He timed the move to Mercedes to perfection. The idea that he can manage that timing twice in a remarkable career is given credibility by history recording how often Fangio jumped teams to keep winning. It is just possible Sir Lewis has found exactly the right new charger at exactly the right time.
Oh Perez. Wherefore art thou? Pick a Shakespeare tragedy. Hamlet, Othello, Richard III... Perez has the leading role in his own disaster. Finishing so many points behind V. Max, and a number of others, down in eighth place on 152 points. That's 71 points behind Lewis in seventh, and a mind-numbing 285 points behind V. Max. Perez only managed to score 34.8% of the points V. Max scored. Money, money, money. All the post-season talks with Red Bull will be around the "What does it cost to make you go away?" The problem being many, many dollars walk out the door with Perez. Plus V. Max likes him as a team mate as he applies zero pressure. Do not be surprised if Perez is still at Red Bull next season on a much reduced retainer... Stranger things have happened.
Alonso! Finished a lonely ninth, miles short of Perez, well clear of Gasly. A man who surely deserved to be a world champion with Ferrari, a man who should be on four or five drivers' titles. Yet he is not. Of all the drivers in the current field, Alonso has had the harshest of reality slaps, and yet he is still standing. The idea of him winning the 2026 Championship with Aston makes me tingle. The old dog having one last day in the sun becomes more appealing the older one gets. Yet F1, like much of life, rarely delivers fairy-tale finishes. We can only hope (go Adrian!).
Gasly! In the hotly contested upper-middle-rear of the pack Gasly took the fight to them and vaulted into tenth place cheerfully clear of Hulk and Tsunoda. Great racing was the result. I loved this midfield tussle with it all to play for. The fact that Gasly finished with a points total of my favourite number, 42, just widened my smile. Great work. Hulk on 41 missed out by a single point... which sums up the career of a driver everyone appears to like. Everyone agrees he is tidy, yet, as the old F1 saying goes... you can tidy-up speed, but not speed-up tidy. He is tidy. He will not break things at Audi. He will also continue to not stand on the podium. To my mind he is the modern day Alesi.
Jean Alesi was famous for being a fine human and a naturally talented genius driver... it just never fell into place for him. The 1995 Canadian GP, in a Ferrari, was his sole GP win. 201 starts and one lone win. Right now if you offered Hulk a single win next year in exchange for his seat in 2026 I think he'd take it. I'm not sure who cried more when Alesi won. Him, me or the Southern Pitpass cats... That was a race.
Tsunoda ended in a vacant space. Which is about what Red Bull think of him. No idea why, but pretty vacant is their view of him. To remind readers of the Sex Pistols opening verse...
"There's no point in asking, you'll get no reply
Oh just remember I don't decide
I got no reason it's all too much
You'll always find us
Out to lunch
(Chorus...)
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty
We're vacant
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty
We're vacant"
I can see Christian and Helmut singing this at a karaoke night with heartfelt passion. Possibly leaving Tsunoda with the desire to smash a few guitars... I've no idea where he will be driving next year. I do know it will all be politics and money, and nothing to do with how well he drives. Yup, pretty vacant.
Lance finished on 24 points, a mere one point clear of Ocon. When one puts this in the context of Alonso (Aston) on 70, Gasly (Alpine) 42 and Ocon (Alpine) 23, it looks the dreadfully weak number it is. Alonso was just two points short of having triple Lance's score. Triple! Only Perez took a tougher beating this year.
K. Mag managed 16 points compared to Hulk's 41. Albon tied Daniel on 12 points apiece, which the Australian managed in a greatly reduced season. Then Colapinto on 5, followed by Zhou and Lawson tied on four points each, leaving Bottas, Sargent, and Doohan as the only drivers not to score.
Teams? McLaren maintained their margin over Ferrari. Two races to go and the gap stood at 25 points. Season's end and we have fourteen points remaining. An A+ to Ferrari for effort, but still no cigar. While 42 is my favourite number, 666, McLaren's final tally, is my least favourite number. The Book of Revelation calls this the Number of the Beast. No, not Mr Horner, but he of the infernal horns. Quite why that's his number is a discussion far beyond even the wandering remit of this column, yet, your scribe wished they had scored either 665, or 667. As noted in a recent article (Everything has a Price) Faustian pacts seldom come to a good end. We can only hope this number of points does not indicate that Zak (Aleister?) has been dabbling in the dark arts in order to progress. If he has, next season, and the 2026 rule change, could go awry for the team... The devil collects.
Red Bull finished in no man's land. A robust 63 points behind second placed Ferrari, yet a towering 121 points clear of fourth placed Mercedes. V. Max made their point, but as a team this was an under performance. Very curious to see who makes what points with large dollars in the near future to see who fills that second seat come Melbourne 2025.
Last of the triple digit scores is Mercedes on 468, before the base-jumping dive down to Aston on 94. Then the only remaining team battle on the grid for 2024 saw Haas slip from sixth to seventh as Alpine managed to put together two solid race weekends in a row. Over the space of a few weekends the French outfit moved from 49 to 65 points and secured a mildly surprising sixth. RB were on 46 two races ago, finding themselves on precisely the same number of points following the season finale. Not their finest hour. They made no points. Hope that form does not continue next year. Williams the same story. Were on 17 points, still are.
Then a shock! Sauber scored four points! One can only assume they read our previous article suggesting they were chasing maximal 2025 wind tunnel hours, not points and prizes. A modest non-zero number not harming their hours one second for testing next season.
Season 2024 is complete. Season 2025 awaits. V. Max will make more points. So too one hopes Alonso, Lewis and all the glorious usual suspects. Mohammed Ben Sulayem has made many points this season. Following curious governance changes within the FIA in recent days expect him to make far more next season. Indeed, the race for MBS to out-score Liberty Media and the teams could eclipse the on-track point scoring. Oh, then we have the on-going pointed disagreement between George and V. Max. Dear reader! Where is one going to find the time to make a point of actually watching races!?
Max Noble
Learn more about Max and check out his previous features, here
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