Formula 1 Season Preview: The Race for Second

Max Verstappen has won three straight Formula One championships, the last in historically dominant fashion. After an offseason in which very little changed in the sport, there’s not much reason to think he won’t coast to a fourth title.

Remember NASCAR? It used to be all the rage, with stock cars supplanting open-wheelers as the preferred racing vehicle in the U.S. in the 1990s. Big TV contracts followed, and then, well, kind of nothing. The reasons its bubble burst are legion and debatable, but one recurring theme, rightly or wrongly, is that the racing got predictable.

The new next big thing is, of course, Formula One, which has ridden a wave of popularity and goodwill from its Netflix reality series. (Again, an overly simplified explanation for the sport’s standing, but space is tight.) The great irony in the transfer of power is that last year NASCAR had one of its most unpredictable seasons ever. A total of 17 drivers visited Victory Lane, including a fella named Shane van Gisbergen, who won his debut, something that had never happened before in the top series’ modern era. (The moral: Pay attention to NASCAR. It’s fun!)

F1, meanwhile, witnessed an unprecedented level of dominance. Max Verstappen won 19 of the 23 races on the schedule, while also setting records for leading laps, taking points and leaving commentators grasping for something new to say. With no significant rule changes and zero driver changes, it’s hard to foresee things being very different in 2024. That’s not to say that F1 is unwatchable. Quite the contrary. Just because the same guy will be the favorite every weekend doesn’t mean a lack of drama. Indeed, it gins up plenty of excitement. Nineteen of the best drivers in the world are chasing one man, a preternaturally cool, calm, collected 26-year-old whose resting face is a kind of Mona Lisa smirk that says both I’m the best driver here and Ain’t this fun? (For the record, Dale Earnhardt had the same thing.) Verstappen isn’t a big bad—far from it. He’s so good that it’s worth watching just to see whether someone can take him down. And if he wins again? Well, you’ve just witnessed the best in the world doing his thing.

Verstappen’s boss, Red Bull principal Christian Horner, has scoffed at the notion that his driver could win every race in a season. He’s right, but that said, Verstappen will enter every race this year as the man to beat. But there are a few things that will stand between him and perfection.

Red Bull will enter the season as the favorite once again with Verstappen and Sergio Pérez (above) :: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Bumps in the Road

These four drivers are the most likely to beat Verstappen to the finish line.

Sergio Pérez

As brilliant as Verstappen is as a driver, the fact remains he’s blessed with a tremendous car. So is his Red Bull teammate, Pérez, and that alone makes him dangerous. Pérez won twice in the first four races of the 2023 season, then struggled as Verstappen dominated. While Pérez wound up second in the drivers’ standings, he crashed out in qualifying in Monaco in May and had two DNFs in the final seven races, leading to speculation that the 34-year-old’s seat may not be safe. Pérez has developed a reputation, for better or worse, as Verstappen’s sidekick/escort. (Max dubbed him the Minister of Defense for his work running interference on rival drivers.) With his job on the line, Pérez will likely be looking out for No. 1 in ’24.

Lewis Hamilton

When Verstappen controversially overtook Hamilton on the final lap of the 2021 season to clinch his first drivers’ title, it was hard not to see it as a larger, symbolic pass, a changing of the guard. Sir Lewis was on a run of four straight world championships, and Verstappen has been virtually unstoppable since snapping that streak. Hamilton hasn’t won a race in two years—but then again, who has? The Mercedes driver is not likely to challenge for a title—at 39, he’d be the fourth-oldest winner if he pulls it off. But he’s got the equipment, the skills and the know-how (he’s won 103 times, more than any driver in history) to be a thorn in Verstappen’s side on any given race weekend. Hamilton announced he’ll drive for Ferrari in 2025. His lame duck status could become a distraction, but the impending move will certainly make next season more intriguing.

Charles Leclerc

The only non–Red Bull car to win a race last season was a Ferrari. It was driven by Carlos Sainz, but Sainz’s teammate, Leclerc, is the more likely of the two to take a checkered flag in 2024. The 26-year-old native of Monaco had a bizarre three-race stretch late in the season in which he was disqualified in Austin for excessive floor plank wear and then crashed out on the formation lap in Brazil when his car broke down. But sandwiched between those odd occurrences was a third-place result in Mexico City, and Leclerc finished the season with three P2s. “Why the f--- am I so unlucky?” Leclerc complained in São Paulo. Assuming things can only get better, the ’22 runner-up could give Red Bull occasional trouble.

Leclerc failed to take a checkered flag last season, but he does have five wins in his F1 career.  :: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Oscar Piastri

To bring Piastri into the fold in 2022, McLaren had to take the young Aussie’s previous team—Alpine, where he had been a reserve driver—to court. He proved to be worth the fight. Last year as a rookie Piastri finished a respectable ninth in the drivers’ standings, but the improvement he showed as the season progressed bodes very well for ’24. After a predictably mediocre first nine events, the 22-year-old—who didn’t race in ’22 while acclimating himself to a new car and a new series—ended last year on a tear, finishing in the points in nine of the final 13 races, including a pair of podiums. Piastri won the ’20 Formula Three title and followed it up with the Formula Two championship the next season. F1 success appears inevitable.

Max Factors

A few issues, highlighted by these races, could trip up the champ.

Bahrain

March 2

Verstappen has it all: guts, instinct, savvy, intelligence. None of that does a driver any good if his car won’t start. Not only does Red Bull provide a machine that is as fast as all get out, but it provides one that’s dependable as well. Max has gone 41 races without a retirement (leaving a race without finishing 90% of the laps). If there’s an exception that proves the rule, though, it’s the Bahrain Grand Prix. Should gremlins torment Red Bull, this is the likely place. In 2022, Verstappen and teammate Pérez suffered fuel pressure issues. Four years earlier Verstappen went after a second-lap collision with Hamilton, but even then he lasted longer than his then teammate Daniel Ricciardo, who completed one lap when he lost power. Those are two of only eight GPs since ’16 in which neither Red Bull car scored a point.

Saudi Arabia

March 9

The 2021 Saudi Arabia GP was … interesting. After Verstappen got too aggressive and crashed out in qualifying, he got even more chesty during the race. He illegally passed Hamilton and was told by the stewards to give the position back. Verstappen slowed to a crawl (he wanted to take advantage of the drag reduction system, which aids passing but is available on only certain parts of the track), causing Hamilton to hit him from behind. A postrace brouhaha ensued, underscoring two things that could potentially get in Verstappen’s way. First, the arbitrary nature of F1 rulings (the stewards’ decision was a bit bonkers). And second, Verstappen himself. He’s usually cool, but the race showed that it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he could be his own worst enemy.

Max Verstappen Lapped the Formula One Field in 2023

Singapore

September 22

The Marina Bay Street Circuit is one of the most taxing tracks on the F1 schedule. (It’s also one of only two on the schedule where Verstappen has never won.) Like most street courses, it doesn’t have long straights that allow a driver to catch their breath, and the fact that it wasn’t designed for racing means that it’s not ideal when it comes to things like runoff areas. It might seem like that would benefit a driver like Verstappen: The more skill required, the bigger the advantage the most skilled drivers should have. But the flip side is that navigating such a tricky track requires good luck. In 2023, Verstappen’s 10-race winning streak came to an end in Singapore, in part due to a few bad calls by his team and two poorly timed safety car interventions. It was bad luck. But in ’24, that might be an opposing driver’s best hope to bring down Verstappen.

Las Vegas

November 23

The good news for those who were looking to topple Verstappen in Las Vegas last year? He seemed genuinely peeved to be at the venue’s first event. Forced to attend an opening ceremony with Kylie Minogue and John Legend, he groused, “It’s not about the singers. We are just standing up there, looking like a clown.” He wrote the event off as being “99% show, 1% sporting event” before driving a single lap. “I’m looking forward to trying to do the best I can, but then I’m not looking forward to this,” he said. He skipped a party hosted by the F1 CEO, saying he had “zero interest” in attending. So maybe it’s possible that Verstappen could be so put off by the glitzy distractions that his performance will suffer. The bad news for those who were looking to topple Verstappen in Las Vegas last year? He still won the race by two seconds.

Other Little Storylines

There’s more to pay attention to than the Flying Dutchman. Here are a few other storylines to keep an eye on in 2024.

Goodbye, Guenther

After Drive to Survive premiered on Netflix in 2018, one of the series’ first breakout stars was an unlikely character: Guenther Steiner . The Haas team principal endeared himself to fans with his candidness and penchant for cursing like a sailor, all in an accent combining his Italian and German roots. After driver Kevin Magnussen slammed a door following a Steiner tongue-lashing, the now 58-year-old provided one of the show’s most memorable lines: “He does not f— smash my door.”

Haas finished last in the constructors’ race last year, and in January it emerged that Steiner was being let go by North Carolina–based team owner Gene Haas. So what does the future hold for Guenther? He performed admirably in the Fox booth last spring for the NASCAR Circuit of the Americas race. And he’s currently at work on his second book, which should delve into the circumstances of his dismissal. His first tome, Surviving to Drive, chronicled a ho-hum 2022 season—and still sold 150,000 copies.

Haas will look significantly different after declining to renew Steiner’s contract in January :: Clive Rose/Getty Images

The Andretti Dilemma

Haas’s struggles since fielding his first cars in 2016 underscore the difficulty Americans have had in cracking F1—at any level. One of the few who have done it is Mario Andretti, who won the 1978 drivers’ title. (His victory in the Netherlands that year remains the last Grand Prix win by a U.S. driver.) His son Michael, a former open-wheel champ who briefly drove for McLaren in the ’90s, spent the last year trying to bring the family name back to Formula One.

Andretti partnered with General Motors in a bid to field a team. The FIA, auto racing’s governing body, signed off on the move, but to make the deal come to fruition, F1 itself also needs to give its blessing. And that’s where the trouble lies. While having a U.S. automaker and another U.S. owner would further entrench Formula One in a desirable market, the fact remains that bringing another into the fold would mean splitting an admittedly very large pie 11 ways instead of 10. On Jan. 31, in a move that was surprising only for its timing and expediency, Formula One Management denied Andretti’s application to compete in 2025 or ’26 on the grounds that it would fail to bring “value” to the series—mainly from a competitive standpoint. (Andretti would basically have had to build a car under the current rules for ’25 and then a whole new one when the rules change the following year.) But that clearly wasn’t the only value being considered. “It’s about the money. It’s only about the money,” FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem told the Associated Press last fall. “They don’t want to share the money.”

So Andretti remains in limbo, aware that when it comes to the U.S., F1 is happy to grow its footprint by staging races (there will once again be a circuit-high three events) without sharing the spoils.

Who’ll Take a Stroll?

One of the strangest rumors of last season—or any season, really—was that struggling Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll was going to quit F1 and become a pro tennis player. Because, as we all know, jumping into the ATP at age 25 is easy. Still, the fact remains that Stroll’s seat is hot. The son of the team’s owner, Stroll hasn’t had a podium finish in his three years with Aston Martin. And he can’t blame it on the car: Last year his teammate, Fernando Alonso, finished in the top three eight times. Stroll kept his job in the offseason, just as every other driver who finished the 2023 season did. Don’t expect that kind of stability going forward. The odds that Stroll is sacked by his dad during the season aren’t great, but there are several other competitors who could find themselves in a tricky situation simply because of their contract status: As teams are more likely to cut ties with a driver near the end of his deal, a staggering 13 of the 20 drivers on the grid will see their contracts expire after the ’24 season, making 65% of the field potential lame ducks.