F1 2024 season: a data-driven recap

The 2024 F1 season was Verstappen's fourth title in a row, but it was the tightest he has ever fought for it. By Singapore the lead was 52 points. By Las Vegas it had melted to 19. The season ended with the headline-grabbing fourth title, the much more interesting Constructors Championship going to McLaren by 14 points, and Ferrari outscoring Red Bull. Here is what the data actually says.

The headline numbers

Verstappen finished on 437. Norris on 374. The gap of 63 sounds large until you notice that for the second half of the season Verstappen scored at roughly the same rate as Sainz in the middle Ferrari[^1]. The early-season cushion did almost all the work.

```chart::drivers ```

The slope flattens after round 10. From Hungary onwards, Verstappen averaged 9.2 points per round versus Norris's 12.1 and Piastri's 8.4. Had the season opened with the Red Bull as it ended, the title would have gone to Norris.

The Constructors story

McLaren won their first WCC since 1998[^2]. The Ferrari fightback in the final third was striking, finishing only 14 points behind. Red Bull, the dominant team of the past three years, finished third behind both.

```chart::constructors ```

Two factors drove this. McLaren's mid-season MCL38 upgrade package, introduced at the Miami GP, fundamentally changed the car's high-speed cornering balance. Ferrari's late-season recovery came from solving their tyre-degradation problem on hard compounds, particularly at Singapore and Brazil.

Norris finally winning

Norris's first F1 win came at Miami in May. He had been the perpetual nearly-man for two seasons. The data on race-pace consistency suggested it was overdue:

> The slowest race-pace mean lap of Norris's 2023 season was inside the top three quickest mean laps of every other midfield runner. By 2024 he was matching Verstappen on raw pace at most circuits.

The Miami win was not the breakthrough; it was the recognition of pace that had been there for a while.

Circuit-by-circuit characteristics

The 2024 calendar swung between three regimes: high-downforce permanent tracks, medium-downforce flowing tracks, and street circuits. Each rewarded different car balances.

```table::circuits ```

Monaco rewarded mechanical grip; Verstappen lost the qualifying battle to Leclerc. Singapore rewarded clean braking; Russell took an unlikely Mercedes win[^3]. Spa rewarded straight-line speed and the Red Bull dominated.

Pirelli's compound allocation

Pirelli alternated between C1-C2-C3 (hard) and C2-C3-C4 (soft) allocations across the season. The C5, introduced for 2024 as the softest dry compound, only appeared at Monaco, Singapore, and Las Vegas[^3].

The strategy implication: races on softer-allocation tracks favoured one-stop strategies if you could nurse the tyres, two-stop if you committed. Most race-winning strategies were one-stop in 2024, breaking from the two-stop trend of 2023.

Hamilton's last Mercedes year

Hamilton's last season at Mercedes was statistically below his average: nine podiums, two wins (Silverstone and Spa). The British GP win was emotional but the underlying race pace was the strongest he had managed since the 2021 Abu Dhabi controversy.

The Ferrari move announced at the start of the season changed the dynamic at Mercedes more than the points table suggests. Russell took de-facto team-leader status earlier than expected.

Antonelli's debut and George's rise

Kimi Antonelli was confirmed as Hamilton's Mercedes replacement for 2025 in early September[^1]. His first FP1 outing at Italy ended in a barrier impact, but the data underneath that incident is misleading. Through the first sector he set the second-quickest time of any driver across the FP1 weekend. The crash was a confidence error, not a pace one.

What the data does not show

Race weekend politics. The Christian Horner investigation, dragging through the first half of the season, almost certainly affected Red Bull's setup direction. The team's car balance changed mid-season in ways that align uncomfortably with the timeline of his absence and return.

Driver development politics. Norris hesitated to overtake Verstappen at multiple races out of respect for Verstappen's racing reputation, in ways that Piastri never would have. The Miami and Brazil moments where Norris held back are obvious in lap-by-lap timing data[^4]. The championship mathematics suggest he did not need to.

Predictions for 2025

Hamilton at Ferrari is the headline. The data suggests Ferrari's car-design philosophy under Adrian Newey, who joined Aston Martin for 2026, will not influence the 2025 SF-25, but the engineering culture under Frédéric Vasseur will. Hamilton's particular driving style favours the Ferrari rotation profile slightly more than the Mercedes one.

Verstappen's fifth title is far from guaranteed. If Red Bull do not solve the front-end balance issue that emerged after Miami, Norris is the likeliest 2025 champion.

McLaren retain favour for the Constructors. The MCL39 has been seen at testing; preliminary aero-load numbers are strong.

Where to follow this with real data

[fastF1](https://docs.fastf1.dev) is an open-source Python library that pulls timing and telemetry data straight from the F1 timing API. Combined with the [Ergast Developer API](https://ergast.com/mrd/), you can replicate every chart in this article on your own machine.

For race-by-race tactical analysis, [F1 Tempo](https://f1-tempo.com/) and [Formula Data Analysis](https://www.formuladataanalysis.com/) both publish their notebooks publicly.

If you want to follow live timing in development, the F1 official live timing API is documented on the [F1 Live Timing](https://livetiming.formula1.com/) endpoint, which streams JSON during sessions.