Autosport Top 50 of 2024: #1 Max Verstappen

“A Schrodinger’s season for Max Verstappen. Concurrently his greatest and never his greatest.” That’s how we’ve described the world champion’s marketing campaign in our Formula 1 driver rankings. And that’s as a result of there are two methods of Verstappen’s efficiency over the previous months.

One is that his success in profitable the title once more with immense efficiency peaks towards the background of a squad seemingly imploding round him mixed into Verstappen’s biggest ever season. The opposite pairs the moments on this marketing campaign that had been of a decrease ebb than in his different championship wins with extra cynical (some would say disappointing) ways in battle, to dip it beneath his different highs total.

Effectively, now it’s time to open the field.

Beginning with ‘the very best’ argument, two issues can’t be denied. The primary is how crushingly good and dominant Verstappen was in profitable 4 of the opening 5 races this time period. This may need been a straight run had been it not for his brake hearth in Melbourne.

The second is how, in 2024, Verstappen produced increased efficiency peaks than ever. His Brazilian Grand Prix wet-weather masterclass will reside longest within the reminiscence, however his beatings of Lando Norris at Imola, Barcelona and in Qatar had been arguably even higher given they didn’t contain help from purple flags in gaining locations.

That’s to not denigrate Verstappen’s Interlagos triumph – he was distinctive there. Move after go at Flip 1, constructing on his wonderful 2016 race in comparable circumstances on the similar monitor. And there he lastly snapped Norris’s faint title hopes. Actually, it was a champion’s drive and Verstappen is a worthy title winner as soon as once more.

These Imola, Spain and Qatar triumphs are so noteworthy as a result of in every Verstappen triumphed towards the chances, with Norris blowing the very best automotive potential total within the latter two and unable to discover a well beyond within the first when the McLaren got here alive within the ultimate stint.

That Verstappen fended him off at Imola having fully misplaced his tyre temperature working window was, on reflection, one thing certainly nobody else might have achieved within the RB20. Nevertheless it wasn’t simply the wins that had been spectacular.

“He simply adapts extremely effectively to what he’s received,” Pink Bull staff boss Christian Horner marvels of Verstappen’s efforts to financial institution factors in these races the place his automotive was removed from class-leading. “And I feel what he confirmed, actually, this yr is simply one other degree of maturity and expertise. Nonetheless bringing dwelling hard-earned factors was extremely essential.”

Maybe extra spectacular was how he fell from a front-row proportion of 72.7% with the all-conquering RB19 in 2023 to only 62.5% with its successor.

In these contests – to which we’ll add his Silverstone podium and Monza sixth – Verstappen completed second when in every McLaren had the tempo to complete simply 1-2, and in Singapore the Ferrari drivers fumbled tempo that meant they need to have been difficult for the rostrum, or doubtlessly the win.

Verstappen continued to show searing one-lap velocity in 2024, including one other eight poles to finish the yr on a profession complete of 40 – away from Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Jim Clark within the all-time standings. However maybe extra spectacular was how he fell from a front-row proportion of 72.7% with the all-conquering RB19 in 2023 to only 62.5% with its successor.

Clearly the opposition was a lot elevated this yr. This explains why he mentioned after securing the title in Las Vegas that he feels he’s grown “as a driver” and turn into “extra throughout” by way of execution.

On the ‘not his greatest’ argument, the errors are a smart start line. Verstappen scraped the wall exiting Ste Commit on the ultimate Monaco Q3 runs and blew a attainable shot at pole, which grew to become sixth within the following day’s procession. Then, at Silverstone, he was oddly off the highway at Copse in Q1 and picked up appreciable flooring injury. This left him beginning fourth and out of the pole battle once more.

Verstappen was once more electrifying in qualifying, notching eight pole positions in 2024

Picture by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Pictures

The errors lengthen to how he drove in battle too. Simply as at Monza in 2021, late within the Austrian GP he reacted poorly to a protracted Pink Bull pitstop – on this case shedding him a really well-built lead the day after he’d blown the opposition away in qualifying. With Norris flying once more on McLaren’s lower-fuel/harder-tyre magic combo, it was Verstappen’s squeeze that led to their contact and his penalty.

In Hungary – this time annoyed that the RB20’s higher-downforce improve had not put Pink Bull again forward of McLaren on pure tempo – he collided with Lewis Hamilton but once more. And, similar to in Austria, he was lucky that this didn’t price him extra factors.

Elsewhere, he cracked when the stress with Norris was at its highest – at Austin and in Mexico. Within the former, his slip off the highway in his now-honed artwork of turning defence into assault – assume Brazil 2021 versus Hamilton – once more had a fortunate ending. Right here the stewards selected to deal with Norris overtaking off-track on the similar time.

In Mexico, Verstappen received it incorrect in persevering with to drive totally to the monitor exit at Flip 4 when Norris had efficiently tailored his personal ways and received his wheels forward, conforming to F1’s ‘Driving Requirements Pointers’ necessities, which he hadn’t achieved in Texas. Verstappen’s subsequent transfer in forcing Norris off three corners later smacked of red-mist lack of management. It was the form of factor we hadn’t seen – however many had continued to surprise about – since that 2021 marketing campaign.

This impacts for 3 causes on evaluation of Verstappen’s 2024 season. First, with Norris and McLaren nonetheless rising into title-contending roles, and Ferrari and Mercedes occurring and off the boil, they should be thought-about weaker opposition than the title-hoovering Hamilton/Mercedes of 2021. And for many of 2022 and all of 2023 Pink Bull had no opposition.

Second, whereas Verstappen made extra errors in 2021, in 2024 his errors had been of higher magnitude. For instance, his crash in qualifying for the 2021 Saudi Arabian GP solely relegated him to 3rd on the grid.

A tiny slip that yr overtaking Hamilton on the surface of Flip 4 in Bahrain, for a first-time title contender towards a seven-time world champion, is much less of a difficulty than getting the battle incorrect towards Norris this yr in Mexico – albeit this time because the ‘defender’ at Flip 4.

However maybe the strongest argument for Verstappen’s 2021 trumping his 2024 is how, in his first title yr, there have been no weekends as unhealthy as his Azerbaijan GP trial of this season.

Verstappen wasn’t with out fault in 2024, making some notable errors together with clashing with Hamilton in Hungary

Picture by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Pictures

Right here, Verstappen blamed his set-up selections, which centred on experience top degree, for his poor, off-colour weekend total. However his half in adopting that can’t be neglected. Ditto Sergio Perez, who Verstappen in any other case destroyed in 2024, outqualifying and comprehensively outracing him that weekend.

This was one race on from the RB20’s dealing with nadir at Monza. However there Verstappen had the sting on Perez. On the altering of the automotive’s dealing with, Horner pinpoints this to Imola, the place “we introduced an improve the place I feel we simply made the window that bit smaller on the automotive. The automotive grew to become fairly tough to function from that time on.”

For Verstappen this meant wild swings in discovery of whether or not he could be grappling oversteer too extreme even for his high-entry-speed, brake-steering type, or be hit with the understeer he detests, as Pink Bull struggled to get the RB20 gelling with the difficult Pirellis. Typically in qualifying, this swing would occur section to section as circumstances modified.

Horner credit Pink Bull’s late-season turnaround with the RB20’s dealing with – launched in its Austin flooring and sidepod upgrades – to “what he was feeling”

In response, Verstappen put in what Pink Bull insiders declare was essentially the most hours he’s ever spent at its Milton Keynes manufacturing unit. “Everybody was struggling to grasp,” he explains. “So, simply asking questions, working collectively, information, evaluation that got here up after each single race we are able to.

“I’m not the engineer, I’m not going to inform them how you can design a flooring or no matter – a suspension. However I can ask questions, after which we focus on, and we undergo what we are able to see from the information of the monitor, wind tunnels, CFD, all these items, simulator. And with all of the sensible heads within the staff, you sit collectively and also you simply have an open dialogue about issues. And I defined my difficulties with the automotive. Typically it’s crucial to have everybody collectively in the identical room.”

Horner credit Pink Bull’s late-season turnaround with the RB20’s dealing with – launched in its Austin flooring and sidepod upgrades – to “what he was feeling”. He continues: “That’s the place Max was vastly spectacular this yr – the management that he impressed from inside the automotive for the path that we would have liked to take to handle a few of the points.”

How then to resolve whether or not this actually was Verstappen’s greatest F1 title given these opposing instances? Focusing solely on on-track achievements/errors, 2021 wins, and bearing in mind his galvanising of Pink Bull to handle the automotive’s mid-season points even across the fallout from the staff’s administration warfare, it should be this one.

Horner believes Verstappen deserves a substantial amount of credit score for Pink Bull’s late season enhancements for his suggestions

Picture by: Pink Bull Content material Pool

However Verstappen himself had a component in that charade. It was his father locked in a tussle with the staff principal, Verstappen implying that he would go away if Pink Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko was axed, and never doing sufficient to close down Mercedes chief Toto Wolff’s wooing mid-season. And he was vocally on the radio slamming Pink Bull’s technique and upgrades in Hungary.

His camp will argue that they had been performing within the staff’s greatest pursuits. And that “being on the restrict, pushing a automotive typically past its capabilities”, as Horner places it, contributed to his errors. But the identical is true of 2021, with stronger opposition.

That mixture turns into our deciding issue. This wasn’t Verstappen’s greatest title. However that doesn’t imply it wasn’t bursting with brilliance.

A standout yr for Verstappen retains him on the high of our Prime 50 rankings for the third consecutive yr

Picture by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Pictures