I’ve got to admit to being a little bit conflicted.
The 2024 season has been epic, with six different drivers winning multiple races for the first time since 1981, matching the record in the sport’s history. If George Russell picks up a win at one of the final three rounds – and he could well have done it in Brazil – then a new standard will have been set.
Granted, that record was equaled in 20 races out of a 24-race season, but still, it shows the quality in the field and how close the grid has become. And yet, the drivers’ championship battle has only felt like it was truly alive for a short period of time.
At the risk of accusations of British bias, I’m going to start with Lando Norris, because he’s receiving too much criticism. For fans who wanted to see a title fight develop, we were asking for near-perfection from a driver who had won just one grand prix in the summer break.
He was 78 points behind Max Verstappen at that point – an enormous gap to close regardless of the opposition – and had been driving a car capable of winning races for less than a year. Against the driver that had won the last three titles, and a team that had dominated the past two and a bit seasons, it was always massively unlikely.
For Norris to be heavily criticized for slipping from a very impressive pole position to finish sixth in conditions that caught out some of the best in the world is cheap. Yes, he’s got some developing and improving to do, and it wasn’t his finest performance, but the fact he lined up on Sunday’s grid off the back of a Sprint win and with genuine belief he could take further significant points out of Verstappen to take the title fight to the wire was remarkable.
But the main reason I don’t think it’s fair to be so harsh on Norris, is because it risks devaluing just how special Verstappen’s performance was.
The conflicted feelings are because it would have been great to see this season get a title decider. Honestly, in my position covering F1, you want to see great performances from the best in the world, but you also want to see competition and uncertainty down to the final round to maintain as much interest as possible. Casual fans are more likely to have their attention caught by a final race showdown, and that might just increase their commitment to the sport and grow it further.
Yet Sunday’s drive from Verstappen genuinely was one of the best he has ever produced, and that’s picking from a high-quality list. If there was a performance worthy of winning a world title – or in this case, taking the wind out of the sails of any challenger – this was it. And they don’t come along that often.
We’ve become used to seeing Verstappen dominating races over the past three years, but you don’t need me to tell you that he no longer has equipment that would normally allow him to do that. The rest of the field has caught up, and he hadn’t even finished a race within 19 seconds of the winner since the summer break.
In Brazil, he beat the field by more than that margin, all from the final restart at the beginning of lap 43 until the end of lap 69, and having started 17th. He still had a move to make at that restart, too.
Senna’s ‘Lap of the Gods’ at Donington in 1993 has become F1’s all-time benchmark for wet weather mastery, but Verstappen earned himself a place in the conversation last weekend. Motorsport Images
To come through such a competitive field was made to look easy, but was anything but. To put what Verstappen is set to achieve this year into context, there have only been two occasions in Formula 1’s history when the drivers’ champion came from a team that didn’t finish in the top two in the constructors’ standings. And only nine other times the drivers’ champion’s team didn’t win the constructors’ title. He’s faced serious competition over the balance of the year.
Rain is often described as the great leveler, and it really does offer up opportunities to drivers who might not normally get them. The car still plays a big part – you want it well-balanced and compliant – but every single Formula 1 car is capable of going so much faster than wet weather allows that it comes down to driver skill in finding the grip, generating heat in the tires, and having immense feel on the brakes and throttle.
Every single facet of Verstappen’s skill came out on Sunday. His first lap – up to the exit of Turn 1 starting lap two – was sensational. Was it Ayrton Senna at Donington in 1993? Maybe not, but the fact I’m telling you it’s an excuse to watch both laps back and be similarly impressed speaks volumes.
His getaway was excellent – it is so easy to get throttle happy in the second phase of the launch in those conditions – and then he was patient in Turn 1 and Turn 2 before driving clean round the outside of two cars in Turn 3.
All day he was so much better on the brakes than anyone else into Turn 1, as immediately evidenced by his pass on Lewis Hamilton when nobody had a true read of the grip level yet. All of the signs were there that he was going to threaten to win long before any red flag help.
Verstappen was 8.6 seconds behind the leader ending the first lap because of his position in the race, and that became 11.6 three laps later. But he was able to lap so quickly in clear air or when overtaking that by the time he was up to sixth on lap 13, he was only 10.4s off George Russell in the lead.
The aforementioned red flag came after a spell when the conditions were so treacherous, Verstappen had actually gone into protect mode. Esteban Ocon pulled away from him by 4.2 seconds on lap 29, and the Dutchman admitted he was happy with his place in the race at that stage, given where he’d started.
Once the final restart happened, an immediate display of that braking confidence into Turn 1 earned Verstappen the lead, and it’s here I can perhaps give him his biggest compliment. In a race with so many mistakes, crashes and interruptions, you just knew he had it won already.
There wasn’t a single part of me that thought anything could be thrown at him that would take that win away, and he certainly wasn’t going to make an error. Even setting fastest lap after fastest lap, you knew Verstappen was still driving within himself.
Days like that are so rare in a field of such talented drivers, but Verstappen was on a level head and shoulders above anyone else, in a manner that extended far beyond his car. It was almost to the extent that you wonder if he would have won in any car on the grid (perhaps except the Stake Sauber – let’s maintain at least some grasp on reality…)
Verstappen deserved the criticism that came his way after Mexico City, and he now deserves all of the praise that he’s getting after Interlagos.
He certainly deserves this championship, and on Sunday he delivered one of the great drives that will be spoken about for years to come to all but seal it.
