An Analysis into F1 and the 2024 Championship Season
Welcome welcome to my roundup of the 2024 F1 Championship!
Ever since the gripping and (somewhat controversial) championship of 2021 between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen: a 7 time World-Champion striving for a historic eighth world-title that precedes the legendary accomplishment that of Michael Schumacher going toe-to-toe with an up-and-coming talented young contender, I was hooked.
Every race, every decision, and every single second matters. Even half a second can make a difference between popping champagne vs dragging your feet back to the car garage whilst holding back tears.
As an avid data and F1 enthusiast, I’m always trying to find ways to showcase how data can take our understanding of the sport to a different light. For those that aren’t religious F1 fans, I’m here to tell you that the 2024 season was epic in so many ways than just the convenient fact that it was the most recent season:
Firstly: it wasn’t a season of nap-worthy content like the 2 years prior because a certain Dutchman kept dominating the track… and the race was over before the likes of Tom Holland or Mbappe even picked up the chequered flag (that’s when the race finishes).
Second: McLaren came out of nowhere and contested (spoiler: won) for the Constructor’s Championship for the first time in a LONG time! This means for us mere mortal fans we could witness some exciting track overtakes and finally hear the National Anthems of other teams! Buckle up folks for a journey through the data that made this season and F1 unforgettable.
We’ll use R to crunch the numbers, visualize the standings, and bring you closer to the action than ever before.
It’s lights out and away we go!
Top Drivers by F1 Sunday Races
Before delving into the season specifics. Let’s set the scene.
Formula 1 racing began in 1950 and still stands to be the world’s most prestigious and well-known motor sport. In its history, it has seen countless talents emerge and go. Drivers are constantly scrutinised and replaced like no tomorrow. But who has actually managed to stay in the game long enough to reign as a household name within the sport?
Which drivers dominated Sunday races in F1 history? Let’s find out who the top performers were, strictly by race-day points (excluding sprint races for the moment as Sprint races came into effect 2021 and we’re here to look at the top F1 legends)
The chart above paints a striking picture of some of the most successful Sunday warriors in the modern era. At first glance, it’s impossible to overlook the towering presence of Lewis Hamilton at the top, his points total dwarfing even the most legendary names in the sport including the likes of Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen and Vettel.
Vettel’s dominance in the early 2010s showcased a driver who excelled in harnessing aerodynamic supremacy and an F1 living-and-breathing-encyclopedia in himself, while Verstappen’s more recent surge demonstrates the raw pace and aggression race-craft of a talent still in his prime.
Looking at the top 10, 6 of those drivers races throughout the 2024 season. Which further highlight the impressiveness of the motor-sport’s talent pool that exists today. We are seeing the sport in its prime with most of its top contenders gracing each race.
Sprint races
Sprint races was introduced in 2021 as a way to extending the typical race weekend where drivers qualified on a Saturday and raced on a Sunday, to feature an additional race where they could get extra points on a Saturday Sprint Race. Love them, hate them, they’re not going anywhere yet so lets look at how Sprint race points might change the course of our historical winners points.
Well well well it looks like the places has stayed the same!
So, it seems like after all the hoopla about adding sprints to “shake up the grid” and “spice up the championship,” the standings are still mostly consisting of the traditional Sunday race to accumulate the most points to make F1 history.
Let’s continue on…to the 2024 season
McLaren’s Climb to Constructors Champions
Twas the season of twists and turns in more ways than those on track. Before us we see the ultimate fight for the Constructors Championship for which McLaren knocked Red Bull off their 2 year streak.
Why do we care?
Because money makes the cars go round.
The top constructors prize pot stands at an estimated $140m which can make the difference between a team operating at the front of the pack or at the back.
This season McLaren showed their tire mastery of car upgrades from round 10 onwards which is why we are seeing the data showing a 40% jump in point-scoring rate and beat Ferrari for the top scoring team.
The secret?
They’ve optimised the art of making in-season upgrades with F1’s $135m cost cap which significantly improved the car’s aerodynamics around the track mid-season and took the track by storm and surprised us all!
And so they climbed steadily to gain their first Constructor’s Championship for the first time since 1998.
Well done McLaren.
Average Pit Stop Time
Pit Stops. They can make or break a driver’s race. They form a critical aspect of a team’s racing performance as the timing and duration of a pit stop can make or break a World Championship. Teams can execute an ‘undercut’ to get ahead of other teams pitting to change the tide in a race.
So is it a big deal?
Yes.
Do some teams do better at pit stops than other teams?
Almost definitely.
Has pit stop performance in F1 improved over time?
Theoretically it should. But let’s see.
When F1’s pit stop times hit a surprising peak of 25.4s in 2020, it wasn’t due to teams losing their touch. Formula 1’s meticulous COVID protocols reshaped pit lane operations – teams worked in isolated bubbles, maintained social distancing, and operated with minimal personnel. These measures, while crucial for keeping the sport running during uncertain times, clearly made an impact on pit crew dynamic and efficiency and we can see this with 2021 having the largest standard deviation bar in the last 10 years- performance took a hit in a variety of ways amongst different teams.
While many assumed COVID protocols caused 2020’s slower pit stops, the real story involves the FIA’s strategic intervention to prioritize safety over speed.
Following COVID protocols, the FIA introduced a new technical directive that prolonged pit crews’ change of tyres with mandatory gaps in between tasks to the driver’s permission to leave the pit. So what we are seeing is a plateau of pit stop performance in 2024 that is likely to persevere in the foreseeable future.
One of the most notable races of 2024…
For those who watched the 2024 season, one particular race may have stood out to you. And that was the Sao Paolo race where Verstappen managed to claw his way from P17 to P1 in extremely wet track conditions.
In F1 when it rains, it pours. Not just in rainfall, but in drama and excitement.
To demonstrate this a bit clearer we’ll be using F1data package to illustrate Verstappen’s track dominance over Sao Paolo:
Voila! Verstappen’s fastest lap around São Paulo—a multicolored masterpiece of motor-sport artistry that looks like a bunch of Skittles got together and decided to form a racetrack.
But what’s so special about São Paulo you ask?
Typically: not much.
But in 2024. A lot.
Because it rained.
A lot.
So much so that out of 20 drivers, 5 didn’t manage to actually finish the race.
Would you believe Verstappen started this race from P17 (that’s number 17th starting position) to finishing P1 by the end of the whirlpool race.
Looking at the plots above for the podium sitters at São Paulo for Verstappen (P1), Ocon (P2) and Gasly (P3) at an anti-clockwise lap formation.
The commonality across the plots is that each driver climbs the gears sequentially. All drivers also skip gears when decelerating.
Ocon by virtue of not using gear 2, climbs the gears quicker when exiting corners. Verstappen however spends a shorter amount of time in gear 2 compared to Gasly before climbing to a higher gear. This clearly boosted his performance to help him climb not only the gears quickly, but track position too.
Lap times and Sector Performance
The São Paulo Grand Prix 2024 Speed Comparison plot here can give us a glimpse into the different driving styles and performance of the top three podium sitters.
We can see the drivers hit their first peak speeds of above 300 km/h before hitting a sharp braking zone, with all three drivers having a very similar braking line which suggests they’re all optimising the racing line around the track. However, there are deviations between them.
Ocon’s speed in the Alpine gets a marginally better exit into the straight as he managed to retain the highest speed exiting the corner than both Verstappen and Gasly. Verstappen in contrast has decreased his speed the most which leads to a steeper climb of acceleration when turning out of the first corner.
The final sector is where we see the most variation between the drivers, with Ocon maintaining slightly higher minimum speed whereas Gasly on the other hand operating on slower speed trajectory past the 1500 km distance of the track which shows a slightly more conservative approach. Clearly Ocon and Verstappen’s aggressive tactics paid off as Verstappen finished P1 and Ocon P2 in an Alpine.
Overall what we’ve learnt is that the higher the risks you take on track, the higher the reward.
If you don’t spin off that is.
Did Max have a quicker pit stop to boost his success?
We’ve looked at the gears, the speed, the track layout and now lets finally have a look at whether or not it was purely the aggressive driving style that propels a driver to the top, or whether your pit crew does.
As we can see, Verstappen from the Red Bull team did not have a significant pit stop advantage. Red Bull’s average pit lane time was actually slightly slower than the likes of their rivals such as Ferrari, which actually hints that his success at the race appears to be driven more so by driver race pace more so than pit stop performance!
Who would have thought…
Wrap up for 2024
What a season indeed.
Diving into the data has certainly made me appreciate just how special this season was.
Surprise Constructors Champions, impeccable racing performances with wet and wild conditions and a never-ending evolution of F1 makes it all the more exciting.
For now, it’s light out and chequered flag on the 2024 season in full anticipation for the next one. 🏎️🏁