Missed It By That Much: 2024 F1 Predictions Re-Visited
Another Formula 1 season is in the books, and what a season it was.
Not only did we get a season in which Max Verstappen and Red Bull didn’t win almost every race, but they were far from the strongest team on the grid for much of the season.
While Verstappen locked up the World Drivers’ Championship in Las Vegas despite a strong push from Lando Norris, McLaren took the Constructors’ Champion thanks to a Norris win in Abu Dhabi.
But every weekend, as many as four teams seemed like they could be competing for a win and seven different drivers claimed victory throughout the 24-race schedule, the longest in the sport’s history.
It was a great season, and hopefully, 2025 gives more of this parity.
We got one heck of a Formula 1 season in 2024. (Getty Images)
But, before we crack open the box on our 2025 Farside desk calendars and start counting the days until the 2025 season gets underway, let’s check in on how my preseason predictions panned out.
We checked in on these during the summer break and, well, some were certainly trending better than others.
Haas: Gets Purchased By Andretti Before The Season Ends
Haas had a big question mark hanging over it as the team’s only team boss ever, Guenther Steiner stepped down and was replaced by Ayao Komatsu.
That was a big change and I thought maybe, with Michael Andretti still looking for a way onto the grid, he’d cut a deal to take the team off of Gene Haas’ hand.
Not only did that not happen at all, but if Haas had no intention of selling the team before this season, he definitely won’t want to sell it now.
Haas had a phenomenal season under Komatsu. They put out a solid car and drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Magnussen got the most out of it.
A P7 finish is great for Haas, even if they probably are a bit disappointed after P6 seemed to be within reach.
I hope they continue this trajectory next season in the final year of the current regulations because the potential is there, and I think the incoming driver line-up of Esteban Ocon and rookie Oliver Bearman should be a good one.
Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber: A Shock Podium
I knew this prediction was wrong by like the first round of pit stops in the opening race of the season in Bahrain.
Sauber’s car was bad.
It was slow, it was unreliable, and at the beginning of the season, they couldn’t even get the wheel nuts to work properly,
While I think Haas’ good car helped Nico Hulkenberg (who was, of course, great in his own right this season) snag a seat on the grid with Sauber next season, the current Sauber car was so bad it forced two solid drivers in Valtteri Bottas — a 10-time Grand Prix winner — and Zhou Guanyu out of the series for the time being (there’s some talk of Zhou being a candidate for the upcoming GM/Cadillac team in 2026 after his manager Graeme Lowdon was named team principal).
Not only was I wrong about a shock podium, but it wasn’t until the penultimate race of the season in Qatar that the team even scored points, and that was thanks to a strong drive from Zhou Guanyu and a healthy dose of chaos in the opening laps.
Sauber has one more season before they become Audi’s works team, and I’ll offer an early prediction for 2025: I think they’ll do what Haas did in 2021 and focus all of their development on their 2026 car.
So, 2025 may not be the most fun season for Hulkenberg and his teammate for next season, F2 champ Gabriel Bortoleto.`
Visa Cash App RB: Yuki Tsunoda Outscores Daniel Ricciardo
Now, here’s one I got right!
I think Yuki Tsunoda is one of the most underrated drivers in F1, while the teammate with whom he started the year, Daniel Ricciardo, is one of the most overrated.
Ricciardo is still a great driver, but ever since he left Red Bull — save for that win in the Italian Grand Prix with McLaren — he’s been a bit underwhelming.
So, that was why I was kind of shocked that the Visa Cash App RB — soon to be Visa Cash App Racing Bulls — would start the season with him instead of highly-touted youngster Liam Lawson.
That was why I thought it would be Tsunoda’s year, and I was right.
I didn’t see the mid-season driver swap coming, though I think the team made the right call. They couldn’t risk losing Lawson, especially considering he has always looked to be the heir apparent to the second seat at Red Bull alongside Verstappen.
There’s still a chance that Lawson ends up with a the big team, which would likely mean Yuki will race alongside F2 runner-up Isack Hadjar with VCARB, making Tsunoda the defacto team leader, a role I think he’s ready for.
Williams: Upward Trajectory Continues To P6
I still maintain that before the season started, this was not a bad prediction.
There just turned out to be two big problems, The first was that Logan Sargeant, who started the season with the team before getting the axe mid-season, still couldn’t get the hang of it in F1 after a tough rookie campaign.
The second was that all three of the team’s drivers — Alex Albon, Sergeant, and Sargeant’s replacement Franco Colapinto — were seemingly incapable of not crashing.
Worse yet, they seemed incapable of cheap crashes.
According to ESPN, crashes during the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend cost the team over $3 million.
In one weekend!
Those were far from the team’s only costly crashes, and in the cost cap era, that’s not the recipe for a successful season.
With a finite amount of money to spend each year, any money spent on crash damage is money that can’t be spent on development, and that sure looks to be what knee-capped Williams this season.
A P9 finish in the Constructors’ standings is a massive disappointment after a P7 finish in 2023, but I still think the team is trending in the right direction. They still have some solid drives out of Albon and Colapinto, and being able to lure Carlos Sainz into the fold now that his time at Ferrari is over is a good sign for 2025 and beyond.
Alpine: A Significant Tumble Down The Order
I can’t believe this one didn’t pan out.
After a P6 finish in 2023, this season, Alpine finished in… drum roll, please… P6.
That’s not a significant tumble down the order. That’s not even an insignificant tumble down the order.
And that stuns me because, after testing and ahead of the first race, this team looked bad. Alpine is known to have the weakest power unit on the grid (which is probably part of the reason they’ll switch to Mercedes power units in 2026 when the new engine regulations arrive).
However, this team made some significant gains throughout the season, and a double podium in Brazil essentially made their entire season.
Pierre Gasly even pulled an anti-Williams and managed to get through a season without costing his team a single dollar in damages.
That’s an F1 first.
They sure proved me wrong.
Aston Martin: Fernando Alonso Wins A Grand Prix
Would you believe it? We’ve got another prediction that I was way off on.
While Aston Martin had a solid year, finishing P5 in the standings behind the four front-running teams, they were never near the front at any point this season.
That’s a disappointment given the blistering start that they had to the 2023 season in which Alonso nabbed a bunch of podiums at the beginning of the year.
However, that success tapered off as the teams around them did a better job developing the car and that trend continued into 24.
It wasn’t a bad car, but it just labored away in the midfield. Even on high-downforce circuits where Aston Martin really shined in 2023, they were kind of invisible.
So, no; Fernando Alonso didn’t win a Grand Prix… but could he get one more before he hangs it up for good?
Well, they’ve got design legend Adrian Newey in the fold starting next season, but the first fully Newey-designed Aston Martin won’t come until 2026.
If Alonso can make it to the 2026 season, I think he might have a good chance to add at least one last Grand Prix win given the way Newey-designed Red Bulls dominated the 2022 regulations.
It was a great season for McLaren that ended with a Constructors' Championship… although i would have appreciated it if Oscar Piastri would have won a Grand Prix before Lando Norris. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
McLaren: Oscar Piastri Wins A Race And Does It Before Lando Norris
This one was close.
McLaren was so strong at the tail-end of 2023 that a few wins seemed imminent, and Piastri took his maiden Grand Prix win at the Hungarian Grand Prix on July 21
However, Norris, took the checkered flag about a couple of months earlier at the Miami Grand Prix.
So, I missed that one, but this is as good a time as any to talk about how good McLaren was this season.
Yeah, we all know that they won the Constructors’ Championship, so obviously they were great, but both drivers were phenomenal. Piastri was the only driver to complete every lap this season, which also speaks to the stellar reliability of the team’s car.
I think Norris was stellar, too—again, duh, he was P2 in the drivers’ standings—but I think they left some wins on the table when he had a bad habit of poor starts from pole.
It’s nice to see one of the iconic F1 brands performing at its best again, and what a season from the team in Papaya.
Carlos Sainz (left) couldn't quite defeat his teammate Charles Leclerc in his final season with Ferrari. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
Ferrari: Sainz Beats Leclerc In The Driver Standings
Nope. Missed this one.
I thought for sure Sainz would be driving like a man possessed to show the Scuderia was going to be missing after they decided to replace him with Lewis Hamilton, and at times, he did… just not enough to make my prediction accurate.
Now, he did miss the Saudi Arabian Grand Orox with appendicitis but even if he had won that race, he’d still trail Leclerc by a significant margin.
In the end, Leclerc came out on top 356 to 290, finishing P3 to Sainz’s P5.
It was still a great season for Sainz and for Ferrari, who I think will pick up right where they left off with a car that is capable of winning — or at least running up front — on most weekends.
Lewis Hamilton's first race win in two and a half years came at, of all places, his home race. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
Mercedes: Lewis Hamilton Returns To The Top Step Of The Podium
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!
Sir Lewis won two races this season, the first of which came at his home race, which was one of the coolest moments of the season. It’s hard to believe that it was his first win in about two and a half years, but it’s been a bit tough for Mercedes since the 2022 regulations came into play.
Despite the wins, Hamilton still had his fair share of struggles and frustrations with the car and — as we saw in his final qualifying session with the Silver Arrows — the team itself.
Mercedes still had weekends where they looked competitive all weekend long, but they were easily the streakiest of the four teams — Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes — that were capable of winning races.
Now, it’ll be really interesting to see if Lewis can add to those 105 wins by taking the top step in Ferrari red.
I think it can certainly happen, but I’m curious to see if Hamilton’s struggles in qualifying will prove to be the result of a car that wasn’t as well suited to his driving or if age is simply catching up to one of the best to ever do it.\
Red Bull: Mid-Season Driver Change
This one came way closer than I thought it was going to.
Sure, Red Bull has a track record of swapping drivers, both at the big team and at VCARB, so thinking they’ll do it again isn’t a total Hail Mary.
But considering how far off the pace of Sergio Perez was from his teammate Max Verstappen, I really can’t believe he made it through the season.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m a big Checo fan, but man, he really struggled this season.
And sure it’s tough when the guy you’re being measured against is one of the best to ever do it, but finishing P8 in the same car as the guy who won the championship? That’s rough.
There’s nothing official yet, but it doesn’t seem like Perez will be back in a Red Bull next season, which is really a shame because he has had an incredible F1 career and I’d hate to see it end on a low note.
…
What a season, and thank you for following a long with me! We'll be back at it in 2025 for what looks like it's shaping up to be an F1 season for the ages.