Motorsport.com writers’ most memorable moments of 2024

Working in motorsport media is a privilege that is not lost on the staff at Motorsport.com.

Travelling to races around the world and reporting on what happens – both on and off the track – is something we take very seriously. But it also affords plenty of opportunities to make lasting personal memories.

From a first visit to the fabled streets of Melbourne and Macau, to the reward for a lengthy wait for clarification on a Le Mans qualifying puzzle and emotional title deciders, there were plenty of high points to reflect on as the year comes to a close.

In our annual feature, our writers pick out their favourite memories from 2024.

By Jake Boxall-Legge, Stuart Codling, Sam Hall, Ed Hardy, Alex Kalinauckas, Stephen Lickorish, James Newbold, Marcus Simmons, Kevin Turner and Ben Vinel

18-24 March – Two ‘idiots’ go to Australia

When some of your fondest memories of watching Formula 1 involve the early wake-up call for the season opener at Albert Park (not so much the call itself, but the excitement of a new season), it was pretty special to actually go to Australia for the first time. Joined by my erstwhile colleague Matt Kew, for whom the Australian Grand Prix would be his last race before moving to pastures new, we decided to make it the best one yet and luxuriate in Melbourne’s quirks and eccentricities.

Our Airbnb in St Kilda was a brilliant find: a two-bedroom flat about 10 minutes’ taxi ride to the track, a five-minute walk from Blencowes Milk Bar (a purveyor in fine breakfast goods), and five-minutes-the-other-way from Balaclava’s Carlisle Street.

It was a faded baseball cap, mullets-and-moustaches kind of area, the kind where the cafes are deliberately decorated with mismatched furniture and unfinished pine. The sort where a hapless father, chasing his hyperactive child through the aisles of Coles, would weakly exclaim “Ezra, if you don’t stop running you’re not going to get a babyccino…” in an effort to quell the toddler tornado. The sort of place that was probably rough once, but reclaimed by people who wear their socks high, own a Hario V60, and distrust the Crosley record player. The good kind of people.

The ephemera of everyday observations aside, the Australian Grand Prix experience was brilliant.

It was warm and sunny, with a slight bite in the breeze to remind the local population that the heights of summer had slipped away. We’d watched St Kilda beat Collingwood in Thursday night’s Aussie rules game with some of our fellow journalists then, on Friday, we’d perched upon the photographers’ tower at Turn 2 and had a great time watching the cars circulate the Albert Park circuit from trackside.

From there, we went as far as Turn 3 (a longer walk than you might surmise) before Alex Albon gave us a red flag with his car-bending antics. Who knew that this was to begin Williams’ penchant for large shunts over 2024? Poor Logan Sargeant did the 24-hour flight to Melbs, only to get benched…

The race wasn’t half bad either. Carlos Sainz’s excellence and Max Verstappen’s broken brake drum gave us a lot more to get our teeth into – at that stage, it looked like it might be another Red Bull cakewalk. Sometimes, you want a bit of variety – and you’ll always get that Down Under. JBL

5 May – A much-needed moment of light relief

Verstappen’s good-humoured response to initially taking up the wrong seat in the Miami GP press conference added to our correspondent’s respect for him

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Max Verstappen provided a moment of mighty relief on what was, personally, the hardest weekend of the 2024 Formula 1 season: the Miami Grand Prix.

Having received the news that my Dad had suffered a (thankfully) minor stroke as race day in Florida began, the morning I’d planned to spend in the paddock within Hard Rock Stadium got rather written off. But, having been assured by family members back home that sticking to my original travel schedule and coming home the next day was the best course of action, with no immediate further danger apparent, concentrating on providing our on-the-flag race report coverage and our long-form post-event analysis was a helpful distraction.

Lando Norris then went and scored a famous first F1 win, which meant he arrived at the post-race press conference long after Verstappen and Charles Leclerc. In leading Leclerc in, Verstappen had duly plonked himself in the middle of the FIA press conference sofa – the winner’s position. It was understandable, he’d headed there 23 times from the previous 27 GPs.

A split second of silence followed. Then, when it was pointed out to Verstappen he needed to shift one spot right, he flung his head back and laughed – the room then joining him. It could’ve been an awkward moment, but Verstappen handled it with aplomb.

It added another layer to the ‘feel good’ run of stories from early 2024. But in that brief howl of laugher, Verstappen showed how even F1’s hardest can have a self-deprecating side. It added to my level of respect for him and provided a much-needed outlet from thoughts flying elsewhere. Cheers, Max. AK

11 May – A chaotic day at Spa

There was non-stop action for Newbold when the WEC headed to Spa for its third round warming up for Le Mans

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

A combination of factors tally up to make the third round of the 2024 World Endurance Championship my standout memory of the year. And unlike the 2023 event, that had nothing to do with cold tyres.

For starters, there was the surprise decision to resume the race after it had been scheduled to finish, following a lengthy red flag caused by Earl Bamber’s slight misjudgement that resulted in an enormous shunt for him and Sean Gelael on the Kemmel Straight. My race report explaining how Ferrari’s 499P had taken its first win at a conventional WEC round, moments from being sent, was instantly consigned to the dustbin.

That decision to restart would be subject to protest by Ferrari, and not just because it would scupper everybody’s dinner plans. But it was undoubtedly a popular one among the many fans who had stuck around, and there was a feel-good factor to seeing Jota become the first privateer winner of the Hypercar era. It was tinged with emotion too, as Callum Ilott dedicated the result to Anthoine Hubert, five years on from his death at the track in Formula 2.

Then there was the LMGT3 race, which kept us guessing right until the end. There were shades of Monaco 1982 as the lead changed hands multiple times in the closing stint, then twice in the space of a few seconds on the final lap. Franck Perera’s Iron Lynx Lamborghini had ducked into the pits, ending its hopes of win that would have been among the year’s biggest upsets, before the two Manthey Porsches swapped places as Richard Lietz pounced on a fuel-saving Klaus Bachler at Les Combes for victory.

Off the circuit, things were no less frenetic.

Excellent strategy from colleague Gary Watkins ensured we missed the worst of the raceday traffic, exacerbated by local construction work rendering the main access road impassable, which snarled a media colleague who only just made the race start. And as for the hordes of fans gathered behind WRT’s pit hoping to lock eyes on Valentino Rossi? Utter carnage. JN

17-19 May – Commemorating Senna

A statue dedicated to the memory of Ayrton Senna received many visitors on the weekend of the Emilia Romagna GP, including from F2 correspondent Hall

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

This was a tight one between two memories, but blasting around Goodwood in a series of supercars either in the driver’s seat or on the passenger’s side was pipped by a first visit to Imola.

What tipped the scale on this one was the pure emotion of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix weekend, which marked the 30th anniversary of Ayrton Senna’s fatal accident at the track during the 1994 San Marino GP. One of my formative memories was Murray Walker appearing on the TV to announce the Brazilian’s death, something that cemented a desire to one day make it to Imola. Therefore, when the opportunity arose alongside my F2/F3 duties this year, there was no hesitation.

Making my way along the path inside Tamburello, I first saw the wall of flags, pictures and other personal memorials left by fans to honour Senna. Reading as many notes as possible in the stark silence that surrounds the area, I came close to walking straight past the famous statue. I had expected it to be in a secluded area, not out in the open as turns out to be the case.

There is truly something disarming about being around a memorial of this kind. Although on a completely different scale, the feeling of relative emptiness and awe can only be compared to when I first visited Belgium’s Menin Gate.

With the various tributes paid across the weekend to mark the anniversary, the emotion kept coming. I feel truly fortunate to have been in the paddock to witness the events, and that first visit to the Senna memorial will stay with me forever. SH

24-26 May – Sampling the magic of Monaco

Can you get closer to the action at any F1 circuit?

Photo by: Stuart Codling

Editing a monthly magazine with a permanent staff of just three people has entailed spending the past two and a half years largely chained to a desk while acting as puppet master to those on the ground. So it was a delight to punch out and work ‘on the ground’ at a grand prix, all the more so since a pet bereavement earlier in the month had left the home office a colder and sadder place.

Monaco ranks among Formula 1’s most polarising grands prix since the race itself is, admittedly, a high-speed parade awaiting the almost inevitable moment of brain fade on the part of one or more participants, whereupon everything can change. It’s OK. You don’t have to like it.

Monaco remains quaintly and almost innocently unique in a calendar that’s beginning to become overstuffed with new venues trying too hard to outdo one another’s schtick even as they hurtle down a funnel of diminishing returns.

Night races? Done. Day into night races? Also done. Fastest ever street circuit? Yeah, yeah, there’ll be another one along next year. A night race on a street circuit, but on Saturday night? Puh-lease.

Contemplating the crop of new venues I’m reminded of the history of the Azerbaijan national flag which ripples in the wind that blows into Baku off the Caspian sea. It sits on what was – upon first hoisting in 2010 – the world’s tallest flagpole, 162m. This record was but fleeting since within a year it was eclipsed by a new and fractionally taller (165m) erection in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, which in turn was out-heighted by poles in Jeddah (171m), then St Petersburg (175m).

Frustrated, the Azerbaijan regime then extended its pole to 192m but – surely not! – even before this edifice reached completion Egypt played its 202m trump card in Cairo. Fear not, doughty citizens of Baku – the new iteration of the Azerbaijan flag is the world’s largest, almost the size of a football pitch, and at 500kg indubitably the heaviest. Stitch that, Egypt!

In contrast Monaco remains, by and large, what it always has been – for better and for worse. Asphalt has replaced packed dirt criss-crossed by tramlines, but the track layout is more or less as originally set out byAgent general de la Regie des tabacsAntony Noghes after a series of walkabouts in 1928. Overtaking was tricky even in the days when cars had cable-operated brakes actuating the front axle only.

Even amid the expansion of the calendar to venues seeking to one-up existing haunts, Monaco retains its appeal for Codders

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

As to the inhabitants – well, Somerset Maugham was describing the entire French Riviera when he coined that oft-repeated descriptor “a sunny place for shady people”, but it is seldom more appositely deployed than when summing up the principality. A whiff of old-world decadence still wafts around the many storeys of freshly poured concrete.

And yet this remains a magical event to attend even if it isn’t without its inconveniences, such as the first-day logistical faff of having to drop off colleagues at the media centre and then schlep half way across town on foot, with full pack, to collect my own credentials – by which time I was sweating like Boris Johnson taking a polygraph.

There’s no other circuit where you can stand that close to racing cars travelling at utterly ridiculous speeds given the proximity of the barriers. Or where you can stand at a particular spot and imagine Stirling Moss glancing back up the hill to measure his lead over the chasing Ferraris in 1961. That’s why, in general, the haters are those who have never been.

For the rest of us it’s an experience to savour – and you might even come away with a chunk of Stake… SC

13 June – Shedding light on a misunderstanding in the Bourdais camp at Le Mans

Vinel showed admirable persistance waiting for Bourdais to emerge after he’d missed out on pole at Le Mans

I’ve been covering the Le Mans 24 Hours for a long time, but the 2024 race was a special one for me because it was the first since I moved to Motorsport.com Global and Autosport after being part of our French team for a decade.

The highlight of my week was figuring out what happened at Cadillac when Thursday night’s Hyperpole was red-flagged with just under eight minutes remaining on the clock.

Members of the Chip Ganassi-run factory team were seen celebrating around their driver Sebastien Bourdais, who had set the provisional fastest time, and his father Patrick… mere seconds before the session was restarted. Bourdais’ #3 Cadillac did not go back out and dropped to third in the classification.

It was around 8:30pm when this happened, and I spent the best part of the next four hours waiting for the French veteran in front of the Ganassi garage in order to get his version of what looked like a blunder – long enough to get acquainted with their security guard, who was kind enough to let me shelter under the awning when it started to rain.

Bourdais finally emerged around quarter past midnight and wasn’t in a great mood – I can’t blame him; as a driver, media duties wouldn’t be what I’m looking forward to at that time of night – but explained that he didn’t have enough fuel to go back out after extending his first run due to the threatening weather.

While the above was communicated to other media, he also made it clear to me that he personally wasn’t celebrating – and hit out at the press.

“If anything, I was telling everyone: ‘There are seven minutes and 40 seconds left, I don’t know why you’re here asking me for pictures,’” he related. “That’s quite funny, because when we weren’t on pole, nobody was there anymore. It was funny, but it’s quite typical from the press.”

One might argue the photographers did exactly what they were meant to do.BV

28-29 September – British GT crowns its champions

Hardy got to see the culmination of a superb season of British GT unfold at Brands Hatch

Photo by: JEP

I’ll always look back on 2024 with fond memories given it was my first championship gig, covering British GT. The role started with an exhilarating McLaren GT3 passenger lap at a wet Donington Park in March, driven by Le Mans class winner Chris Buncombe, and culminated in an emotional season finale at Brands Hatch in September.

That weekend, Rob and Ricky Collard became just the second father-son pairing to clinch the GT3 crown after Glynn and Jim Geddie in 2011. I’ve spoken to the Collards a lot this year so I was not surprised to see Rob’s son Ricky, who often wears his heart on his sleeve, burst into tears in parc ferme after a rollercoaster of a weekend.

The pair arrived at Brands with a 24.5-point lead over title rivals and Barwell Lamborghini team-mates Sandy Mitchell/Alex Martin, so it initially appeared like a relatively straightforward job given such a large margin has never been overturned on the final day.

But no. The #63 Huracan suffered an engine failure in first practice, meaning the Collards managed just eight laps across the opening two sessions compared to 67 for the sister Huracan.

It was the worst kind of preparation for qualifying, where the Collards clocked in sixth. The session included a 360 rotation for Ricky, while Mitchell/Martin qualified third. When I spoke to Rob and Ricky in the paddock, the look on their faces was one of bewilderment and despair.

Could Mitchell/Martin do the unthinkable and clinch the title? Several media centre colleagues certainly thought so.

But Rob drove superbly all year and showed his class in the race by climbing up to third in the first of two hours, before Ricky showed great composure to stay within the points-scoring positions he needed to – which was top five – despite Mitchell/Martin taking a maximum score.

The father-son duo shared an emotional hug in parc ferme and I’ll always remember being in the Barwell garage afterwards, as the Lamborghini squad celebrated such a dominant year. The story just had a feel-good factor as Ricky had previously spent two frustrating seasons in touring cars, while 2024 may prove to be Rob’s final year of racing given he’s now aged 56. So, hats off to the pair. EH

5-6 October – Bennetts trips and Hill leaps to BTCC glory

This year’s BTCC finale was memorable for a few reasons this year

Photo by: JEP

“Good job I wasn’t wearing my Breitling.”

It was an inauspicious start to the British Touring Car Championship title-deciding weekend for West Surrey Racing chief Dick Bennetts. He’d been looking at his phone while walking behind the Brands Hatch pits, and came a cropper when he tripped on one of the numerous plastic covers that teams install to cover the electricity cables running out of their garages.

There was a nasty gash to poor old Dick’s cheek, and his watch had been smashed in the impact with the asphalt. “It’s the first time I’ve had an accident in the paddock since 1982, when we were changing a Formula 3 engine at Thruxton and it dropped on my foot,” he mused.

That was on the Saturday morning, but by Sunday afternoon all injury to self and property had been forgotten. Bennetts and his WSR staff were celebrating Jake Hill’s championship success – and, of course, BMW’s umpteenth manufacturers’ crown.

It was an emotional time for many. From my side, I’ve known Jake’s dad Simon since we both raced in Formula First in 1989-90; he worked like hell even then to gain a foothold in the sport, and if anything has toiled even harder for his son.

The net result is a consortium of Hill supporters and backers. One of those who goes under the radar is John Miskin, who was instrumental in Hill’s manager Mark Blundell’s mid-1980s FF1600 and FF2000 exploits with Fleetray Racing, and who I first got to know when he supported my old pal Piers Hunnisett during his 1992 Formula Vauxhall Lotus title-winning season.

“I never go and talk to Jake on the grid,” related Miskin among the happy throng afterwards, “but before the last race today, he beckoned me over and thanked me for everything I’ve done.” It was that kind of a day. MS

23-24 October – Watching the next generation battle it out

Turner cherished the opportunity to watch Fairclough, Sharp, Lindblad and Slater be put through their paces

Photo by: Motorsport Images

You’d think the 3.7-mile Silverstone Grand Prix circuit in cars entirely unfamiliar to them would be enough to comfortably separate four teenagers. But no. This year’s shootout for the Silverstone Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award was ridiculous.

The judging panel, led as ever by the force of nature that is Derek Warwick, was already pretty excited about the 2024 finalists. Arvid Lindblad had won more Formula 3 races than anybody else this season, in his rookie campaign, Deagen Fairclough and Freddie Slater utterly dominated their respective F4 championships in Britain and Italy, and Louis Sharp had taken the GB3 title in his first year in the series.

But the level and closeness of the battle in MotorSport Vision F2, Beechdean Motorsport Aston Martin GT3 and RLR M Sport Ligier LMP3 machinery was unprecedented. The winner won’t be announced until the new-look Autosport Awards in January, but I don’t think it’s giving away too much to give a snapshot.

Across the 12-lap pursuit run in the F2 cars, the ‘winning’ margin – in terms of total time – was 0.001 seconds, and 1.3s covered all four. And, of course, they didn’t have the decency to finish in the same order across different sessions!

Many hours were subsequently spent looking at the data and debating which runs, if any, should be weighted more than others. And it was definitely close because the level was high – just ask the benchmark drivers… KT

13-17 November – Majestic Macau

Enthralling GT contests in Macau justified a lengthy trip for Lickorish

Photo by: Macau GP

There is no real contest when it comes to my highlight of the season. Being asked to report on this year’s Macau Grand Prix was a huge privilege. And what a place for a motorsport event it is! The backdrop of ludicrous skyscrapers and the sheer wealth on display of the special administrative region is staggering. Then the circuit itself is something else!

Being able to walk the majority of the track on the Wednesday gave a true perspective of just how narrow it is. Being driven around the Melco hairpin in a road car is crazy enough, let alone racing machinery. The Guia circuit also offers some truly brilliant viewing opportunities. One of my favourites was on the inside of R Bend, where you are practically on top of the cars as they negotiate the final turn.

And that corner was the scene of some pretty remarkable action during the thrilling FIA GT World Cup race. It is not famed as an overtaking place, but nobody had told Antonio Fuoco that! Ferrari’s Le Mans winner made two sensational passes on the inside of the corner to grab the lead, only for a controversial clash with Raffaele Marciello to send him plummeting down the order.

While the single-seaters were shambolically stop/start amid the rain, the GTs more than made up for it with a Macau contest that will be remembered for many years to come. SL

There truly is nowhere like Macau, and getting acquainted with it trumps Le Mans road tripping for Lickorish

Photo by: BMW Motorsport