Seven things we learned from the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

And breathe. Formula 1’s 24-race marathon is done, dusted, and to be firmly ensconced in the history books; it’s already gone from present to past tense on Wikipedia.

It’s been a great year for F1, as expectations of another Max Verstappen title rout were firmly dispelled as the growing forces behind Red Bull nudged it off its perch. Verstappen overcame the renewed challenge to keep his hands on the title belt but, on the basis of this year, he’ll have his work cut out to claim a fifth.

The remaining loose ends were tied up at the Abu Dhabi finale, as McLaren laced up its first constructors’ title in 26 years to put Ferrari’s growing challenge firmly to bed. In his controlling victory at the Yas Marina circuit, Lando Norris took the oh-so-coveted vice-champion accolade to go down in history as one of seven billion people who didn’t win the F1 title in 2024. Better luck next year, chap.

An intense battle for sixth in the constructors’ championship also reached its conclusion: in a season-long fight contested by Haas and RB, the honours went to Alpine thanks to a dramatic recovery in the final quarter of the season (plus a handy bit of luck with inclement weather in Brazil). There’s still a few things left to resolve away from the circuit, namely the Red Bull and RB line-ups, even though Sergio Perez definitely has a contract and definitely won’t be going anywhere…

So, for the final time this year, let’s do this: here’s everything we learned at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

1. McLaren goes through hell and back again for first constructors’ title since 1998

In 1998, McLaren ended a barren spell in the mid-1990s thanks to the Adrian Newey-penned MP4/13 chassis and a strong line-up in Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, and came away from the year with both titles in tow.

The team was back at the front of the field but, somehow, didn’t win another constructors’ title for 26 years. Hakkinen won the drivers’ title in 1999, but Ferrari swung the teams’ crown by four points albeit after having its disqualification at the Malaysian Grand Prix overturned despite apparently illegal bargeboards. The Prancing Horse then followed up on this in 2000 to embark on a streak of dominance while McLaren paled in comparison.

The 2007 season should have been the year when McLaren secured its ninth constructors’ championship, if not for a Surrey copy-shop owner blowing the whistle on the wife of technical director Mike Coughlan – a request to photocopy 780 pages of confidential Ferrari documents had not gone entirely under the radar…

McLaren contended for titles in the early 2010s, but could not defeat Red Bull over that time period before enduring a regression over the next few years. Poor cars in 2013 and 2014 led to a disastrous switch to Honda powertrains, and its continued plummet led to Zak Brown arriving in 2016 and taking the top job from 2018. Thanks to his knack for pulling in partners and putting people in the right places, McLaren’s fortunes picked up. Now, it has a title to show for the last five or six years of steady, sustainable regrowth.

Norris largely carried the title fortunes on his own back in Abu Dhabi, while Oscar Piastri had to recover from being nerfed off the road by Verstappen and his own penalty for ramming Franco Colapinto into Turn 6 during said recovery. As long as Norris won, McLaren had the deal sealed – and Ferrari could not apply enough pressure to force the Briton into a mistake.

Piastri added his own point into the mix after rising to 10th by the end as a final garnish for the team’s championship win. Neither Norris or Piastri were born when McLaren last won the title – for those at Woking who have remained at the team in that time, it’s been a long old road back to the top.

2. The Prancing Horse can’t catch Team Papaya

Norris was able to keep Sainz at bay to clinch the manufacturer’s title for McLaren, despite a late-season Ferrari surge

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Ferrari had a jolly good go at getting involved in Formula 1’s constructors’ battle but, despite the colossal strides the team has made operationally and with its race pace over 2024, it didn’t have quite have the legs over McLaren to close it out.

Through Charles Leclerc’s Monaco win, Ferrari at least stayed in touch with Red Bull in the constructors’ standings but, after its disasterclass in Canada, it lost significant ground and was later overtaken for second by McLaren in Hungary. At one point, Ferrari was over 70 points away from the top of the championship, but Red Bull’s declining fortunes and Sergio Perez’s lack of contribution brought the defending champion outfit into view.

Ferrari moved ahead of it in Mexico, and got to within 29 points of McLaren for the final four races. The gap was just 21 points by the end of Qatar, leaving Ferrari needing two strong results from Sainz and Leclerc and hope other results went its way to snatch a first constructors’ title since 2008.

But Norris was too strong to overcome, as Ferrari ceded a tenth or two to McLaren over the weekend. It attempted to put McLaren under pressure with a few pitlane dummies, hoping to entice Norris to anticipate and cover off an imaginary pitstop, but the Briton’s gap was too great – he was in the position where he could simply respond to whatever Ferrari did. There was little that Maranello’s finest could do except hope that Norris encountered strife, but that ultimately never emerged.

3. Verstappen vs Russell, round two; Wolff vs Terrier, round 348

Russell was joined by Wolff for an extraordinary press conference before the weekend

Photo by: Ronald Vording

First, congratulations must go to Max Verstappen on his announcement that he is to be a father, although he already considers himself a “bonus” dad to his partner Kelly Piquet’s daughter. Verstappen is someone who has great appreciation for his close friends and family, and one imagines he’s very happy for his family to grow. And, even with the genetics of a Verstappen-Piquet child, the Dutchman is very much hoping his child doesn’t fancy following in the family business…

Right, that’s the nice bit out of the way – it’s now time to turn our attention to Verstappen’s soap opera-adjacent argument with George Russell. After Qatar qualifying, Verstappen was most aggrieved at Russell’s antics in the stewards’ room and accused him of heavy lobbying to give him a grid penalty.

Russell took his right of reply and stated that Verstappen’s behaviour in the stewards’ room was also questionable and suggested that the eventual race winner had a) threatened to put him into a wall and b) had spent a lot of the stewards’ meeting swearing.

First complaint: okay, fine, it’s probably fair to be aggrieved at that. Second complaint: shades of Milhouse shouting “Mom, Bart’s swearing” when Bart Simpson simply asked to have a go on the blue-haired poindexter’s new copy of Bonestorm. All this, weeks after the GPDA stated it wanted drivers to be treated like adults…

Verstappen stood his ground, Russell stood his, avoided each other at the drivers’ end-of-year dinner, then the whole thing fizzled out as everyone got bored of the whole fiasco. Professional sports dads Toto Wolff and Christian Horner, however, wanted to rekindle a relationship that Horner described as “love-hate, in that he loves to hate me”. Wolff was particularly aggrieved at how the Red Bull team principal had labelled Russell as “hysterical” and referred to Horner as a “yapping little terrier”.

Asked to respond in Friday’s press conference, Horner reeled off a tangent about the different terriers he’d owned in an uncharacteristically jaunty cadence, clearly having prepared the night before in the mirror. He then concluded his canine musings with the sentence “…but I’d rather be a terrier than a Wolff”.

End of season delirium, it seemed; everyone had gone barking mad in a season dogged with drama. It mastiff taken Horner all night to come up with that joke.

4. Perez’s defiance finally wavers – but he still has a contract for 2025

Perez has been insistent on his return to Red Bull next season, though that confidence changed on Sunday evening

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

If you were in absolutely any doubt, Sergio Perez has a contract for next year. To be fair to the beleaguered Perez, it must be increasingly difficult to answer the inevitable question about his future after finishing outside of the points again in a race-winning car. He can’t say “I don’t know what the future holds”, because that weakens his position; Red Bull offered him a contract earlier this year, he signed it, and since then has been decidedly pants. But, and here’s the crucial bit: he has a contract.

Ultimately that contract – which Perez has, by the way – will require some kind of buy-out fee to spring him from. And, as his results have continued to worsen with nine points from the last eight races, Red Bull’s decision seems very much made up.

It is expected that Liam Lawson will join Max Verstappen, as Horner continues to deny that the mere concept of Yuki Tsunoda exists, and that F2 runner-up Isack Hadjar will move up to RB to spend a year blowing up the team radio with his irascible nature. If you thought Yuki was a bit shouty, Hadjar is going to make him look like a penitent saint of patience.

That leaves Perez who, despite having a contract for next year, will be out of luck. And, despite his earlier defiance that he, indeed, has a contract for next year: that defiance perhaps showed its first sign of slipping in the post-Abu Dhabi media sessions – which he was apparently in a great rush to get to after retiring on lap one from damage with his clash with Valtteri Bottas.

“I just know I’ve got a contract to race next year,” Perez began, a sentence that shocked and surprised all in attendance. “Unless something changes in the coming days, that’s going to be the situation for next year”.

That’s the first acknowledgement he’s given that things could indeed change. He has a contract to race next year, but that doesn’t totally mean it’ll be honoured if Red Bull enacts a presumed break clause.

5. Hamilton goes forth after last dance with Mercedes

Hamilton made sure he ended his Mercedes career on a relative high

Photo by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Images

So that’s it: after 12 seasons, 246 races, 84 wins, and six titles with Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton is leaving after a fraught final season at the team. Initial promise with this year’s W15, a significant departure from its previous lineage of ground effect cars, subsided as its capricious nature meant the team blew hot and cold throughout the season. Hamilton, who values predictability and stability in his racing machinery, never fully gelled with the silver-and-black machine.

Finishing fourth is a little bit of a damp squib to end on: it’s not a win, and nor is it a podium, but it was a nonetheless brilliant drive from 16th on the grid – no thanks to the intervention of a displaced bollard on his final qualifying lap. The last-lap pass on George Russell would have been a pleasing way to end a monumentally successful tenure with Mercedes, even if the team was surprisingly low-key with its send-off for the seven-time champion after his decades-long association with the brand. One wonders if Hamilton asked them not to go too wild with the farewells, or if it was vice versa.

It’s hard not to be sentimental, because it’s in the pantheon of greater driver-team combinations: think Senna and McLaren, Schumacher and Ferrari, Vettel/Verstappen and Red Bull, Piquet and Brabham, Clark and Lotus, Stewart and Tyrrell. Regardless, Ferrari now beckons for Hamilton’s presumed final years in F1 – and it’s a change of scene and a change of style that he’ll nonetheless relish.

Mercedes has its next young hopeful to work with in Andrea Kimi Antonelli, while Russell takes on the team leader mantle for 2025 and beyond. It’s going to be a very different dynamic with Hamilton out of the picture.

6. It’s goodbye from him: Zhou, Bottas, Magnussen bow out…for now

Not the best end for any of the four definite F1 departures, with Bottas retiring after contact with Magnussen

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The scythe’s remorseless swing claimed the F1 careers of Zhou Guanyu, Valtteri Bottas, and Kevin Magnussen; the trio were left seatless in F1’s wildest driver merry-go-round in some years, and now have their futures to consider for 2025. The Grim Reaper has, kindly, left all three with the opportunity to resurrect their F1 careers in the future; Cadillac’s entry in 2026 may leave a position open, as may any further unexpected movements around the field.

In truth, 2024 hasn’t been a stellar year for any of them. For Magnussen, his year only picked up after it was confirmed that he wouldn’t be remaining in F1; the lack of comfort on the brakes that he’d dealt with in the opening period of the year appeared to subside in the final third, allowing him to put Nico Hulkenberg under the cosh on a more regular basis. But, of the three, Magnussen is probably the least affected.

The Dane has experienced life outside of F1 before, and has already been signed by BMW to drive its M Hybrid LMDh machinery – although it’s yet to be decided if this will be in the World Endurance Championship or the IMSA SportsCar Championship. Or both, perchance?

Zhou and Bottas, both let go by Sauber, want to stick around in F1-adjacent roles. Bottas is in line for a return to Mercedes as a reserve, having spent his best years at the Brackley squad, while Zhou is also casting his net around for a similar role with another team. Both would be handy additions to any team to have around; it has been a great shame to see them pootling around at the back with Sauber, and would be worthy contenders for a Caddy seat in ’26.

Franco Colapinto’s F1 journey also goes on hiatus after an explosive start to life in the championship. Although his stock took a dramatic rise and fall in his nine races at the team, he already feels like part of the furniture and seems far more at ease with the rigours of racing at the highest level than Logan Sargeant ever did. The loquacious Argentine will surely be back in a race seat in the future; perhaps a year in a reserve role will give him a bit more of a run-up than his surprise introduction this season.

7. Drivers in new colours and future stars in Abu Dhabi’s end-of-year test

Sainz was the first to hit the track for his new team on Monday after his podium on Sunday

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

We’ve already had a series of surprise driver movements this year; the old made way for the new, and the likes of Lawson, Colapinto, Jack Doohan, Oliver Bearman all got chances to impress part-way through 2024 for a variety of reasons: illness, sackings, driver bans, and, of course, “sod it, we might as well bin Esteban off a race early”.

But they’re not the only drivers to be put through their paces, as further young (and young-ish) hopefuls will get their chance to show their mettle in the end-of-year Yas Marina running – half Pirelli test, half young-driver extravaganza.

It’s also a chance for the teams’ 2025 signings to get their first running in at their new homes. Williams has acquired Carlos Sainz early for the test, as Esteban Ocon’s early Alpine release means he can drive for Haas. Sauber will get both halves of its new line-up behind the wheel as Nico Hulkenberg and newly crowned F2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto will drive, while Doohan and Andrea Kimi Antonelli also prepare for 2025 with their new teams.

Will Yuki Tsunoda star enough for Red Bull that he finally gets that coveted call-up to partner Max Verstappen? Will Pato O’Ward suggest to McLaren that he’s worthy of F1 in the future? Will Luke Browning sufficiently wind up Isack Hadjar again? We’ll find out on Tuesday.

That’s it for another F1 campaign, can McLaren take both titles next season?

Photo by: Colin McMaster / Motorsport Images