McLaren clinched the 2024 Formula 1 constructors' title after Lando Norris won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in dominant fashion, signaling the return of Papaya to the top.
While we arrived in Abu Dhabi with the F1 drivers' crown already secured by Max Verstappen, Ferrari were still hoping to beat McLaren for the constructors' title.
While the drivers' championship is the more coveted, the constructors' is a reward to all the hard-working people who are in the background, the unsung heroes of F1 who peg away in the factories and garages to make sure two cars are available for the teams' drivers.
In addition to McLaren's return to the top, we saw an F1 era ending last weekend in Abu Dhabi with Lewis Hamilton racing for the final time for Mercedes after a collaboration that rewrote the history record books of our sport.
In addition to Hamilton, other drivers were contesting their final races with their teams: Carlos Sainz with Ferrari and Nico Hulkenberg with Haas, the former moving to Williams, the latter to Sauber.
Some drivers were in their final races in F1: Zhou Guanyu, Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas, Franco Colapinto, and most probably Sergio Perez.
While Magnussen is on his way to BMW to be part of their World Endurance Program, we are yet to see whether any of the other drivers will resurface in F1 in a reserve role.
On the other hand, it was Jack Doohan's first race with Alpine, as Esteban Ocon—according to insider information acquired by GrandPrix247—was unceremoniously thrown out of the team before what would have been his final race with them.
In the end, the 2024 F1 season was a great spectacle with action, controversy, and intrigue both on and off the track, as the stage is now set for an even more interesting 2025 season, and as such we are now in the final Takeaways column this year.
So here we go, our takeaways from the 2024 F1 season finale, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Enjoy the party McLaren, it gets real in 2025
The 2024 F1 constructors' title was McLaren's first since 1998, back in the days when it was run by Ron Dennis and when its cars were still painted silver.
It took the great team 26 years to return to the top of the F1 championship, quite a long time, but what makes this success special is that it was achieved in the colors Bruce McLaren chose for his team when he founded Bruce McLaren Racing LTD in 1963.
While Dennis turned McLaren into a legendary team in F1, at the end of his tenure at the helm, the team was a shadow of its old self for various reasons we will not go through now, but credit to Zak Brown, who brought McLaren back after being in the doldrums for years.
It was a tough task to fix McLaren, and it took Brown a long time to do so, but in the end he set up the team and brought in the right people to do the job, and while there were setbacks during that journey—Andreas Seidl leaving and James Key underdelivering—in the end, with Andrea Stella installed as team principal and some serious technical hires, Rob Marshall from Red Bull jumps to mind, the team from Woking was on its way to success.
But they were not perfect, as they did not manage their drivers in the best ways, and some of the races were also badly managed from the pit wall, but as I said in previous columns, McLaren need to learn how to win again, and 2024 was the best crash course for them, and in 2025, we will see its results.
With Norris and Oscar Piastri, McLaren has a formidable driver pairing, and if they start off 2025 with a strong car (the MCL38 became a winner only after Miami) and manage their drivers in a better way, Verstappen will find it even tougher to defend his title.
Verstappen winning seven of the first ten races meant he ran away with the championship, so Norris and Piastri, one of them that is, need to make sure that doesn't happen in 2025.
Norris said 2025 will be his year, but I have some news for him: Piastri is thinking the same, and it will be interesting to see the dynamic between them.
But for McLaren as a team, anything less than a 2025 F1 title double will be a failure. But for now, enjoy the champagne... Well done!
Hamilton's final Mercedes race
While Hamilton drove a great race from the bottom of the grid to beat George Russell to fourth, that was probably not the way he would've wanted to conclude his Mercedes career. A podium would've been nice.
But Mercedes made a mess of his qualifying, sending him out too late for his final Q1 run, and the bollard Magnussen dislocated got stuck under his car, and his final qualifying in a Silver/Black arrow was prematurely over.
It was sad as Lewis was faster than George all weekend long, but the way in which his final Mercedes weekend went down somehow reflects how dysfunctional the relationship with the team became, and that goes back to 2022 when Mercedes decided not to listen to their seven-time F1 champion on how the car should be developed.
Since then the decision to leave for Ferrari was a matter of when not if, and once the announcement was made, the relationship soured even more. The divorce was civil despite some unsavory statements from Toto Wolff about Hamilton's shelf life.
In the end, Hamilton leaving Mercedes is a genuine end of an era and we can only look forward to see how the most successful driver in F1 gets on in its most successful team.
Verstappen vs Piastri
Verstappen's brain fade of a move on Piastri at the start of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix means one of two things: either his head was already somewhere else, or he was trying to send a message to the driver he feels would be his rival in the future, as close as 2025 that is.
I would disregard the first option as we know Verstappen is always on it, so it is probably the second, but the execution was clumsy.
The Dutchman was rightly given a ten-second time penalty for his antics but his comments about the incident post-race were a bit puzzling.
He was too apologetic for the Max we know and also said the last driver he wants to crash with is Piastri. I would have loved to see what he would've said had he beaten the Australian in that fight. I am sure his sentiments would've been different, similar to those we have seen regarding incidents with Norris, Russell, and even Hamilton when he was fighting him.
Verstappen has shown he can beat Norris, who also admitted he was lacking and planning to up his game in 2025. But Piastri has been the McLaren driver in close racing, and Max must have taken note of that.
The four-time F1 champion is expecting a close fight from McLaren from race one in 2025 and was trying to lay a marker, but it didn't pan out as per his plan.
One more thing on the Verstappen/Piastri incident: David Coulthard was commenting on the race and agreed with the penalty dished out to the Red Bull driver, but when the same applied to Bottas, who took out Perez in a similar contact, the retired Scottish driver questioned it... Just saying...
Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Quick hits
- Ferrari came to Abu Dhabi on the back foot as they sought to win their first F1 constructors' championship since 2008. Changing the battery on Leclerc's car, which meant a grid penalty, did not help their chances.
Leclerc drove valiantly to finish on the podium, but even with Sainz in second, that was not enough to beat McLaren.
The Reds have much work to do in 2025, especially with a seven-time F1 champion coming on board. McLaren sorted out their car and now need to focus on execution; Ferrari have both aspects to work on, and yeah, one more thing: reliability. - As for Sainz, it is truly sad to see a driver like him lose a Ferrari drive. Life at Williams will be tough, but maybe that is what he and Williams both need right now.
- After his superb qualifying, ninth in a Sauber, it was a pity to see Bottas' race end in a crash.
- Is it just me, or did anyone else notice that Doohan's debut was uninspiring?
- A great race from Pierre Gasly in the other Alpine as the Frenchman finished the season on a high, benefitting from the recent improvement of his car.
- After impressing in the first few races of his debut, Colapinto ended his final race with Williams with a DNF, and based on his recent performances, he won't be driving an F1 car soon.
At least Williams boss James Vowles is relieved from a dilemma as he now doesn't have to think about Sainz's teammate, whether it would be Colapinto or Alex Albon whose performance was somehow dwarfed by the early ones of the Argentine. - A final word for Perez, whose future was yet to be decided as these words were being written. It was sad to see his race end in a DNF, and while he has given Red Bull a lot, he shoulders some blame in their failure to defend the constructors' title keeping in mind the issues with the RB20.
The Mexican's fate seems to have been decided, but we can only wish him well in the future.
Takeaways will return in 2025 but for now, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year...
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