The top five most dramatic crashes from F1 2024

Crashes are naturally a part of F1, where eventually if you drive for long enough, you will hit something or someone. 

The 2024 season featured a number of big accidents, and fortunately, all drivers involved walked away uninjured. 

Below, RacingNews365 takes a look at five of the biggest accidents of the season just gone, with the accidents presented in order of when they actually happened and not in any ranking.

Alex Albon – Australian GP

Williams endured a torrid season of crashes with at least 15 sizeable impacts, and indeed they feature three times on this list.

However, whilst the Sao Paulo qualifying shunt that ruled him out of the race ight have been a bigger impact, we have opted for Alex Albon’s FP1 crash in Australia.

With 40 minutes on the clock, he dipped a wheel onto the grass at Turn 7, spitting himself into the outside barrier and destroying the front right of the car.

The chassis damage was too severe to be fixed on location, meaning the car was withdrawn, and with no spare chassis on-site due to delays in car-build, boss James Vowles was faced with a terrible decision. 

Should he pull the innocent Logan Sargeant from the remainder of the weekend after FP2 to give Albon a shot at nabbing a point or say ‘tough luck’ to Albon and see him sit out the race.

Vowles opted to withdraw Sargeant, itself summing up how his season went, as Albon could only take Sargeant’s car to P11 – nil poi.

Sergio Perez, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg – Monaco GP

Arguably the biggest accident of the season, it was triggered on run-up Beau Rivage on Lap 1 in Monaco by Kevin Magnussen. 

He drove into a disappearing wedge up the inside of Sergio Perez’s Red Bull and it was only a matter of time before Perez was hooked into the barrier. 

The RB20 was destroyed with all four wheels being plucked off as the survival cell did its job to protect the innocent Mexican racer. 

Magnussen was fortunate not to receive penalty points to trigger a race ban, as team-mate Nico Hulkenberg was a bystander, being caught by the spinning Red Bull as he tried to slither through a slim gap. Fine margins.

Logan Sargeant – Dutch GP

The crash that spelled the end of Sargeant’s F1 career.

It was abundantly clear that Sargeant would be leaving Williams, but it was only a matter of when. He hurried that answer up after dipping a wheel onto the grass at a wet Zandvoort – earning himself a one-way ticket to the barrier – and out of F1.

The wrecked Williams briefly caught fire as the team could not fix the machine in time for qualifying, as Sargeant’s career would end with a 16th place finish in the race itself. 

His replacement was Franco Colapinto.

Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez – Azerbaijan GP

This crash arguably cost Ferrari the constructors’ championship.

With two laps to go in Baku, Carlos Sainz and Perez were battling over third place and 15 world championship points. 

Exiting Turn 2, the two came together on the straight, crashing hard to the inside wall and taking both out. 

Sainz was running in that P3 at the time, with the lost 15 points proving crucial as Ferrari eventually finished only 14 points behind McLaren, whose own score was boosted as Lando Norris was bumped up to fourth for 13 points including fastest lap, compared to the nine he would have received for sixth with fastest lap had the crash not happened.

Franco Colapinto – Las Vegas GP

Colapinto impressed greatly, scoring four points in Azerbaijan, a further one in the United States and very nearly fastest lap of the race.

But after the Austin weekend, his fortunes turned as he had one crash too many. 

His accident in Sao Paulo qualifying can be forgiven as the rivers that form at the long Turn 3 when it is chucking it down have caught out many drivers down the years, including one Michael Schumacher. 

But crashing under the safety car was a pure rookie mistake, but again, given that this was the first time he’d driven an F1 car in the wet, at a tricky wet circuit like Interlagos, it can be tolerated.

But what cannot be accepted, especially after a mammoth rebuild job by Williams to get two cars to Las Vegas, was then to destroy another in qualifying. 

Colapinto clipped the inside wall at the end of the strip, and was spat at some 50G into the outside concrete wall. 

He has genuine pace, but ultimately proved a bit too crash-happy to land a full-time 2025 seat.