Autosport Top 50 of 2024: #1 Max Verstappen

“A Schrodinger’s season for Max Verstappen. Concurrently his best and not his best.” That’s how we’ve described the world champion’s campaign in our Formula 1 driver rankings. And that’s because there are two ways of looking at Verstappen’s performance over the past months.

One is that his success in winning the title again with immense performance peaks against the background of a squad seemingly imploding around him combined into Verstappen’s greatest ever season. The other pairs the moments in this campaign that were of a lower ebb than in his other championship wins with more cynical (some would say disappointing) tactics in battle, to dip it below his other highs overall.

Well, now it’s time to open the box.

Starting with ‘the best’ argument, two things cannot be denied. The first is how crushingly good and dominant Verstappen was in winning four of the opening five races this term. This might have been a straight run were it not for his brake fire in Melbourne.

The second is how, in 2024, Verstappen produced higher performance peaks than ever. His Brazilian Grand Prix wet-weather masterclass will live longest in the memory, but his beatings of Lando Norris at Imola, Barcelona and in Qatar were arguably even better given they didn’t involve assistance from red flags in gaining places.

That’s not to denigrate Verstappen’s Interlagos triumph – he was exceptional there. Pass after pass at Turn 1, building on his excellent 2016 race in similar conditions at the same track. And there he finally snapped Norris’s faint title hopes. Truly, it was a champion’s drive and Verstappen is a worthy title winner once again.

Verstappen delivered several crunch wins on days when McLaren arguably had a faster car package in 2024

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Those Imola, Spain and Qatar triumphs are so noteworthy because in each Verstappen triumphed against the odds, with Norris blowing the best car potential overall in the latter two and unable to find a way past in the first when the McLaren came alive in the final stint.

That Verstappen fended him off at Imola having completely lost his tyre temperature operating window was, on reflection, something surely no one else could have done in the RB20. But it wasn’t just the wins that were impressive.

“He just adapts incredibly well to what he’s got,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner marvels of Verstappen’s efforts to bank points in those races where his car was far from class-leading. “And I think what he showed, really, this year is just another level of maturity and experience. Still bringing home hard-earned points was incredibly important.”

Perhaps more impressive was how he fell from a front-row percentage of 72.7% with the all-conquering RB19 in 2023 to just 62.5% with its successor.

In those contests – to which we’ll add his Silverstone podium and Monza sixth – Verstappen finished second when in each McLaren had the pace to finish easily 1-2, and in Singapore the Ferrari drivers fumbled pace that meant they should have been challenging for the podium, or potentially the win.

Verstappen continued to display searing one-lap speed in 2024, adding another eight poles to end the year on a career total of 40 – clear of Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Jim Clark in the all-time standings. But perhaps more impressive was how he fell from a front-row percentage of 72.7% with the all-conquering RB19 in 2023 to just 62.5% with its successor.

Clearly the opposition was much increased this year. This explains why he said after securing the title in Las Vegas that he feels he’s grown “as a driver” and become “more all around” in terms of execution.

On the ‘not his best’ argument, the errors are a sensible starting point. Verstappen scraped the wall exiting Ste Devote on the final Monaco Q3 runs and blew a possible shot at pole, which became sixth in the following day’s procession. Then, at Silverstone, he was oddly off the road at Copse in Q1 and picked up considerable floor damage. This left him starting fourth and out of the pole battle again.

Verstappen was again electrifying in qualifying, notching eight pole positions in 2024

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The errors extend to how he drove in battle too. Just as at Monza in 2021, late in the Austrian GP he reacted poorly to a long Red Bull pitstop – in this case losing him a very well-built lead the day after he’d blown the opposition away in qualifying. With Norris flying again on McLaren’s lower-fuel/harder-tyre magic combo, it was Verstappen’s squeeze that led to their contact and his penalty.

In Hungary – this time frustrated that the RB20’s higher-downforce upgrade had not put Red Bull back ahead of McLaren on pure pace – he collided with Lewis Hamilton yet again. And, just like in Austria, he was fortunate that this didn’t cost him more points.

Elsewhere, he cracked when the pressure with Norris was at its highest – at Austin and in Mexico. In the former, his slip off the road in his now-honed art of turning defence into attack – think Brazil 2021 versus Hamilton – again had a lucky ending. Here the stewards chose to focus on Norris overtaking off-track at the same time.

In Mexico, Verstappen got it wrong in continuing to drive fully to the track exit at Turn 4 when Norris had successfully adapted his own tactics and got his wheels ahead, conforming to F1’s ‘Driving Standards Guidelines’ requirements, which he hadn’t done in Texas. Verstappen’s next move in forcing Norris off three corners later smacked of red-mist loss of control. It was the sort of thing we hadn’t seen – but many had continued to wonder about – since that 2021 campaign.

This impacts for three reasons on assessment of Verstappen’s 2024 season. First, with Norris and McLaren still growing into title-contending roles, and Ferrari and Mercedes going on and off the boil, they must be considered weaker opposition than the title-hoovering Hamilton/Mercedes of 2021. And for most of 2022 and all of 2023 Red Bull had no opposition.

Second, while Verstappen made more errors in 2021, in 2024 his mistakes were of greater magnitude. For example, his crash in qualifying for the 2021 Saudi Arabian GP only relegated him to third on the grid.

A tiny slip that year overtaking Hamilton on the outside of Turn 4 in Bahrain, for a first-time title contender against a seven-time world champion, is less of an issue than getting the battle wrong against Norris this year in Mexico – albeit this time as the ‘defender’ at Turn 4.

But perhaps the strongest argument for Verstappen’s 2021 trumping his 2024 is how, in his first title year, there were no weekends as bad as his Azerbaijan GP trial of this season.

Verstappen wasn’t without fault in 2024, making some notable errors including clashing with Hamilton in Hungary

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Here, Verstappen blamed his set-up choices, which centred on ride height level, for his poor, off-colour weekend overall. But his part in adopting that cannot be overlooked. Ditto Sergio Perez, who Verstappen otherwise destroyed in 2024, outqualifying and comprehensively outracing him that weekend.

This was one race on from the RB20’s handling nadir at Monza. But there Verstappen had the edge on Perez. On the changing of the car’s handling, Horner pinpoints this to Imola, where “we brought an upgrade where I think we just made the window that bit smaller on the car. The car became quite difficult to operate from that point on.”

For Verstappen this meant wild swings in discovery of whether he would be grappling oversteer too severe even for his high-entry-speed, brake-steering style, or be hit with the understeer he detests, as Red Bull struggled to get the RB20 gelling with the tricky Pirellis. Sometimes in qualifying, this swing would happen segment to segment as conditions changed.

Horner credits Red Bull’s late-season turnaround with the RB20’s handling – introduced in its Austin floor and sidepod upgrades – to “what he was feeling”

In response, Verstappen put in what Red Bull insiders claim was the most hours he’s ever spent at its Milton Keynes factory. “Everyone was struggling to understand,” he explains. “So, just asking questions, working together, looking at data, looking at analysis that came up after every single race we can.

“I’m not the engineer, I’m not going to tell them how to design a floor or whatever – a suspension. But I can ask questions, and then we discuss, and we go through what we can see from the data of the track, wind tunnels, CFD, all these things, simulator. And with all the smart heads in the team, you sit together and you just have an open discussion about things. And I explained my difficulties with the car. Sometimes it’s very important to have everyone together in the same room.”

Horner credits Red Bull’s late-season turnaround with the RB20’s handling – introduced in its Austin floor and sidepod upgrades – to “what he was feeling”. He continues: “That’s where Max was hugely impressive this year – the leadership that he inspired from within the car for the direction that we needed to take to address some of the issues.”

How then to decide whether this really was Verstappen’s best F1 title given these opposing cases? Focusing solely on on-track achievements/mistakes, 2021 wins, and taking into account his galvanising of Red Bull to address the car’s mid-season issues even around the fallout from the team’s management war, it must be this one.

Horner believes Verstappen deserves a great deal of credit for Red Bull’s late season improvements for his feedback

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

But Verstappen himself had a part in that charade. It was his father locked in a tussle with the team principal, Verstappen implying that he would leave if Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko was axed, and not doing enough to shut down Mercedes chief Toto Wolff’s wooing mid-season. And he was vocally on the radio slamming Red Bull’s strategy and upgrades in Hungary.

His camp will argue that they were acting in the team’s best interests. And that “being on the limit, pushing a car sometimes beyond its capabilities”, as Horner puts it, contributed to his errors. Yet the same is true of 2021, with stronger opposition.

That combination becomes our deciding factor. This wasn’t Verstappen’s best title. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t bursting with brilliance.