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Before Lando Norris won the Miami Grand Prix, he was only fifth in the 2024 Formula 1 world championship and already 52 points behind Max Verstappen.
At that point, the idea of there being a 2024 F1 title fight at all seemed extremely far-fetched. But even if you were holding out hope for one, it’s unlikely your money was on Norris to provide it.
While it’s not uncommon for the identity of the title protagonists to surprise compared to the preceding season (see Jenson Button/Brawn in 2009) or even pre-season testing, a mid-season twist where someone who seemed out of contention or who you’d never have expected to be in contention mounting a surge is far more rare.
And usually doomed to fail. But not always…
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA 2003
Having swept all before them in 2002, suddenly Michael Schumacher's and Ferrari's grip on every F1 title in the early 2000s looked vulnerable in 2003.
But it wasn't Juan Pablo Montoya and Williams applying the pressure in the early stages of the season.
McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen was leading the drivers' championship after six rounds with Montoya only seventh, having fluffed a win chance in Melbourne with a spin and been halted by a blown engine in Austria.
Then in Monaco, everything clicked. Montoya won after jumping Williams team-mate Ralf Schumacher at the pitstops, kickstarting a run of eight straight podium finishes that included a second win at Hockenheim.
By the end of that run he was only three points behind leader Michael Schumacher and poised for a three-race title showdown with Schumacher and Raikkonen. Williams was on course for a first constructors' title since 1997 too, having started the season trying to stave off Renault for third, adrift of Ferrari and McLaren.
It looked as if the collective truckload of untapped potential from both Montoya and the potent but soon to be ceased Williams-BMW alliance was going to be realised, before it all went so badly wrong with a contentious rule clarification around tyres that hit Michelin runners such as Williams hard and a penalty for an Indianapolis collision.
The full extraordinary, controversial circumstances around that disastrous end that cost it both titles belongs in a different list, but Montoya has his place on this list for the mid-season transformation that propelled Williams to what is still by far the closest it has come to winning a title in the last 26 years. - Josh Suttill
EDDIE IRVINE - 1999
Though Eddie Irvine’s first grand prix win in the Australia season-opener was attrition-assisted, he was having his strongest Ferrari year yet in 1999 even before Michael Schumacher broke his leg at Silverstone that July.
He was only six points behind his team leader at that point and it would’ve been closer still had team orders not been applied as they battled for scraps in the wet/dry mayhem of Magny-Cours. But that was still 14 off championship leader Mika Hakkinen and with no expectation of that gap doing anything but widening.
Then Schumacher got injured, Irvine won the first two races of Schumacher’s absence and suddenly he was leading the championship by eight points.
Yes, Irvine raised his game, but Hakkinen and McLaren got very good at opening the door too.
In the end - partly because Ferrari temporarily took its eye off 1999 development thinking it would have to wait for Schumacher’s return before it could win a title - Irvine didn’t have enough to hold off Hakkinen and McLaren’s sheer speed. - Matt Beer
JAMES HUNT - 1976
While Niki Lauda’s return from near-death is rightly feted as one of sport’s greatest and most astonishing fightbacks, rival James Hunt’s mental fortitude in clawing back a chasm of a deficit at mid-season is right up there on sporting merit too.
It’s easy to forget that Hunt was still quite unproven heading into the 1976 season after Emerson Fittipaldi’s late decision to race with brother Wilson in the new Copersucar squad and eschew a third season at McLaren.
Hunt and McLaren’s season appeared to collapse at Jarama when he was disqualified for a dimensional controversy regarding his car's width. That saga went on for months eventually resulting in his nine points being handed back via the courts.
The legendary Brands Hatch win brought Hunt to within 23 points of Lauda but then that was spirited away and he was then languishing behind Tyrrell driver Jody Schekter, 35 points away from Lauda. Any idea of a title charge still seemed quite fanciful.
Post Nurburgring, Hunt was clinical in difficult circumstances as friend and rival Lauda flitted between life and death and then began his astonishing recovery.
By the time Monza came around Hunt was 14 points shy (the Jarama result having been reinstated too) and the title was very much on. It was the wins either side of Monza - at Zandvoort and Mosport - that proved so crucial. Hunt was sublime in his McLaren M23, which he was now qualifying over a second ahead of team-mate Jochen Mass.
The Fuji finale is legendary now but Hunt’s bravery in battling through the ludicrous conditions was just as valiant as Lauda’s decision to sit it out. If ever there was a title that should have been shared it is this one. - Sam Smith
SEBASTIAN VETTEL - 2009
The 2009 season was meant to be Red Bull’s first proper F1 title shot, as Adrian Newey did what Adrian Newey does best by targeting a massive rules overhaul to propel his team forward.
But of course the infamously controversial double diffuser, initially present on three cars but not the rest and exploiting a loophole Newey said had existed in the rules as far back as 1995, powered Ross Brawn’s Mercedes-engined Honda salvage operation to the front of the grid while Red Bull initially toiled.
Button won five of the first seven races and built a commanding 31-point lead over Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel - back when there were still only 10 points for a win - and the title fight, such as it was, looked like being a two-horse race between the Brawn drivers, at best.
When it became clear double diffusers weren’t going to be banned, Newey skipped the third round of the season - the Chinese Grand Prix and Vettel’s first win for the team - to get working on Red Bull’s own version.
The first iteration was rushed onto the car for round six (of 17) in Monaco, and didn’t work efficiently, but by round eight at Silverstone what Newey called “a more considered version” was ready and Red Bull dominated.
As Brawn ran aground with its own, underfunded car development and Button suffered his mental collapse under the weight of expectation, Vettel chipped away at the gap.
Victory in Japan, as the Brawns struggled home seventh and eighth, put Vettel in outside contention - 15 points off the lead with two races remaining.
But he fell short, ‘only’ finishing fourth in Brazil after a charge from 15th on the grid, while Button clinched his only world title with a fifth placed finish. - Ben Anderson
DAMON HILL - 1994
Following Ayrton Senna’s death, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Michael Schumacher would sweep on unopposed to a dominant first world championship in 1994.
While Damon Hill had done much better than expected as Alain Prost’s Williams team-mate during his first full F1 season the previous year and even though the Williams was improving after the team’s wrong-footed start to the new rules era, after round seven Hill was a colossal 37 points behind Schumacher and had only beaten him once all season. And that was when Schumacher’s Benetton was stuck in fifth gear in Spain. Even then, Schumacher still finished second.
And yet it came down to a final-round decider with them just a point apart, and Hill only lost the title due to a dubious move by Schumacher as he tried to recover from a race-ending error.
Four wins in races Schumacher was either banned or disqualified from were the cornerstones of Hill’s recovery. Hill tripping over Ukyo Katayama’s Tyrrell in the Hockenheim race Schumacher retired from and then Schumacher demolishing Hill at Jerez when he returned post-ban suggested Hill had been handed a title shot he wasn’t really capable of seeing through.
But that sublime Suzuka win in awful weather and then forcing Schumacher into the Adelaide error showed the quality Hill was capable of at his best. - MB
JOHN SURTEES - 1964
John Surtees was not favoured to win the 1964 championship for a number of reasons. He'd started out as a motorcycle racer and world champion before he switched to cars full-time in 1960, hadn’t won a race until he got to Ferrari in 1963 (though had been stunningly competitive at times), was at a car disadvantage to Lotus at the start of 1964 and retired from three of the first four races and four of the 10 races in total in his stunning Ferrari 158.
Admittedly, back when failing to finish races was just as common if not more so than finishing, big championship swings were possible, albeit nine points for a win did mean making up ground had its challenges.
But in the races Surtees did finish, he was always on the podium. Trailing by 15 points after those first four events - a miracle it wasn't more, pointing to the adversity his rivals faced too - he won at the Nurburgring and Monza in front of the Tifosi, took seconds at Zandvoort, Watkins Glen and Mexico City and a third at Silverstone.
Surtees' reliability issues in 1964
Monaco - gearbox
Spa - engine
Rouen - oil pipe failure
Zeltweg - suspension
Reigning champion Jim Clark was in spellbinding form that year, maybe even his best in F1, but attrition - mostly engine related - got the better of his Lotus. In fitting fashion he was leading the epic final race in what would have been enough to give him the title before an engine issue handed it to Surtees.
Clark would strike back the next year. - Jack Benyon
HEINZ-HARALD FRENTZEN - 1999
The 1999 F1 season didn’t have just one twist. As Irvine and Hakkinen both stumbled, Jordan and Heinz-Harald Frentzen crept up behind Ferrari and McLaren in an all-time great underdog championship bid.
Frentzen quickly restored his damaged reputation by blowing away the soon-to-retire Hill and notching up a string of podiums and fourth places plus a very well-judged win in the wild mixed weather in France.
That didn’t add up to a title bid until Monza - where Hakkinen spun away the lead, Irvine was slow and Frentzen took a victory that brought him to within 10 points of them both, having had everyone except Hakkinen covered on the day.
A glorious last-gasp pole at a drying Nurburgring next time out (despite a fraught build-up to qualifying) and then superbly leading the first half of the race under massive pressure in changing weather seemed evidence Frentzen and Jordan could make their fairytale come true.
Then he essentially switched his own car off while deactivating the Jordan's manual anti-stall system at the pit exit and it was back to reality. Jordan just didn’t have the pace after that race and the big teams were let off the hook. - MB
KEKE ROSBERG 1982
Everyone knew Keke Rosberg was a brilliant flair-infused racing driver but prior to 1982 he was totally unproven in F1. But then again he’d always been in poor machinery – Theodore, ATS, Wolf and Fittipaldi.
The late decision by Alan Jones in the autumn of 1981 to take up farming in his native Australia vexed Frank Williams who was forced to scour the paddock for an available replacement. He saw a washed up Rosberg as his best option, even though in the wretched Fittipaldi F8C in 1981 he’d not qualified for 50% of the races and didn’t get near a sniff of even a point.
Rosberg left Brands Hatch that summer 14 points adrift of Didier Pironi after stalling on the grid from pole. Yet he chipped away with a fifth here (Paul Ricard) and another third there (Hockenheim) and then at Dijon the breakthrough win finally came, famously the only one of his title-winning year.
Gilles Villeneuve would have won it had he lived, Alain Prost deserved to win it but for horrendous Renault reliability, then Pironi should have won it before his career-ending injury and perhaps even John Watson might have won it had his McLaren's suspension not collapsed at Hockenheim.
The first ever Finnish world champion did the hard yards in 1982 and it’s a misnomer to say he was not a worthy winner. He did what he needed to do, and through the carnage, tragedy and politics of ‘82, he became a no-nonsense deserving hero who personally somehow defined the early to mid 1980s intelligent macho aesthetic. - SS
