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The 2024 drivers' championship might effectively be over but there are still plenty of Formula 1 drivers with a point to prove in the final three race weekends.
Here are our picks:
Lando Norris
One day Norris might be a multiple F1 world champion looking back on his first proper title bid in 2024 as a useful learning experience that hinted at everything to come.
But right now he's ending it facing plenty of question marks over his pace and racecraft relative to Max Verstappen and the help he's needed from less experienced McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri and what that means for the team's longer-term power balance.
All that said, he probably also goes into the final three races with the fastest car on the grid still and perhaps a little pressure off.
There's every indication he'll have the car to mount another title shot in 2024, especially if he can buoy himself and the team with a strong end to the year. Something like Nico Rosberg winning the last three races of 2015 and then taking the 2016 title would do nicely. - Matt Beer
Sergio Perez
Sergio Perez is no stranger to having his Red Bull seat dangle by a thread. He almost lost it to Daniel Ricciardo in the summer break and he now has just three races to convince Red Bull it should stick with its temporary solution to its driver crisis for a fifth consecutive year.
While his home race in Mexico was an unmitigated disaster, there were some signs of life in Brazil after Red Bull granted his chassis change wish.
He was immediately quick in practice and he made a brisk recovery to a point from 13th on the sprint, but Sunday was more of the same frustration as even both RB drivers scored points when he didn’t.
Dammingly Esteban Ocon has only scored two fewer points than Perez has since the summer break after standing on the podium in Brazil, something Perez hasn’t done since Shanghai in April.
Las Vegas was one of Perez’s better 2023 races, and he so desperately needs a repeat this weekend or his only hope will be all his potential replacements faltering. - Josh Suttill
Liam Lawson
Speaking of potential Perez replacements, Liam Lawson has to be the leading candidate for promotion, given the way he’s performed since replacing Daniel Ricciardo at RB.
There’s been a pair of points finishes already and he’s already come off best a couple of times in on-track duels with Perez in a slower car.
It’s far from a done deal yet though and Lawson needs to show consistency through this triple-header to prove Red Bull’s ready to have a driver with only 11 grand prix starts line up alongside Max Verstappen next year.
Qatar will be a particularly good marker of Lawson’s growth given he identified that race as the weakest of his quintet of races last year as Ricciardo’s stand-in replacement. - JS
The ejected 2025 trio
Valtteri Bottas, Zhou Guanyu and Kevin Magnussen already know they’ve lost their seat and have just three weekends before they head into the F1 abyss.
All three could land reserve driver roles elsewhere given the pool of drivers with experience of these cars is shallow. They could lead to stand-in appearances that act as auditions to get (back) on the F1 grid as Ollie Bearman’s trio of 2024 races showed.
But there’s no guarantee any of them will race in F1 again, so these last three weekends are the final guaranteed chance they have to prove they still deserve to be on the grid.
Magnussen probably has the best chance to do so, given he’s had a late-season breakthrough and will have the best machinery at his disposal.
He’s returned twice from the F1 wilderness already so a run of points finishes to round out his 2024 would at least make return number three a vague possibility rather than completely implausible.
Bottas and Zhou will struggle to show much in a limited Sauber but perhaps some Las Vegas chaos could give them a chance of a rare result - though even all the Interlagos chaos left 13th as the team’s measly watermark. - JS
Franco Colapinto
There's no denying Colapinto has made a great impression since his sudden F1 debut, and raised a few question marks about Williams team leader Alex Albon too.
But recent races have featured some heavy crashes and a run of three Q1 exits. And as it stands, Colapinto is still set to spend 2025 on the sidelines.
Red Bull is best placed to change that, so getting back onto the tidier and quicker level of performance he showed in his early races would be ideal for Colapinto in his efforts to encourage some to pay what's necessary to get him out of his Williams deal.
Conversely, putting Colapinto firmly back in the shade would be a good sign for Albon as he gears up to welcome Carlos Sainz to his team very soon. - MB
Lewis Hamilton
What happens in the last three grand prix weekends of Hamilton's Mercedes career won't overshadow the enormity of their achievements together over the previous 243.
And he'll be welcomed to Ferrari with huge excitement by the team and Tifosi even if the end of his Mercedes stint is as poor as his recent races have been.
So in a way, he has nothing to prove and this triple-header's fairly inconsequential.
Yet on emotional grounds, for the sake of both Hamilton's past and future, he could really do with a final flourish for Mercedes.
A partnership that's produced six world championships (and it wouldn't have taken much more at all for that to be eight) 84 grand prix wins deserves better than to end with more Q2 exits and non-event races.
And Ferrari would surely rather its massive star signing wasn't arriving amid swirling question marks over whether he'd faded irrevocably from his brilliant best. - MB
