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The destiny of both 2024 Formula 1 championships will be decided by six grands prix in the next eight weekends.
But who will walk away with the titles come Abu Dhabi in December? And who will triumph in the equally intense fights further down the field where there are millions in prize money to be won or lost?
We asked The Race’s F1 team for their predictions with regards to some of the key questions that the remainder of F1 2024 will answer:
Contributors: Edd Straw, Scott Mitchell-Malm, Samarth Kanal, Ben Anderson, Glenn Freeman, Matt Beer, Jonathan Reynolds, Megan Cantle and Josh Suttill
Who will be drivers’ champion?
All but one of our nine contributors backed Max Verstappen to convert his 52-point championship lead into his fourth F1 title.
Matt Beer thinks we may end up looking back on Verstappen’s 2024 triumph as “one of F1’s greatest underdog wins” as Verstappen’s been racking up podiums in a car that hasn’t been F1’s fastest for months.
Glenn Freeman says the continuing trend of Verstappen not throwing away points and McLaren and Lando Norris leaving too many on the table should mean the title goes Verstappen’s way.
“However, I do believe we have a title fight. Lando is going to close the gap, it just won't be enough,” he added.
There’s plenty of optimism that Red Bull’s Austin upgrade will improve the RB20 too.
“Having seen the Red Bull at its worst, it should start to get better with more late season upgrades,” Scott Mitchell-Malm said. Ben Anderson expects the upcoming circuits to suit Red Bull more too.
But according to Edd Straw, even if McLaren and Norris retain their car advantage, consistent results for Verstappen should be enough to see the title over the line.
The only contributor to pick Norris for the title was Josh Suttill.
“I'm going out on a limb here on the basis that Red Bull's Austin upgrade won't suddenly solve its performance crisis,” Suttill explained.
“Norris will continue to chip away in the superior McLaren and I think he’s got just enough to pip Verstappen by outscoring him by an average of nine points (or 8.67 to be precise) per weekend. Only the errant yellow flag in Baku has stopped him hitting that number since the summer break.
“Help from Oscar Piastri, some interloping Mercedes and Ferrari cars and a chunk of luck somewhere can help him do the unthinkable.”
Who will win the constructors’ title?
All nine contributors picked McLaren as the 2024 constructors’ champion.
“Best car, strongest overall driver line-up, will continue to bring in lots of points,” summarised Megan Cantle.
Straw thinks it’s a “done deal” unless there’s an “extraordinary swing” in Red Bull’s favour that changes that.
Despite “sometimes dicey execution” McLaren’s car advantage will see it through, according to Beer.
This was the “easiest prediction to make” according to Suttill, while Freeman declared “this one is over”.
Who will finish best of the rest?
Behind Verstappen and Norris, who will take third in the drivers’ championship, with just eight points currently separating Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri?
Six of the nine predicted Piastri will overhaul Leclerc in the final six weekends.
“This is extremely hard to predict. Leclerc is performing at an incredible level, but given where McLaren are at, I fancy Piastri to overhaul him,” Jonathan Reynolds said.
Beer went a step further: “Despite his occasional muted weekends, Piastri's high points are so high it's easy to see him going on a run so strong that he begins 2025 as clear title favourite."
Straw doesn’t expect there to be much between them but “Piastri is likely to have the stronger machinery and should be able to outscore Leclerc by a small number of points”.
Three of the contributors (Mitchell-Malm, Freeman and Samarth Kanal) picked Leclerc to finish third.
“Leclerc is a superstar who will have some mega weekends, and Piastri is likely to miss out on some points whenever Norris needs to be prioritised by McLaren,” Freeman explained.
Mitchell-Malm added “Leclerc's been outstanding and I think he'll overachieve enough to beat Piastri”, while Kanal said Leclerc “deserves plaudits for being third in the championship” given how peaky Ferrari’s performance has been.
Will Hamilton finish ahead of Russell?
Lewis Hamilton has six weekends as a Mercedes driver before he makes his bombshell move to Ferrari for 2025.
It’s clearly not going to end with the farewell title he’d have dreamed of, but Hamilton can outscore his team-mate George Russell for the second time in three years if he can convert his current 19-point advantage.
Seven of our contributors believe Hamilton will finish ahead of Russell.
“This one is almost too close to call but I'll say that Hamilton will finish ahead of Russell as the car balance has come towards the seven-time champion from the 2024 British GP onwards,” Kanal said.
“He has a decent lead at the moment, and is Lewis Hamilton,” are Cantle’s two reasons for picking Hamilton, while Reynolds thinks wanting to end his Mercedes stint on a high will motivate Hamilton to pip Russell.
“In terms of the overall results Hamilton and Russell will get, it feels like a coin toss on any given weekend given the volatility of the Mercedes performance,” Straw said.
“Therefore, Hamilton's existing 19-point advantage means he gets the nod.”
Beer and Suttill were the outliers who picked Russell, both citing Russell losing 25 points for his masterful Spa win as skewing the current picture.
“More often than not when you look at a qualifying result, it doesn't make any sense that Russell isn't already miles ahead of Hamilton in the points,” Beer said.
“The Spa disqualification is the only reason now, surely.”
Who will Sauber pick for 2025?
The final open non-Red Bull 2025 seat belongs to Sauber - which still hasn’t decided whether to stick with the experience of Valtteri Bottas or gamble on youth with either Williams stand-in Franco Colapinto or current McLaren protege Gabriel Bortoleto.
The majority of our team (seven out of nine) is tipping Colapinto to land the seat, with near-universal agreement among them that “if Sauber was keeping Bottas, it would have signed him long ago” as Beer puts it.
“Pouncing on Colapinto too quickly might feel like something from the Helmut Marko school of kneejerk reactions, but on current form he is worth the punt,” Beer added.
Cantle doesn’t even see it as a typical Sauber “young driver punt” given what Colapinto has done so far: “If he carries on like this, it would be a real shame for him to not be on the F1 grid next season.”
Straw’s personally advocated for Sauber retaining Bottas for 2025 and even though who will get the seat is a more difficult question, he thinks Bottas will get the nod.
“Bottas is the pragmatic solution that will allow flexibility for Audi to make what it sees as a more decisive longer-term pick either for 2026 or 2027,” Straw explained.
Reynolds thinks Bortoleto will emerge as the surprise victor: “The fact so many young, inexperienced drivers have come into F1 and done well recently works in Bortoleto's favour.”
Who will be Verstappen’s 2025 team-mate?
Red Bull has dropped Liam Lawson into Daniel Ricciardo’s RB seat for the rest of 2024 to determine whether he should supplant Sergio Perez as Verstappen’s 2025 Red Bull team-mate.
A third of our contributors expect that attempt to be successful - with Anderson saying “Red Bull losing the constructors' championship to McLaren will be reason enough to make a change, and Lawson seems to me to be the favoured candidate”.
Freeman agrees Perez is “incredibly vulnerable” while Mitchell-Malm doesn’t think “Red Bull needs much of a reason to drop Perez, so it’s down to Lawson to do the job”. He then expects either Isack Hadjar to slot in at RB or Red Bull to steal a rival’s junior such as Colapinto or Bortoleto for that seat.
Conversely, Reynolds expects the trend of Perez doing just enough to retain his seat (while others aren’t doing enough to take it) to continue long enough for Perez to remain for 2025. Straw too thinks Perez’s incumbency and Red Bull’s hesitancy so far to drop him will continue to save him for now.
“Ideally I'd like Perez to win the Mexican GP, realise that's as good as it's going to get for him in F1 now and immediately retire and have a great rest of his life with his family,” Beer mused.
“Realistically, he's doing enough that Lawson would have to be really, really convincing to risk a switch, especially as Red Bull's decline has made some of Perez's car complaints look more reasonable.”
Suttill thinks Perez will retain his seat but caveated his answer is applying for the start of 2025 only, with Lawson replacing Perez mid-season next year more likely than a change over the winter.
Which team finishes sixth?
The strength of F1’s top four teams in 2024 has left slimmer pickings than usual for those teams behind.
Aston Martin banked enough points early on to have fifth place in the constructors’ secure, but the fight for sixth place is still very close.
RB has held sixth since Melbourne in March but its advantage has been whittled away in recent rounds - with Haas three points adrift and a rapidly improving Williams team 18 points behind. Retaining the sixth place it finished in 2023 will be a long shot for Alpine as it’s 21 points back, but it's not impossible.
Seven of our panel are tipping Haas to overhaul RB, with Kanal citing Lawson needing time to bed in and the continuation of Hulkenberg’s heroic season to be decisive.
Anderson thinks Haas has the “best all-round car” of this group and that will make the difference, while Mitchell-Malm says it would be a “huge achievement” if Haas can manage to secure the spot given the team’s size.
Reynolds and Beer backed RB to maintain its sixth place - with Beer believing RB possesses a stronger driver line-up, which will help it edge Haas.
“On pace it should be Williams but the gap is too big” reckons Beer, while Suttill predicts an Abu Dhabi decider between Haas and Williams that goes in favour of the former, while RB will drop to eighth.
Will Sauber score a point?
The soon-to-be-Audi works team is on course for its first point-less season in a decade unless it can change that over the next six race weekends.
There’s zero confidence Sauber can do so from our panel - with all nine contributors predicting Sauber to finish the season without a single point.
“F1's no longer random enough for the clearly slowest car to score,” Beer summarised, with Suttill saying Sauber needs a race with at least nine DNFs, the like of which just doesn't happen in modern F1.
Straw says only a “magical upgrade” package will allow Sauber to score points, with Anderson noting even a “successful upgrade will only make it a more respectable backmarker”.
Mitchell-Malm added: “The car - in relative terms, with the other midfield teams so evenly matched - is close to 2019 Williams levels of rubbish”.
