Undercutters Ep2: F1 2024 Midfield Battle (transcript)
Hello everyone, and welcome to the second Undercutters podcast hosted by me, Morris. Today we’ll be reviewing the tightly contested battle for 6th between RB, Haas, and Alpine.
I also want to add that, as I’m just starting, I’m playing around with how these podcasts will work. The first episode was very scripted, this one is going to be much less so, I’ve made some notes on stats and facts, with a few bullet points so I stay on-topic, but otherwise apart from this intro and the end I’ll be talking in a much more free flowing way. Do let me know if you prefer one or the other. On Twitter I’m MorrisF1 or you can comment at morrisf1.blogspot.com.
As with the first episode I’ll also be uploading the script, or transcript, in this case and putting up a number of graphs related to the content.
But before we consider RB, Haas, and Alpine and how their fortunes varied as the season waxed and waned I want to briefly look at the other three teams. Those are Aston Martin, Williams, and Sauber. All of whom ended with no risk of either passing other teams or of being passed in the standings.
We’re going to start at the bottom of the grid, unfortunately, which was Sauber by quite a long way. Sauber were slow all season long and quite often by a significant margin. Overall Bottas was generally the quicker but that’s not saying too much. They had two problems, two very big problems. The first one was pit stops which were agonisingly slow. This was because of a design problem which meant taking the tyres [edit: and by ‘wheels’ I, of course, mean ‘tyres’] off and putting on new ones, which is what you do in a pit stop, took a very long time, so even if they were theoretically in with a chance of nabbing a point that would ruin their race. They did resolve this fairly quickly in the first half of the season.
The other problem was much worse. The car just was not fast enough. It did improve substantially in the last few races, but by then it was too late. They did score in Qatar with Zhou Guanyu who scored 4 points for finishing in 8th. Which was quite nice to see, probably the last points he will ever score, and it did mean that Sauber escaped being pointless in 2024. Bottas in that race was 11th. So no points for the Finn which is a shame because it’s not that long ago that he was regularly on the podium or winning races.
When they get reincarnated as Audi Sauber or whatever they’re called officially next year I imagine they’ll do rather better. But it would be difficult to do much worse.
Sauber never looked like they were going to pass Williams or Alpine or anyone else, so it was a pretty rough season to be a Sauber fan.
Just above them in the standings were Williams, and Williams were a bit slower than I expected this year. Team principal James Vowles has talked a good game and seems to have his head screwed on right but it takes time to turn around an oil tanker and Williams have been a backmarker for a while now. Probably didn’t help that they had a good driver in Albon but started off with one that wasn’t so great in Logan Sargeant. For some time they were ahead of not only Sauber but also Alpine, but Alpine had some late upgrades that were very good and I’ll talk about them more later. And Williams never developed that well.
Part of this was because there were many, many crashes. And this meant money got sucked up just making spare parts. Overall development was poor, they were lucky not to be at threat from Sauber in any way. They were pretty much rooted to 9th, especially when Alpine turned into a bit of a rocket ship towards the end.
Talking of DNFs here are some interesting stats and a couple that surprised me. Albon scored four times, three times he was 9th and he got 7th in Azerbaijan. Given the car that’s not too bad. But he did have six DNFs and also one DNS. Those six DNFs are three times as many as Logan Sargeant who only had two, although he did not start in Australia. Sargeant, however, never troubled the scorers and got replaced for the last nine races by Franco Colapinto, the Argentine rookie. I’ve got to say he did very well immediately. He scored twice, however, after a very good start he did become a bit of a crash machine. In nine races he had three DNFs. On average, that’s a greater rate of frequency per race, who had six in 24 so that’s a quarter, whereas Colapinto had them a third of the time. It’s also a worse rate than Sargeant who had about one in seven.
It took Williams some time to get going, their first points were in Monaco which is about a third of the way into the season. And they were ahead of Alpine until Brazil, but ultimately finished three places behind them in the standings. Hopefully next year will be better, but the number of crashes they had and the replacement parts did mean that that ate into next year’s budget somewhat. 2026 will be the key year because that’s when we get a more substantial regulation change and, as always in this sport, that’s when a team can surprise on the upside in a big way. And if you’re at the sharp end, and I hope Williams can make a step forward, I’m not expecting them to win races or challenge for the title, but if they can make a big step forward that could stand them in good stead for the entire next regulatory era.
But in 2025 they’ve got Sainz and Albon, which for a midfield or backmarker team is a really good lineup. So, some cause for optimism there.
Now we move onto Aston Martin. Aston Martin were interesting, it wasn’t quite the total annihilation that Alonso did over Stroll in 2023 but it was not that far off. You can tell which driver used to be world champion and which one is the son of the the guy who owns the team just by looking at the points. Aston Martin started off pretty well and they scored at most races. But the vast majority of their points came early on so their development was not great. This is kind of interesting, actually, it’s become a recent habit of Aston Martin to not develop well but in previous guises as Force India or Racing Point their budget was tiny but they were really good then at developing. They weren’t that much on TV because they were never in the hunt for podium results, didn’t have that many crashes, so they kind of fell between stools.
Like I said Alonso outclassed Stroll by a mile. Not everywhere, there were one or two blips and Alonso, I think, occasionally struggled for motivation, which is understandable. Stroll had some moments, and in the next podcast episode I’m planning to make it Top 10 Most Memorable Moments. There will be some for Stroll, at least one definitely. He ran into the back of Ricciardo under the safety car, which I think was in China, and that was a bit ridiculous. Not quite as bad as the gravel trap in Brazil which, yes, that’s funny and daft and ridiculous, but it did alter the start of the race, giving us a 17 minute delay. It’s not great.
The points tallies were 24 for Stroll and 70 for Alonso, so nearly three times as many. Alonso actually was the winner of Formula B or Formula 1.5, whatever you want to call it, he was the highest driver outside the big four teams. Stroll was 13th, and was beaten by Gasly, Hulkenberg, and Tsunoda. Another fun fact: in the first four races Alonso scored 24 point, which is as many as Stroll got in the whole season. After the mid-season break Aston Martin only scored 21 points. This wasn’t great and it’s kind of lucky for them that the season ended when it did. They were still fairly comfortably 5th but Alpine and Haas, in an even longer season, with more races, those two were catching up. Luckily, Alonso had scored enough that there was no risk of them catching with the calendar as it is.
So that covers the three teams that ended up pretty much by themselves. Sauber and Aston Martin looked destined all season to finish that way. Sauber at the foot of the table and Aston Martin clearly outside the top four but faster than everyone else. Williams were a bit different because they did have something of a battle with Alpine but then Alpine just took off, but they also ended up in their own No Man’s Land.
But there was a much closer battle between RB and Haas throughout the season, and later they got joined by Alpine too.
It’s easy to forget now but the testing mood music for Haas was terrible. Everybody expected them to be very very poor and that just wasn’t the case. From very early on they were scoring or threatening to score, and the reverse, kind of the reverse, happened to RB who many people thought would be best of the rest or certainly top of the midfield. And they were pretty good, they were scoring often, but they weren’t as fast as others anticipated.
So, in the first half dozen races RB scored at three of them and Haas at four but Haas scored lower points. They scored seven over that period and RB got 19. And that’s mostly down to Miami which was pretty fantastic for them. Ricciardo got 4th in the sprint and Tsunoda was 7th in the Grand Prix which is towards the upper end of what’s possible for anyone outside the top teams.
It was a bit one-sided, or lopsided I should say, within the teams as well. At this point Tsunoda had 19 to Ricciardo’s nine points. Hulkenberg had six points and Magnussen just one. But then we had a couple of races that were fantastic for Hulkenberg, and I imagine lots of you listening will remember this. Austria and Great Britain: Hulkenberg finished 6th at both races and achieving this in a Haas when you’ve got the four top teams very competitive, very close to one another, is really impressive. Austria was quite interesting as he finished half a second ahead of Perez, and at that race Magnussen was 8th. So across Austria and the UK Haas won 20 points, and RB only scored 3.
So suddenly the title, title race (they wish), the race for 6th becomes a lot closer. RB are on 31 and Haas are on 27. For reference, at this point Alpine were on nine, Williams on four, and Sauber on zero.
Next six races weren’t too eventful, this covers Hungary to Singapore. RB scored three points and Haas four, so a slight narrowing of the gap. Quick note that one of these points was scored by Bearmen, who was standing in for suspended Magnussen at Azerbaijan. Bearman’s going to be driving for Haas full time next year, of course, and he’s pretty impressive so far. One swallow does not make a summer, but two maybe does? He scored for Ferrari earlier in the season and for Haas in Azerbaijan, and I’d argue that scoring for Haas is more impressive because obviously the car’s a long way further back, less competitive.
So this puts us on RB 34, Haas 31.
Then there was a driver change, a permanent one, not just a suspension for naughtiness. Ricciardo was tossed overboard and replaced by Liam Lawson at RB. Lawson did really well for the team last year, as a super sub, so I’m not too surprised he’s back, however I think it wa s abit shoddy the way Ricciardo was treated because he was given no opportunity to have a grand finale, say farewell, it was an open secret not officially confirmed, he suspected or knew and then he got axed. So, not too impressed by that.
As it stands, the Circuit of the Americas and Mexico were both great for Haas who got seven points in the USA with double points in the sprint, and eight in Mexico, double points in the race with Magnussen finishing 7th. Which was ahead of Piastri and just behind Verstappen.
So at this point Haas have very much seized the initiative. They’ve been consistent all season long, the pace advantage that RB had has either been diminished or vanished completely with Haas being the faster car. Hulkenberg is driving fantastically well. Magnussen, I think is a bit underrated as a driver. Yes, he can be silly sometimes but he’s fast enough to be there, and he’s scoring points too as per the 7th in Mexico. So during these two events Haas score 15 points and RB 2 points. So Haas are on 46 and RB on 36.
At this point I thought the 6th place was pretty much nailed on for Haas. However, the next race was the Brazilian Grand Prix. And anybody who predicted that podium you deserve all the kudos, and, if you bet on it, all the money that you got because I certainly did not.
At the Brazilian Grand Prix Alpine joined the party. Before the race weekend, Alpine had 14 points and were close to Williams, who at this stage had 17. Quick reminder Haas were on 46 and RB 36. So Alpine were not in that race. But Brazil was super wet and it seemed to really suit the Alpine. In the sprint Gasly got a couple of points. In the race, they held out for a full safety car or red flag and they got the red flag at the perfect point. Ocon was actually leading the race at this point, he got passed on the restart by Verstappen but that’s fair enough. Gasly was in 3rd as well, so Verstappen leads Ocon and Gasly to an Alpine double podium, 33 points. It’s a ridiculous amount for a backmarker, at the time, backmarker team. Both of them drive incredibly because conditions were very bad indeed. The rookies were having problems all over the place, even experienced drivers were struggling, but Ocon and Gasly held on easily, didn’t really look threatened.
In the same race Haas scored nothing. RB did score eight points and both Tsunoda and Lawson racked up some points. This then put Alpine on 49, Haas stayed on 46, and RB were on 44. That means that five points covered those three teams and there were just three races left.
Las Vegas was not so great for Alpine. In fact it was a little bit of a clown show. Gasly’s car failed him, and you are going to get reliability failures now and then during a season. It’s bad luck that it happened there, but it did. Ocon was compromised by a voluntary drive-through penalty. Basically, called into the the pits, went through the pit lane, didn’t get new tyres. Not great.
Las Vegas did see Haas score four more points and RB two more points. This switches things, Haas now lead with 50 points, Alpine stay on 49, RB are still on 46.
Still very tight. And then we come to Qatar, home of the Wing Mirror Incident. In the sprint Hulkenberg got a pair of points, and Magnussen also got a pair in the proper race which saw Hulkenberg DNF. RB didn’t score in either. But Alpine got a pretty fantastic 10 points. Gasly finished 5th, and fended off Sainz for numerous laps towards the end. There is a question mark over whether the Spaniard should’ve been able to pass him. There’s only really one place to do it, so Gasly knew where it would be, going into the first corner after the DRS. And it wasn’t the easiest passing, the DRS zone got cut by quite a margin this year. On the other hand, Ferrari is a lot better than the Alpine, even the upgraded Alpine. And I think that Sainz probably should’ve been able to make headway against the Alpine.
So, heading into the final race, Abu Dhabi, Alpine are now in 6th on 59 points to Haas on 54. With RB on 46, still.
There was another driver change here, so every single one of these teams, voluntary or not, changed their lineup during the course of the year. Ocon was cast aside by Alpine in favour of Jack Doohan, who’s going to drive for them next year. Ocon ended up with 23 points to Gasly’s 42. But at least part of this is because Ocon never got the same upgrades as Gasly late on and these made a huge difference. So I think that’s a bit rough and kicking him out for the last race, I’m not a fan of that really. Although the relationship between him and the team seems to have really broken down, particularly in Monaco where he decided a ‘brave’ attempt to pass Gasly would be a good idea, they collided, it was ridiculous and that seems to have been the snapping point for Alpine.
Anyway, I digress.
There was controversy in Abu Dhabi qualifying. Hulkenberg did amazingly well, which was a habit of his in qualifying in 2024, but this time he qualified 4th. But then he got a 3 place grid penalty, which put him down in 7th. This had implications for the battle for the Constructors’ because Gasly was promoted to 5th on the grid and started ahead of Hulkenberg instead of behind him. The penalty was for not following the race director’s instructions, I think it was regarding overtaking on the pit exit.
And I think it was perhaps harsh, especially in context. You see, Russell, during qualifying, impeded Lawson on a hot lap. Russell did not receive a penalty, and he wasn’t even investigated. However, Russell did benefit and moved up one slot due to Hulkenberg’s penalty. Sometimes you’ll hear people complain about British bias, and I wonder whether this is British bias or Russell bias. Because if you think of the Qatar one slot penalty for Verstappen for impeding Russell not on a hot lap, that benefited Russell, obviously. If you think of this weird penalty for Hulkenberg, or maybe not weird but harsh penalty, benefits Russell. Russell impedes someone on a hot lap, doesn’t get investigated even. Hmm, anyway, I digress again.
So, the Abu Dhabi race sees both Hulkenberg and Gasly end up with good points but Gasly finishes ahead in 7th a few seconds over Hulkenberg who got 8th. This puts the Alpine on 65 points to Haas on 58. And RB stay on 46 at the end of the season.
I also want to add that, as I’m just starting, I’m playing around with how these podcasts will work. The first episode was very scripted, this one is going to be much less so, I’ve made some notes on stats and facts, with a few bullet points so I stay on-topic, but otherwise apart from this intro and the end I’ll be talking in a much more free flowing way. Do let me know if you prefer one or the other. On Twitter I’m MorrisF1 or you can comment at morrisf1.blogspot.com.
As with the first episode I’ll also be uploading the script, or transcript, in this case and putting up a number of graphs related to the content.
But before we consider RB, Haas, and Alpine and how their fortunes varied as the season waxed and waned I want to briefly look at the other three teams. Those are Aston Martin, Williams, and Sauber. All of whom ended with no risk of either passing other teams or of being passed in the standings.
We’re going to start at the bottom of the grid, unfortunately, which was Sauber by quite a long way. Sauber were slow all season long and quite often by a significant margin. Overall Bottas was generally the quicker but that’s not saying too much. They had two problems, two very big problems. The first one was pit stops which were agonisingly slow. This was because of a design problem which meant taking the tyres [edit: and by ‘wheels’ I, of course, mean ‘tyres’] off and putting on new ones, which is what you do in a pit stop, took a very long time, so even if they were theoretically in with a chance of nabbing a point that would ruin their race. They did resolve this fairly quickly in the first half of the season.
The other problem was much worse. The car just was not fast enough. It did improve substantially in the last few races, but by then it was too late. They did score in Qatar with Zhou Guanyu who scored 4 points for finishing in 8th. Which was quite nice to see, probably the last points he will ever score, and it did mean that Sauber escaped being pointless in 2024. Bottas in that race was 11th. So no points for the Finn which is a shame because it’s not that long ago that he was regularly on the podium or winning races.
When they get reincarnated as Audi Sauber or whatever they’re called officially next year I imagine they’ll do rather better. But it would be difficult to do much worse.
Sauber never looked like they were going to pass Williams or Alpine or anyone else, so it was a pretty rough season to be a Sauber fan.
Just above them in the standings were Williams, and Williams were a bit slower than I expected this year. Team principal James Vowles has talked a good game and seems to have his head screwed on right but it takes time to turn around an oil tanker and Williams have been a backmarker for a while now. Probably didn’t help that they had a good driver in Albon but started off with one that wasn’t so great in Logan Sargeant. For some time they were ahead of not only Sauber but also Alpine, but Alpine had some late upgrades that were very good and I’ll talk about them more later. And Williams never developed that well.
Part of this was because there were many, many crashes. And this meant money got sucked up just making spare parts. Overall development was poor, they were lucky not to be at threat from Sauber in any way. They were pretty much rooted to 9th, especially when Alpine turned into a bit of a rocket ship towards the end.
Talking of DNFs here are some interesting stats and a couple that surprised me. Albon scored four times, three times he was 9th and he got 7th in Azerbaijan. Given the car that’s not too bad. But he did have six DNFs and also one DNS. Those six DNFs are three times as many as Logan Sargeant who only had two, although he did not start in Australia. Sargeant, however, never troubled the scorers and got replaced for the last nine races by Franco Colapinto, the Argentine rookie. I’ve got to say he did very well immediately. He scored twice, however, after a very good start he did become a bit of a crash machine. In nine races he had three DNFs. On average, that’s a greater rate of frequency per race, who had six in 24 so that’s a quarter, whereas Colapinto had them a third of the time. It’s also a worse rate than Sargeant who had about one in seven.
It took Williams some time to get going, their first points were in Monaco which is about a third of the way into the season. And they were ahead of Alpine until Brazil, but ultimately finished three places behind them in the standings. Hopefully next year will be better, but the number of crashes they had and the replacement parts did mean that that ate into next year’s budget somewhat. 2026 will be the key year because that’s when we get a more substantial regulation change and, as always in this sport, that’s when a team can surprise on the upside in a big way. And if you’re at the sharp end, and I hope Williams can make a step forward, I’m not expecting them to win races or challenge for the title, but if they can make a big step forward that could stand them in good stead for the entire next regulatory era.
But in 2025 they’ve got Sainz and Albon, which for a midfield or backmarker team is a really good lineup. So, some cause for optimism there.
Now we move onto Aston Martin. Aston Martin were interesting, it wasn’t quite the total annihilation that Alonso did over Stroll in 2023 but it was not that far off. You can tell which driver used to be world champion and which one is the son of the the guy who owns the team just by looking at the points. Aston Martin started off pretty well and they scored at most races. But the vast majority of their points came early on so their development was not great. This is kind of interesting, actually, it’s become a recent habit of Aston Martin to not develop well but in previous guises as Force India or Racing Point their budget was tiny but they were really good then at developing. They weren’t that much on TV because they were never in the hunt for podium results, didn’t have that many crashes, so they kind of fell between stools.
Like I said Alonso outclassed Stroll by a mile. Not everywhere, there were one or two blips and Alonso, I think, occasionally struggled for motivation, which is understandable. Stroll had some moments, and in the next podcast episode I’m planning to make it Top 10 Most Memorable Moments. There will be some for Stroll, at least one definitely. He ran into the back of Ricciardo under the safety car, which I think was in China, and that was a bit ridiculous. Not quite as bad as the gravel trap in Brazil which, yes, that’s funny and daft and ridiculous, but it did alter the start of the race, giving us a 17 minute delay. It’s not great.
The points tallies were 24 for Stroll and 70 for Alonso, so nearly three times as many. Alonso actually was the winner of Formula B or Formula 1.5, whatever you want to call it, he was the highest driver outside the big four teams. Stroll was 13th, and was beaten by Gasly, Hulkenberg, and Tsunoda. Another fun fact: in the first four races Alonso scored 24 point, which is as many as Stroll got in the whole season. After the mid-season break Aston Martin only scored 21 points. This wasn’t great and it’s kind of lucky for them that the season ended when it did. They were still fairly comfortably 5th but Alpine and Haas, in an even longer season, with more races, those two were catching up. Luckily, Alonso had scored enough that there was no risk of them catching with the calendar as it is.
So that covers the three teams that ended up pretty much by themselves. Sauber and Aston Martin looked destined all season to finish that way. Sauber at the foot of the table and Aston Martin clearly outside the top four but faster than everyone else. Williams were a bit different because they did have something of a battle with Alpine but then Alpine just took off, but they also ended up in their own No Man’s Land.
But there was a much closer battle between RB and Haas throughout the season, and later they got joined by Alpine too.
It’s easy to forget now but the testing mood music for Haas was terrible. Everybody expected them to be very very poor and that just wasn’t the case. From very early on they were scoring or threatening to score, and the reverse, kind of the reverse, happened to RB who many people thought would be best of the rest or certainly top of the midfield. And they were pretty good, they were scoring often, but they weren’t as fast as others anticipated.
So, in the first half dozen races RB scored at three of them and Haas at four but Haas scored lower points. They scored seven over that period and RB got 19. And that’s mostly down to Miami which was pretty fantastic for them. Ricciardo got 4th in the sprint and Tsunoda was 7th in the Grand Prix which is towards the upper end of what’s possible for anyone outside the top teams.
This continued, the trend, for the next four races where RB scored at three and got nine points, and Haas did not trouble the scorers having a points drought. So in the first 10 races that’s 28 points for RB and seven for Haas. At that stage even though Haas have scored a few it does look very much like RB’s position to lose, that position being 6th.
It was a bit one-sided, or lopsided I should say, within the teams as well. At this point Tsunoda had 19 to Ricciardo’s nine points. Hulkenberg had six points and Magnussen just one. But then we had a couple of races that were fantastic for Hulkenberg, and I imagine lots of you listening will remember this. Austria and Great Britain: Hulkenberg finished 6th at both races and achieving this in a Haas when you’ve got the four top teams very competitive, very close to one another, is really impressive. Austria was quite interesting as he finished half a second ahead of Perez, and at that race Magnussen was 8th. So across Austria and the UK Haas won 20 points, and RB only scored 3.
So suddenly the title, title race (they wish), the race for 6th becomes a lot closer. RB are on 31 and Haas are on 27. For reference, at this point Alpine were on nine, Williams on four, and Sauber on zero.
Next six races weren’t too eventful, this covers Hungary to Singapore. RB scored three points and Haas four, so a slight narrowing of the gap. Quick note that one of these points was scored by Bearmen, who was standing in for suspended Magnussen at Azerbaijan. Bearman’s going to be driving for Haas full time next year, of course, and he’s pretty impressive so far. One swallow does not make a summer, but two maybe does? He scored for Ferrari earlier in the season and for Haas in Azerbaijan, and I’d argue that scoring for Haas is more impressive because obviously the car’s a long way further back, less competitive.
So this puts us on RB 34, Haas 31.
Then there was a driver change, a permanent one, not just a suspension for naughtiness. Ricciardo was tossed overboard and replaced by Liam Lawson at RB. Lawson did really well for the team last year, as a super sub, so I’m not too surprised he’s back, however I think it wa s abit shoddy the way Ricciardo was treated because he was given no opportunity to have a grand finale, say farewell, it was an open secret not officially confirmed, he suspected or knew and then he got axed. So, not too impressed by that.
As it stands, the Circuit of the Americas and Mexico were both great for Haas who got seven points in the USA with double points in the sprint, and eight in Mexico, double points in the race with Magnussen finishing 7th. Which was ahead of Piastri and just behind Verstappen.
So at this point Haas have very much seized the initiative. They’ve been consistent all season long, the pace advantage that RB had has either been diminished or vanished completely with Haas being the faster car. Hulkenberg is driving fantastically well. Magnussen, I think is a bit underrated as a driver. Yes, he can be silly sometimes but he’s fast enough to be there, and he’s scoring points too as per the 7th in Mexico. So during these two events Haas score 15 points and RB 2 points. So Haas are on 46 and RB on 36.
At this point I thought the 6th place was pretty much nailed on for Haas. However, the next race was the Brazilian Grand Prix. And anybody who predicted that podium you deserve all the kudos, and, if you bet on it, all the money that you got because I certainly did not.
At the Brazilian Grand Prix Alpine joined the party. Before the race weekend, Alpine had 14 points and were close to Williams, who at this stage had 17. Quick reminder Haas were on 46 and RB 36. So Alpine were not in that race. But Brazil was super wet and it seemed to really suit the Alpine. In the sprint Gasly got a couple of points. In the race, they held out for a full safety car or red flag and they got the red flag at the perfect point. Ocon was actually leading the race at this point, he got passed on the restart by Verstappen but that’s fair enough. Gasly was in 3rd as well, so Verstappen leads Ocon and Gasly to an Alpine double podium, 33 points. It’s a ridiculous amount for a backmarker, at the time, backmarker team. Both of them drive incredibly because conditions were very bad indeed. The rookies were having problems all over the place, even experienced drivers were struggling, but Ocon and Gasly held on easily, didn’t really look threatened.
In the same race Haas scored nothing. RB did score eight points and both Tsunoda and Lawson racked up some points. This then put Alpine on 49, Haas stayed on 46, and RB were on 44. That means that five points covered those three teams and there were just three races left.
Las Vegas was not so great for Alpine. In fact it was a little bit of a clown show. Gasly’s car failed him, and you are going to get reliability failures now and then during a season. It’s bad luck that it happened there, but it did. Ocon was compromised by a voluntary drive-through penalty. Basically, called into the the pits, went through the pit lane, didn’t get new tyres. Not great.
Las Vegas did see Haas score four more points and RB two more points. This switches things, Haas now lead with 50 points, Alpine stay on 49, RB are still on 46.
Still very tight. And then we come to Qatar, home of the Wing Mirror Incident. In the sprint Hulkenberg got a pair of points, and Magnussen also got a pair in the proper race which saw Hulkenberg DNF. RB didn’t score in either. But Alpine got a pretty fantastic 10 points. Gasly finished 5th, and fended off Sainz for numerous laps towards the end. There is a question mark over whether the Spaniard should’ve been able to pass him. There’s only really one place to do it, so Gasly knew where it would be, going into the first corner after the DRS. And it wasn’t the easiest passing, the DRS zone got cut by quite a margin this year. On the other hand, Ferrari is a lot better than the Alpine, even the upgraded Alpine. And I think that Sainz probably should’ve been able to make headway against the Alpine.
So, heading into the final race, Abu Dhabi, Alpine are now in 6th on 59 points to Haas on 54. With RB on 46, still.
There was another driver change here, so every single one of these teams, voluntary or not, changed their lineup during the course of the year. Ocon was cast aside by Alpine in favour of Jack Doohan, who’s going to drive for them next year. Ocon ended up with 23 points to Gasly’s 42. But at least part of this is because Ocon never got the same upgrades as Gasly late on and these made a huge difference. So I think that’s a bit rough and kicking him out for the last race, I’m not a fan of that really. Although the relationship between him and the team seems to have really broken down, particularly in Monaco where he decided a ‘brave’ attempt to pass Gasly would be a good idea, they collided, it was ridiculous and that seems to have been the snapping point for Alpine.
Anyway, I digress.
There was controversy in Abu Dhabi qualifying. Hulkenberg did amazingly well, which was a habit of his in qualifying in 2024, but this time he qualified 4th. But then he got a 3 place grid penalty, which put him down in 7th. This had implications for the battle for the Constructors’ because Gasly was promoted to 5th on the grid and started ahead of Hulkenberg instead of behind him. The penalty was for not following the race director’s instructions, I think it was regarding overtaking on the pit exit.
And I think it was perhaps harsh, especially in context. You see, Russell, during qualifying, impeded Lawson on a hot lap. Russell did not receive a penalty, and he wasn’t even investigated. However, Russell did benefit and moved up one slot due to Hulkenberg’s penalty. Sometimes you’ll hear people complain about British bias, and I wonder whether this is British bias or Russell bias. Because if you think of the Qatar one slot penalty for Verstappen for impeding Russell not on a hot lap, that benefited Russell, obviously. If you think of this weird penalty for Hulkenberg, or maybe not weird but harsh penalty, benefits Russell. Russell impedes someone on a hot lap, doesn’t get investigated even. Hmm, anyway, I digress again.
So, the Abu Dhabi race sees both Hulkenberg and Gasly end up with good points but Gasly finishes ahead in 7th a few seconds over Hulkenberg who got 8th. This puts the Alpine on 65 points to Haas on 58. And RB stay on 46 at the end of the season.
Think it’s important to say that the comeback of Alpine is huge and cannot be underestimated. In the last four races they racked up 51 points. That’s more than RB got in the whole season. And it’s only seven fewer than Haas got in the whole season. In the last four races Haas scored 12 and RB 10. Aston Martin, too far ahead to be caught, but they only scored 8 points in the final races and this goes t show just how critical the development race is whether you’re competing for the title or you just want to move up in the standings because it elevated Alpine from, I think they were 9th, up to 6th. Which means lots of lovely prize money.
Hulkenberg had a great year, he was very consistent and the consecutive 6th places in Austria and the UK were fantastic. He was also, I don’t know if you’d call this unlucky, but he finished 11th on seven occasions. He scored 41 points over the season to 16 for Magnussen. It’s worth remembering the Dane did play the team game on a few occasions, holding up rivals to Hulkenberg so the German had a better chance but nevertheless it’s clear who was the more impressive driver.
Gasly was also really good this year. He was helped a little bit by fortune at the final race due to Hulkenberg’s penalty. In total he scored 42 points, which is one more than Hulkenberg over the course of the season. Ocon had 23. I think it’s certain he would’ve scored more had the updates been available for his car as well. Doohan, for the record, did not score but he only competed in a single race, so I think that’s fair enough.
Tsunoda did pretty well this year. He outscored Ricciardo pretty comfortably by the time the Aussie was turfed out, with 22 points to Ricciardo’s 12. Lawson’s a rookie so a straight comparison maybe isn’t fair. During his time both RB drivers, Tsunoda and Lawson, scored at two race weekends, with eight points for Tsunoda, and four for Lawson.
Tsunoda also beat Lawson in qualifying 6-0, but I dug into this and the stat is a little bit misleading. So, for example, Mexico, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi all have the gap at less than 0.06s. That’s tiny, half a tenth basically, or less. At Las Vegas it was big, it was 1.228s, in Brazil, which was very wet, the gap 0.373s but they qualified 3rd and 5th. So not too bad. And in the USA, at the Circuit of the Americas, Lawson had a DNS in Q22 because he had new power unit parts so he didn’t bother setting a time. His Q1 time was faster than Tsunoda’s best Q2 time by 0.167s.
If you enjoyed this, please share, comment, and like this content online. As a brand new podcast that really helps. And if you’ve got comments, questions, suggestions, or other feedback for me then you can find me at MorrisF1 on Twitter or at morrisf1.blogspot.com. On the blog I’ll be putting up some more graphics relating to this podcast plus a transcript.
And next up I’m going to look back at 10 of the Most Memorable Moments of F1 in 2024. Aiming to get that up between Christmas and the New Year, but we’ll see. Thanks again for listening.
Morris
PS you can find this episode on various podcast platforms. Distribution to most is up and running, a few take a little longer. The podbean version is up here:
https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/undercutters-ep2-f1-2024-midfield-battle/
https://open.spotify.com/episode/05TYpdrVsQObsCpTLZnsNV
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/f2194ab6-f65e-48c3-9bb7-efdedb0aec76/undercutters---f1-podcast-undercutters-ep2-f1-2024-midfield-battle
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