Three GPs and three different winners: 2024 Miami, Imola and Monaco F1 race reports

Ferrari senior engineer Jock Clear was asked recently if he thought Red Bull was beatable. His reply was as follows: “We know how big the gap to Red Bull is on paper, if you’re looking at delta lap times in the race, but as that gap gets smaller, as soon as it gets relatively close enough that you’re putting pressure on, that’s when actually they’re beatable. It’s not like you have to be faster than them to beat them. You have to be close enough that they start to make the same sort of tricky decisions that we all have to make every week. Then if they don’t have the perfect race strategy, you will beat them.”

Big upgrades for McLaren and Ferrari in consecutive races at Miami and Imola respectively gave Formula 1 hope of some competition for Red Bull. With Monaco – a place where historically Red Bull’s advantage has been at its smallest – following the week after Imola, this trio of races was set to give crucial competitive shape to the whole season. Both McLaren and Ferrari seemed very bullish about the performance boosts they were expecting. McLaren’s was launched (on Lando Norris’s car only) at Miami, with Ferrari’s following at Imola.

“Norris was in place to exploit the timing of the safety car”

McLaren’s could hardly have gone any better – as Norris took his maiden grand prix victory in Miami. It was a win which needed some luck – a safety car came out before he had stopped but after everyone else had, allowing him to vault to the front after stopping with the speed of the pack restrained. But that sells their performance short – because the McLaren was unquestionably the fastest car in the race and Norris was only unpitted by the time of the safety car’s appearance because he still had great pace on his old tyres, long after everyone else’s rubber had given its best. So there was great merit in how he was in place to exploit the timing of the safety car.

There are a couple of further qualifiers even to that, however. As has happened before during sprint format weekends, the Red Bull was not in its happiest place, Max Verstappen never quite satisfied with its balance. He still won the sprint race and still then set pole for the grand prix later that day. But twitchy oversteer into the slow corners and understeer in the fast ones made him work hard for the performance and gave the tyres a rather harder time in the race than they were enjoying on the McLaren. That’s the sort of Red Bull difficulty which opens the door of opportunity for any team already within sniffing distance – which is exactly where McLaren’s update had put it.

Great though the McLaren’s pace was on the race-day tyres, it struggled on the soft, which was the fastest tyre over one lap. Therefore Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri (in the only partially updated car) had qualified no better than fifth and sixth respectively. An errant Sergio Pérez almost took out Verstappen at Turn 1 after trying an optimistic pass on Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari – and as everyone took evasive action, Piastri was well placed to surge straight up to third while Norris was stuck behind Pérez in sixth. Four laps into the race Piastri was able to pass Leclerc for second and thereafter was able to keep Verstappen within 3sec. Although Norris’s straightline speed wasn’t enough to allow him to pass Pérez, he could feel that he was quicker. This much was confirmed as he pressured Red Bull into bringing Pérez in quite early. Norris stayed out and his pace in clear air was electrifying, the McLaren lapping around 0.5sec per lap faster than race leader Verstappen as he chased after Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari.

Leclerc pitted to undercut back ahead of Piastri and within a couple of laps the Ferrari was getting perilously close to undercutting Verstappen too, forcing Red Bull to bring the leader in for the hard tyres on which to get to the end. Again, there was that pressure forcing Red Bull into uncomfortable decisions.

This timing was to prove Verstappen’s undoing. Because he just didn’t have the usual pace advantage. This was not a typical Verstappen day of dominance; he was working hard to stay in control of this race. Seeing off the Leclerc challenge was only one part of his task. The bigger threat now was Norris who on his old tyres was still lapping a few tenths faster than Verstappen could go on his new. The McLaren was only 11sec ahead (with a pit stop losing around 20sec) so wasn’t going to retain the lead after stopping. But it was an eye-catching performance nonetheless and Norris looked set to run for many more laps, with each additional lap increasing the tyre advantage he’d have over Verstappen in the final stint.

Piastri and Sainz had already pitted and rejoined behind Leclerc. Without the safety car Norris’s pace may well have vaulted him past them but he would still have had Leclerc and Verstappen to contend with. But just one lap after the Piastri and Sainz stops Norris was given the safety car present, allowing him to pit for his new tyres and rejoin without losing the lead. The safety car was to clear up the mess from a Kevin Magnussen/Logan Sargeant collision and it initially picked up Verstappen. Norris was able to make his in-lap to the pits and get out still well ahead of the queue.

Norris had to get defensive upon the restart as Verstappen took a look down the Turn 1 inside – but thereafter he had way more pace. Enough to pull himself immediately out of DRS range. Verstappen for once had to settle for second, unable to offer any challenge to the flying McLaren. “Lando’s pace was just insane,” said Verstappen afterwards. “There’s no way I could have done those times.”

“About time,” said the delighted first-time winner on the slow-down lap. It had indeed been a long time coming but there are surely more to follow. It was also McLaren’s first grand prix win under team principal Andrea Stella. Leclerc was able to stay with Verstappen to the flag but not to pass it. But that was with the pre-updated Ferrari. What would the new one be able to give him at Imola?

We only had to wait two weeks to find out, the Ferrari appearing with Red Bull-like ‘over-bite’ cowlings around the radiator inlets, part of an aero upgrade comprising a new floor and diffuser and shrunken sidepods. The Red Bull had a small upgrade, but the most intriguing Red Bull-related story once the cars were running on Friday at Imola was that it was even further outside of its sweet spot than in Miami, with Verstappen around 0.5sec off the pace of McLaren and a few tenths off Ferrari too. Team test driver Sébastien Buemi did a 10-hour stint in the Milton Keynes simulator on Friday-Saturday to help define a new baseline set up, around a smaller rear wing. It was enough to allow Verstappen to take pole by just a few hundredths of a second ahead of the two McLarens which were around 0.1sec faster than Leclerc’s Ferrari. But Verstappen was taking an essentially untried set-up into the race.

Piastri had qualified for the front row but received a three-place grid drop for impeding and it was Norris who again took the challenge to Verstappen. Things looked quite routine in the first stint of the one-stop race as Verstappen built up a comfortable 6sec lead over the McLaren, with Norris working hard to keep Leclerc out of undercut range. This was initially the pattern into the second stint too, with Norris’s pace being reined-in by his race engineer Will Joseph as Leclerc applied the pressure. Piastri meanwhile had undercut himself past Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari to go fourth.

“It was a Verstappen victory, but not as we’ve come to know them”

There were 18 laps to go when Joseph finally allowed Norris off the leash to pull away from the Ferrari and quite by chance this coincided with Verstappen running into problems with that untried set-up. His front tyres had worn and were now losing temperature. Once they do that when the tread gauge is thin, there’s no bringing them back – and as the Red Bull began to struggle so the charging Norris was taking whole chunks out of Verstappen’s lead. He arrived on the Red Bull’s tail with four laps still to go and Norris’s challenge then was to try to get to less than 1sec of Verstappen at the DRS detection point which lies just beyond the fast Variante Alta chicane. This was easier said than done, partly because of the very aerodynamic effects which DRS was designed to address and partly because Verstappen was using his battery’s extra boost shrewdly. As Verstappen’s battery store began then to deplete so Norris came at him again but ultimately ran out of laps. “One more lap would have been sweet,” he said after following up his Miami win with such a close second. It was a Verstappen victory, but not as we’ve come to know them.

There was a groundhog day theme to the first practice day at Monaco as Verstappen and Pérez wrestled with a Red Bull which was difficult over the bumps and cambers of the street track. Meanwhile Charles Leclerc took the circuit apart, in scintillating form in a Ferrari which had visibly better mechanical traits. That set the competitive tone of the weekend, Leclerc untouchable, Red Bull in serious problems with its ride. This time there was no rescuing the Red Bull situation with a demon new set-up overnight; Verstappen insisted this was a more fundamental problem, to do with the concept of the car and a street circuit with bumps, cambers and kerbs it could not smother. “It’s not a new thing,” he insisted after qualifying only sixth. “It’s been here since 2022. Of course with the last few years we had a car advantage and it gets masked a little bit because we gain in the corners where the kerbs and bumps are not that much of a limitation. But with everyone catching up… when you’re not improving your weakest point you get found out.”

It was nothing new for Leclerc to be on pole here; he’d been there twice before. But victory had always eluded him. This time there was nothing standing in his way, not even Piastri’s McLaren which had qualified on the front row ahead of Sainz, Norris, George Russell’s Mercedes and only then the lead Red Bull. The other one, driven by Pérez, was only 0.3sec slower than Verstappen in Q1 (about his usual margin) but that wasn’t enough to get into Q2. He would start 18th.

Leclerc surged into a lead on a beautiful sunny day. Sainz got better drive off the right-hand side of row two than Piastri on the left of row one and arrived at Ste Dévote ahead and on the inside. But Piastri wasn’t up for surrendering. It was vital for him that Ferrari did not get Sainz into a position to control the McLaren’s pace while Leclerc escaped and he hung on around the outside, pinning Sainz in. As the Ferrari understeered a little on the exit its left front tyre sidewall took a puncture from the McLaren’s floor edge. Piastri was through to second and a few hundred metres further on Sainz’s car refused to turn right into Casino. He took to the escape road. That looked to be the end of his race but he was to get a reprieve. There had been a big accident up the hill of Beau Rivage as Magnussen and Pérez had come together, the accident accounting for Magnussen’s Haas team-mate Nico Hülkenberg too. The Red Bull had only one wheel still attached. The race was red flagged and Sainz got to limp back and take the restart.

“Leclerc sprinted away. It was a beautiful story but a dull race”

Because everyone was competitively obliged to switch tyre compounds (to fulfil the requirement of two compounds but without having to make a pitstop), it now became effectively a zero-stop race. Everyone would be trying to get a set of tyres through to the end. It was easier for the top four as they’d switched to hards. But more difficult for Russell, Verstappen and Hamilton who were now on the mediums.

They maintained grid order into the first corner – Leclerc, Piastri, Sainz, Norris, Russell, Verstappen, Hamilton, Yuki Tsunoda, Alex Albon and Gasly – and they remained so for the entire distance! Absolutely nothing of further note happened. Ferrari had Leclerc run slowly enough that there was no gap for the McLarens to drop into if they had tried to make a stop for new tyres. Which involved keeping the gap to Russell small. But Russell was trying to get his mediums to last so was driving at a pedestrian pace – and so was Leclerc. Only near the end, when it was clear McLaren had no more opportunities, did Leclerc sprint away. It was a beautiful story, but a dull race.

The emotional victor recounted he’d had tears in his eyes in the last few laps as he thought of how his late father had dreamed of Charles doing this one day. “I think Red Bull still have the best car,” he said. “But it wasn’t the best car around here.”