Karun Chandhok: ‘It’s been brilliant to see seven different F1 winners’

The Formula 1 season heads into the summer break after a demanding run of five races in six weekends. While 2024 started off in a dominant way for Max Verstappen, for all of us neutrals it’s been brilliant to see seven different winners this season already, which is the highest number we’ve had since 2012.

Reflecting on the first half, I would still say that Max has been the best driver so far. He made hay while the Red Bull had a clear advantage in the early races but more recently when it seemed like the McLaren was a faster car at Imola and Barcelona, he really had to dig far into his reserves of talent to pull out some great qualifying laps which set up the win. The lap he did on Saturday in the wet in Spa to be six-tenths ahead of the pack was extraordinary.

The Spanish Grand Prix is a great example of why he’s worth his weight in gold. Max started on the front row while Sergio Pérez was outside the top 10. He seized the initiative straight away by not only passing Lando Norris off the start but also attacked to get past George Russell in the first two laps, gaining track position. Norris lost a chunk of time behind George in that first stint which proved to be the difference between winning and not. The frustration-induced rage from the cockpit throughout the Hungarian Grand Prix was a sign that the red mist still comes over Max and his burning desire to be a perfectionist overcomes everything else, including empathy for his team who are clearly not enjoying being beaten either.

“Red Bull is backing Pérez to raise his game. Now that’s what he must do”

Lando has had a very strong year and should be closer in the points table if it was based on pure driving performances, taking the car and strategy out of the equation. Taking his first win in Miami shook the monkey off his back but actually he’s been in a position to win five races in a row from Canada until Hungary and didn’t end up winning any of them. Two of those were lost at the start, plus more places on the opening lap in Spa and certainly Silverstone was lost through strategic and communication errors so there are still areas where the British driver needs to improve to challenge for the title. The good thing is that Lando is self-aware and will be conscious of the techniques he has to work on. In recent races it seems that Oscar Piastri is now a match for pace and I’m fascinated to see how the intra-McLaren battle will play out in the second half of the year.

The Ferrari duo have been pretty evenly matched and have done a solid job to drag performance out of the car whenever the opportunity presented itself. Charles Leclerc’s fairy-tale Monaco Grand Prix win was one of the feel-good stories of the year while Carlos Sainz’s amazing turnaround from being dropped by Ferrari, missing a race due to appendicitis and then coming back to win in Melbourne is probably just as strong a contender in that category! Overall the Ferrari hasn’t been as strong as the McLaren or the Mercedes recently yet the drivers seem to be racking up points at a solid rate.

Russell has been brilliant in qualifying this season, a good chunk ahead of Lewis Hamilton but since Barcelona, the seven-time world champion has been much happier with the car. Victory at Silverstone was a superb illustration of how Lewis is still capable of producing the magic when it counts. On a day when George lost confidence in the damp and Lando got the strategy wrong and overshot his marks at the pitstop under pressure, Lewis’s final run on those soft tyres was utterly brilliant. He managed every corner of the stint, beautifully manipulating the weight transfer and the rotation at the entry to the corners to give the tyres as little stress as possible while unleashing the pace he needed.

There’s been a huge amount of noise around the second Red Bull seat and that won’t necessarily stop even though the team is standing by Sergio Pérez (for now). In the eight races from Imola until Spa, the Mexican scored 28 points in contrast to 141 for Verstappen, 126 for Piastri and 116 for Norris. McLaren has outscored Red Bull 242 to 169 in that same period. The team is backing Pérez to raise his game and now that’s what he must do to combat the growing threat from McLaren and also Mercedes.

Christian Horner and Helmut Marko will need to put aside their personal issues to manage what happens next. Pérez has a deal to stay put for 2025, but only big points and performances will guarantee his place.

A former racing driver in Formula 1, WEC and Formula E, Karun Chandhok is an analyst for Sky Sports F1
Follow Karun on Twitter @karunchandhok