How Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes have reeled in Red Bull

Seven different winners from the first 14 races has turned the 2024 Formula One season into compulsive viewing. Back at the first round in Bahrain, such excitement seemed unlikely as Red Bull dominated and its rivals were left tens of seconds in arrears.

F1’s fierce development war has changed all that and created genuine unpredictability at each race. Below, we track the upgrades of each of the top four teams during the first part of the year to tell the story of how the 2024 campaign came alive.

Red Bull

Wins: 7
Points: 408

The year started in familiar fashion, with Red Bull and Max Verstappen easing to two consecutive victories at the first two races. At the season opener, Verstappen had a margin of 22 seconds over teammate Sergio Pérez and a week later it was still a comfortable 13 seconds in Saudi Arabia.

Turmoil off track detracted from Verstappen’s dominance on it, but the first sign of sporting vulnerability came with a retirement due to a brake fire at the Australian Grand Prix. A 12-second winning margin over Pérez in Japan, where the Red Bull received its first major upgrade of the season, and a 13-second margin over Lando Norris in China suggested there was nothing to worry about, but things changed when McLaren brought a major upgrade to Miami.

Although an unfortunately timed safety car handed Norris the lead ahead of Verstappen, it was the pace the McLaren exhibited from that point onward that turned heads at Red Bull. The world-champion outfit hit back with their own major upgrade in Imola, but the race in northern Italy was also the first time the limitations of the Red Bull were laid bare since the introduction of the ground effect regulations in 2022.

Struggling over the kerbs, Verstappen saw a seemingly comfortable lead slashed to a few fractions of a second at the finish in a surprisingly close fight with Norris. The weaknesses of the Red Bull and its inability to ride kerbs and bumps was fully exposed in Monaco, where Verstappen could only manage sixth place behind cars from all three of Red Bull’s main rivals.

The weaknesses were still prevalent in Canada, but Verstappen drove around them to take a remarkable win in mixed conditions before a further upgrade in Spain helped in his narrow victory over Norris. By this point, though, it was clear Red Bull wasn’t finding the same joy from its development plan as its rivals and the team hasn’t won a race since those Barcelona celebrations in June.

There were factors beyond pure performance involved in the subsequent four races, such as his clash with Norris at the Austrian Grand Prix and his engine penalty in Belgium, but another minimal relative gain from a major upgrade in Hungary has left the team worrying about what the second half of the season may hold. Perhaps its biggest issue is not Verstappen but Pérez’s struggles with the car.

The 34-year-old Mexican has scored just 28 points from the past eight races, allowing McLaren to close the gap at an average of more than six points per race since Miami. Continue on the current points trajectory and McLaren will ease its way to the constructors’ title.

McLaren

Wins: 2
Points: 366

A slow start to the season raised questions over the team’s ability to continue its upward trajectory from 2023, but those questions were firmly answered with a major upgrade in Miami. From that point on, the team has averaged 30.25 points per race weekend and scored a podium in 10 consecutive races stretching back to China.

The Miami upgrade was significant and traded some of the high-speed prowess of the McLaren for more performance in slow- and medium-speed corners. Seven races on from the update’s introduction, when McLaren took its first 1-2 victory in three years at the Hungarian Grand Prix, team boss Andrea Stella attributed the dominant result to the car’s strengths through the medium-speed corners of the Hungaroring.

Arguably points went missing at the Canadian and British Grands Prix due to the timings of pit stops, and in Austria following Norris’ collision with Verstappen, but McLaren’s overall car performance has positioned it as a genuine contender for the constructors’ championship.

While the Red Bull in Verstappen’s hands can be devastatingly quick at specific circuits, the McLaren seems to be a better all-rounder with a wider window in which it will offer up quick lap times. What’s more, McLaren’s development plan has been more fruitful than Red Bull’s, allowing the team to overhaul F1’s aerodynamic powerhouse and even get a nose ahead.

“Red Bull have taken trackside more developments so far, in terms of physical parts delivered, when you look at the submission, than what we have done,” Stella said at Spa. “But definitely, I can talk for McLaren: we seem to be now in condition to cash in some of these developments that we have accrued in the ground.

“I would expect that for the second part of the season we will have, at multiple times, some new parts. In a way, I’m surprised that we’ve been so competitive, considering that from Miami onwards we haven’t actually brought trackside many new parts. So it means that obviously the Miami upgrade was big, but there’s some upgrades that will come in the second part of the season.”

Ferrari

Wins: 2
Points: 345

Ferrari emerged from preseason testing as Red Bull’s closest — albeit still quite distant — rival. A Ferrari driver joined the Red Bull duo on the podium at the opening two races, before Carlos Sainz made a remarkable comeback from appendicitis to lead a Maranello 1-2 in Australia when Verstappen retired with a brake issue.

Sainz’s strong form continued with a podium in Japan, but from the Chinese Grand Prix onwards it was McLaren that took the lead of the chasing pack behind Red Bull. Hopes were pinned on an upgrade at Imola, which the team tried to play down in public but was being billed as a similar step to McLaren’s Miami upgrade by some media outlets. The performance improved, but not by the step required to get in the fight for victory.

Any concerns about the lack of progress in Imola was cast aside by Charles Leclerc‘s victory at the next round in Monaco. There was little doubt that between the walls and over the bumps in Monaco, Leclerc’s Ferrari was the class of the field, and he was rewarded with his first home victory of his career.

Reality bit hard a week later in Canada when Ferrari was suddenly nowhere and mistakes left it with no points for either driver. A fast-tracked upgrade package promised to turn the tables in Spain, but the car emerged as the fourth fastest and introduced a worrying trait.

The upgrade, which was aimed at improving the car’s aerodynamic efficiency, introduced bouncing in high-speed corners, sapping confidence from the drivers. The team reverted to its pre-Barcelona specification for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, but in doing so conceded significant ground to its rivals in F1’s development war. A revised floor was brought to the car in Hungary aimed at solving the problems with the Barcelona package, but it only underlined the growing realisation that Ferrari now has the fourth-fastest car.

In Belgium, Leclerc managed to get his tyres in the perfect window for a wet qualifying lap, allowing him to take pole position once a grid penalty was applied to Verstappen, but once again the performance was lacking on race day and he dropped to fourth at the finish, which became third when George Russell was disqualified.

Mercedes

Wins: 3
Points: 266

The start of the season seemed painfully familiar for Mercedes, as Russell and Lewis Hamilton struggled to score double-figure points at most rounds. Undoubtedly the team had made some progress over the winter, but only in finding a new baseline while its rivals continued apace with adding performance to their cars.

What’s more, the Mercedes still had some nasty handling traits, meaning attempts to cure its slow-corner oversteer with setup changes left the car prone to sudden snaps of oversteer in high-speed corners. Attempts to address the oversteer only resulted in the return of time-sapping low-speed understeer. Neither driver felt particularly comfortable with the car and, despite a number of upgrades, its unpredictability from session to session seemed only to worsen.

For the eighth round in Monaco, Mercedes rushed through the production of a new front wing. Compared to the more comprehensive upgrades at other rounds, it seemed like a minor step, but it proved to be crucial in unlocking performance and balancing the car.

Because just one wing was ready in time for Monaco, only Russell ran it, and the benefits, although present, didn’t have a major impact on performance at such a slow-speed circuit. At the next round in Canada, however, Russell qualified on pole and took a podium in a race Mercedes should have won. Hamilton followed up with a podium in Spain before Russell capitalised on the Norris-Verstappen clash in Austria to win Mercedes’ first race since Brazil 2022.

Further victories in Great Britain and Belgium means Mercedes has won three of the past four races before the summer break and the performance of the car looks unrecognisable compared the first few races of 2024.

Speaking after the Canadian Grand Prix breakthrough, technical director James Allison was asked if there had been a eureka moment in the development of the car.

“This was more of an ‘Oh God, how could we have been so dumb?!’ type moment,” he said, “where you see the path forward and you should have seen it sooner!”

Source: www.espn.com