Max Verstappen comfortably leads the drivers championship, but he’s no longer the sport’s form driver in the quickest car.
Formula 1 2024 is delivering a cracker of a season, with seven different winners to date from four different teams. It’s become impossible to predict who’ll be on top of the pile from round to round.
It only underlines that there’s more to form this season than points alone. The championship table, with the Dutchman in control on top, doesn’t tell the story of the campaign.
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Note: statistics do not include sprint qualifying or sprint races, only grands prix results.
1. MAX VERSTAPPEN
Championship: 1st, 277 points
Wins: 7
Poles: 8
Teammate head-to-head, races: 11-0 (points: 277-131)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 14-0
He might be on his longest losing streak since 2020, but there’s no arguing with the work Max Verstappen has done so far this season.
He made hay when the sun was shining on the RB20, dominating with foreboding ease. He then won races he shouldn’t have done after McLaren and Mercedes caught up. More recently he’s consistently got the most from his car — Hungary the notable exception, and to a lesser extent Austria — to ensure barely anything has been taken out of his healthy 78-point championship lead.
Some of his harder-fought victories have embellished his reputation after having won races easily in the last two seasons. His stranglehold over teammate Sergio Pérez — a thoroughly decent grand prix driver despite his lacklustre form — only further underlines that Verstappen remains the competition’s best performer.
2. LANDO NORRIS
Championship: 2nd, 199 points
Wins: 1
Poles: 2
Teammate head-to-head, races: 9-5 (points: 199-167)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 11-3
Lando Norris has been Verstappen’s closest qualifying challenger all season, their average time-attack results separating them by just 1.78 places in the Dutchman’s favour. That difference shrinks to just 0.067 places if you count only from the Miami Grand Prix.
The pace gap between them since Miami is just 0.076 seconds, counting the dry Q3 segments.
The half-season we’ve had to date has only confirmed that Verstappen and Norris are natural title rivals.
He’s clearly lacked Verstappen’s polish, and his advantage over teammate Oscar Piastri has shrunk markedly as the car’s been upgraded, but with both Norris and McLaren experiencing their first unexpected title campaign, some teething problems are to be expected for the driver upon whom the team’s expectations have been placed for years.
3. OSCAR PIASTRI
Championship: 4th, 167 points
Wins: 1
Best qualifying: 2nd (3)
Teammate head-to-head, races: 5-9 (points: 167-199)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 3-11
It wasn’t simply Oscar Piastri’s brilliant final fortnight before the break that clinched him third on this list.
Far less heralded was his excellent May, spanning Miami to Monaco, in which the Aussie could easily have made himself a multiple grand prix winner had luck been on his side.
In Miami he outperformed Norris in a slower car with fewer upgrades but lost out under the safety car. In Imola a team error in qualifying earnt him a grid penalty. In Monaco the monster first-lap crash prevented him from using his pace to pressure Charles Leclerc at the pit stops.
Then, later, there was the disaster at Silverstone where a bumbling team strategy cost him a short at the win.
Belgium was a close-run thing too. Piastri probably would’ve had the pace to beat both Mercedes drivers on the faster one-stop strategy had McLaren — or anyone other than George Russell — seen it as a viable option.
He loses points for some relatively anonymous races in the first month or so, when Norris easily kept him in his box. Since Miami, however, only Spain and arguably Canada have seen anything more than fractions between them — not bad for a driver in just his second season in the sport.
4. CHARLES LECLERC
Championship: 3rd, 177 points
Wins: 1
Poles: 2
Teammate head-to-head, races: 7-5 (points: 177-162)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 8-5
Verstappen excepted, no-one has started on the front row more frequently this season than Charles Leclerc, continuing to mount the case that he’s Formula 1’s fastest driver over one lap.
He used that speed to be Verstappen’s closest challenger in the opening months, but since then he’s has been fighting a losing battle with an SF-24 that continues sliding backwards through the pack.
His devastating run of three DNFs in four grands prix between Canada and Great Britain had little to do with him and everything to do with mechanical and strategic fumbles.
But behind the mess of Ferrari’s season has been far greater consistency and better polish than in previous years. His podium in Belgium — a gritty fourth on the road before George Russell’s disqualification — was a flawless drive for scant reward, a quiet reminder, again, that Leclerc only needs the car to do the business.
5. CARLOS SAINZ
Championship: 5th, 162 points
Wins: 1
Poles: 2nd (2)
Teammate head-to-head, races: 5-7 (points: 162-177)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 5-8
Fortune played a role in Carlos Sainz winning the first non-RBR victory of the year in Australia, but Ferrari had the pace that weekend, and he, not Leclerc, was the one to seal the deal.
Leclerc has lifted since then, perhaps wary of the reputational risk of being beaten by a driver who was sacked in January, but the difference between them on the title table is less than the 18 points Leclerc scored in Saudi Arabia, which Sainz sat out with appendicitis.
His highs haven’t been as dizzying as Leclerc’s, but the Spaniard’s season has been defined by metronomic consistency even in the face of troubles with the team or car, being yet to finish lower than sixth this year.
He only really lacks Leclerc’s single-lap pace in this head-to-head duel, putting him marginally behind his teammate in these rankings.
6. LEWIS HAMILTON
Championship: 6th, 150 points
Wins: 2
Poles: 2nd (1)
Teammate head-to-head, races: 4-7 (points: 150-116)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 4-10
Lewis Hamilton’s poor head-to-head record against teammate Russell might make his position on this leaderboard appear nonsensical, but the seven-time champion has risen to the occasion of Mercedes’s improving car.
What had looked like a lacklustre season before the upgrade run between Monaco and Spain has come alive, Hamilton enthused by the sniff of victory.
Starting from Spain, he’s been the better Mercedes performer every weekend bar Austria — a sloppy race by his standards — to take a decisive intrateam points lead.
The highlight was of course Silverstone, breaking his victory drought with the sort of classic Hamilton drive to silence his critics.
He signed off with a second victory in Belgium, and though it took Russell’s disqualification to grab the trophy, he had the pace to beat his compatriot on the same strategy.
7. GEORGE RUSSELL
Championship: 8th, 116 points
Wins: 1
Poles: 2
Teammate head-to-head, races: 7-4 (points: 116-150)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 10-4
George Russell’s head-to-head advantage over Hamilton came mostly from early in the year, when the W15 was at its worst. As the car found its groove, Russell fumbled his chances, most notably in Canada, when a rough performance had him turn pole into third on a weekend Mercedes really should have won.
But he’s worked hard to undo a forming reputation for squibbing his opportunities. His performance in Belgium was exquisite, being the first to accurately read the conditions as being ripe for a one-stop strategy and then executing to perfection, albeit with a small weight advantage that ultimately cost him disqualification.
He still has things to prove alongside Hamilton in the second half of the year, but performances like that in Belgium will have Mercedes breathing a sigh of relief about its 2025 line-up.
8. NICO HÜLKENBERG
Championship: 11th, 22 points
Best finish: 6th (2)
Best qualifying: 6th (1)
Teammate head-to-head, races: 11-2 (points: 22-5)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 11-3
You’d have got long odds at the beginning of the season for Nico Hülkenberg heading the midfield in the drivers championship at the mid-season break, but the born-again German ace has confounded expectations.
Coming off an already impressive comeback season in 2023, Hülkenberg has found another level in his improved Haas car, smashing teammate Kevin Magnussen into what will almost certainly be the Dane’s retirement from the sport.
Qualifying has been key, putting him in defensible positions on the cusp of points, from where he’s converted more often than not.
The standout results are two sixths in Austria and Great Britain, which have almost instrumentally raised Haas into contention for sixth in the championship standings.
What looked like an uninspiring passport-led choice by Audi for its first driver contract suddenly looks like an expert pick.
9. ALEX ALBON
Championship: 18th, 4 points
Best finish: 9th (2)
Best qualifying: 9th (2)
Teammate head-to-head, races: 9-0 (points: 4-0)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 13-0
Though losing massive points for writing off his car in Melbourne and single-handedly setting back the team’s development program for moths, Alex Albon has continued to prove capable of getting the most from substandard machinery.
His Williams car has been well over the minimum weight, but he’s failed to make it out of Q1 just twice this year, being a Q2 regular and having made several Q3 forays.
The Thai driver has nailed all William’s genuine scoring chances, most important among them Monaco, where that weight disadvantage was at its smallest. He also surprisingly excelled at Silverstone to score points.
The icing on the cake is his uninterrupted domination of teammate Logan Sargeant, who he’s beaten in every qualifying and race since they became teammates last year, a rare and impressive feat.
10. YUKI TSUNODA
Championship: 12th, 22 points
Best finish: 7th (2)
Best qualifying: 7th (1)
Teammate head-to-head, races: 7-5 (points: 22-12)
Teammate head-to-head, qualifying: 9-5
Had the mid-season break come a couple of races further into the campaign, Yuki Tsunoda could have slipped further down the order, for while he’s sitting on a relatively comfortable head-to-head comparison with teammate Daniel Ricciardo, it’s been almost all one-way traffic against him in the last two months.
Still, it was Tsunoda’s fast start to the season that ensured RB was able to capitalise while its car was the quickest among the midfielders before its major upgrade package in Spain went awry,
And while Ricciardo has gradually wrestled back control, there’s been little on which to fault Tsunoda, his big Hungary Q3 crash being the one big blip during season otherwise smooth, consistent and impressive enough to earn an early contract extension that will tie him to the team next season.
Ironically the only Tsunoda’s only remaining doubters appear to be at Red Bull Racing management.
11. FERNANDO ALONSO
This hasn’t been a vintage Fernando Alonso season so far.
It’s had some highlights. He rated his race to sixth in Japan as one of the top five of his entire career, and disciplined performances in Great Britain and Belgium netted reasonable points.
But it’s also been a year of painful and sometimes inexplicable lows for F1’s elder statesman, with none more dire than his crash-prone and frustration-tinged weekend in Imola.
He doesn’t bear all the responsibility, with Aston Martin clearly having slipped from the front of the field. But he’s been matched and beaten by known-quantity teammate Lance Stroll more times than a driver of his standing really should’ve been — perhaps simply to give his insistence that Stroll is a champion in waiting some sort of credibility.
12. PIERRE GASLY
There’s been little to separate the Alpine teammates in a mostly miserable first half of the season, but Pierre Gasly has been the more consistent and certainly the more measured.
His highs have been higher, and his lows have been less damaging. The inevitable flashpoints between him and friend-turned-rival Esteban Ocon have inevitably been triggered by his teammate, leaving Gasly as the last man standing at the team after two years as partners.
13. DANIEL RICCIARDO
Just as was the case with Tsunoda, Daniel Ricciardo’s first half of the season has come in two parts: the underwhelming first segment up to the end of the Monaco Grand Prix and the promising fightback that’s come since.
There’s no question Ricciardo wasn’t up to standard in the opening months of the year bar the occasional moment of brilliance, his sprint performance in Miami chief among them. After a scoreless race in Monte Carlo, the threat of the mid-season sack loomed as a real possibility.
Since then, however, he’s markedly lifted. He’s been the better performer at every race since bar the British Grand Prix, comfortably leading Tsunoda, and would’ve had more than his modest 12 points had his upturn in form not coincided with RB’s botched upgrade rollout, dropping it into the tight midfield pack.
The truism that you’re only as good as your last race is what’s kept him in his seat through the break and in with a shot at replacing Sergio Pérez later this year or in 2025, but the totality of his first half of the season — which on balance was more underwhelming than overwhelming — can’t have him inside the top 10 on this list yet.
14. VALTTERI BOTTAS
He’s been a quietly solid performer buried deep in the scoreless bottom half of the field, but try as he might, Valtteri Bottas has been incapable of outperforming his machinery or Sauber’s haphazard work in pit lane.
Remarkably he’s escaped Q1 six times in what is clearly the slowest car in the field, including one Q3 appearance in China, proving his lost none of his single-lap powers since leaving Mercedes.
It could be his only season highlight is the change of management at Audi that’s boosted his chances of extending his career.
15. LANCE STROLL
Lance Stroll started the season in the unenviable position of being the weakest link in what appeared to be a rock-solid top 10, leading to talk of the ‘Stroll Cup’, whereby the competition for the bottom five teams was to capitalise on the Canadian’s inevitable errors.
After a shaky start comprising four non-scores in the first six rounds, he’s been a more dependable performer, closing the performance gap to teammate Alonso, albeit as the car has become decreasingly relatively competitive.
It’s not been enough to make him a star performer, but it’s perhaps been less dire that it looked set to be in the first few months of the campaign.
16. ESTEBAN OCON
Esteban Ocon’s season will be defined by that ugly weekend in Monaco, where he jeopardised the team’s first double-points finish of the year with an ill-judged move on his teammate into Portier. Only the red flag saved Gasly’s race, though Ocon’s afternoon was done.
The team was so furious that former principal Bruno Famin considered sacking him on the spot.
While he’s been less outrageous since, there’s no escaping that in a year the team’s needed him to focus to get the most from its limited chances, he hasn’t always been dependable.
17. KEVIN MAGNUSSEN
Kevin Magnussen’s second F1 comeback almost certainly ends here, comprehensively bested by Hülkenberg.
His 5-22 points deficit to his teammate is representative. Had the Dane been closer to the German’s level, Haas would be favourite for sixth and perhaps even eyeing off Aston Martin for fifth in the second half of the year.
Magnussen’s defeat has at least been honourable. He’s dutifully played the team game several times this season to help Hülkenberg into the points, sometimes against his better instincts, but he’s only been in that rear-gunner position because he’s rarely had the speed to make himself the team leader.
18. ZHOU GUANYU
Zhou Guanyu has been through the ringer in what’s almost certainly his last season in Formula 1. Dealing with the grid’s slowest car and a team with divided attention between the track and its transformation into Audi, Zhou has badly struggled for momentum.
He’s been on the receiving end of some serious qualifying beltings from Bottas, who’s been at least half a second quicker at five of the last seven weekends, and hasn’t looked remotely like a points threat since the first few races of the year.
19. SERGIO PÉREZ
Sergio Pérez is better than this, though he hasn’t been for most of this year.
He was a reasonable match for Verstappen up to and including the Chinese Grand Prix, collecting four podiums from the first five grands prix.
Since then he’s been so bad that his season statistics have been terminally polluted.
His average qualifying gap to Verstappen is 6.57 places, the worst in the sport.
His average qualifying time deficit to Verstappen is 0.519 seconds, the worst in the sport.
His average gap to Verstappen at the chequered flag is 3.91 places, the worst in the sport.
He’s been whitewashed in both qualifying and race conditions.
His form has been so putrid that Red Bull Racing is at risk of losing the constructors championship despite having held a comfortable early lead and despite still having a race-winning car.
Pérez is capable of more than this, but there’s no excusing what he’s shown since April.
20. LOGAN SARGEANT
Logan Sargeant hasn’t copped a fair shake in his make-or-break second season in the sport stemming back to that fateful Australian Grand Prix.
He was turfed from his car to allow Albon to continue competing after the Thai driver wrote off his own chassis, and he was subsequently forced to race out-of-date aero kits for months.
It took until recently for him to get back on terms, and to his credit, his results improved, including a strong 11th in Britain.
But close enough was never going to be good enough, and he was never able to do enough to mount a case to be retained next season.
Source Agencies
