The motorsport moments that made 2024 a racing watershed

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8 mins read

29 December 2024

Formula 1

How Max Verstappen joined Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel as a four-time Formula 1 world champion only underlined what we already knew about the Dutchman: that at 27 his place is assured among the few, as one of the greatest racing drivers we’ve yet seen – and, much like Michael Schumacher, he will probably always stoke anger over his hard-edged character and approach to wheel-to-wheel racing.

For a while we feared 2024 would be more of the same following his near-whitewash last year. Verstappen won seven of this season’s first 10 races to open up a gaping lead – which was just as well given how the season would then turn.

The toxicity of Christian Horner’s allegedly inappropriate behaviour to a female employee at Red Bull tarnished the opening weeks. Horner was cleared of misconduct and brazenly rode out the storm, but the cost was heavy. The loss of Adrian Newey, eventually to Aston Martin, will surely have a profound knock-on effect, if it hasn’t already. Newey’s bombshell coincided with Red Bull’s sharp decline, as Verstappen struggled with the tricky RB20.

At the same time, McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes pulled their acts together, to varying degrees, with all of their drivers winning races in what turned out to be a superbly competitive and entertaining season.

Suddenly, Verstappen was on the back foot and that inevitably triggered his petulant streak. But, impressively, he never cracked. This was a flawless campaign as he kept his score ticking over despite Red Bull’s downturn in form, and when he finally ended a four-month losing streak with a sensational wet-weather comeback from 17th on the grid in Brazil, Verstappen had fully earned his fourth Formula 1 crown.

Lando Norris emerged as his only threat for the title, although the points gap would have required a record-breaking effort to overcome it. As the 25-year-old freely admitted, there were too many mistakes as he suddenly found himself in a genuinely pace-setting McLaren for the first time. He’ll learn so much from the experiences of this year.

Meanwhile, McLaren’s revival under measured team principal Andrea Stella is proof that in this era Mercedes customer status is enough of a basis to fight for world titles, and with fellow first-time GP winner Oscar Piastr i in the other papaya car, the team boasts arguably the most potent driver line-up.

Season highlights? Lewis Hamilton’s ninth British GP win was special, ending a 945-day victory drought. His move to Ferrari for 2025 was the year’s biggest story, announced before the season began. The seven-time champ will be 40 in January but remains an inspirational F1 force – even if Mercedes team-mate George Russell comprehensively out-qualified him this year.

After two years of Red Bull domination, F1 was back to its best in 2024 – to the relief of anyone not connected to Verstappen. It ’s never been tighter: in Norris, Piastri, Hamilton, Russell, Charles Leclerc and more, it has a stellar cast of winners – and any one of them will believe they can dethrone Verstappen in 2025. Bring it on.

British Touring Car Championship

Britain’s premier four-wheeled motorsport series crowned a new champion in 2024. Jake Hill followed in the footsteps of Frank Sytner, Will Hoy, Tim Harvey, Joachim Winkelhock and his WSR team-mate Colin Turkington by winning a BTCC title in a BMW.

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The 30 -year-old from Kent scored eight wins on his way to his first championship in anything, beating Excelr8 Hyundai’s Tom Ingram in a nail-biting finale at Brands Hatch.

Ingram’s hard luck in race one, when he was caught up in a collision between Josh Cook and outgoing champion Ash Sutton, opened the door for Hill, who had come into the final weekend equal on points with the 2022 champion.

Four-time champion Turkington, out of the reckoning this year, did his team-mate a favour and allowed him through for victory. But Ingram hit back in race two, slicing past both BMWs for a stirring victory. Hill’s championship lead was a single point as they headed into the finale, in mixed conditions – and the change in weather played to the strengths of the BMW 330e.

With another helping hand from Turkington, he finished second to Sutton in the race to seal an emotional BTCC title.

“Almost every time it has rained we’ve won or been on the podium,” said Hill. “So for it to rain in that last race and to pass Tom for the championship around the outside at Surtees pleased me most. Funnily enough, when Tom won the title in 2022 he pulled the exact same move on me. So it was a perfect way to get it done, especially at home on the Brands GP circuit.”

Formula E

Jaguar’s works squad claimed team honours in the electric-powered series, but as usual it’s the drivers’ title that takes precedence for the public – and somehow the Kiwi pair of Nick Cassidy and Mitch Evans bungled that one. Or at least their team did.

Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein won the Saturday race in London, but Cassidy took pole position for the Sunday finale to leave the top three separated by just four points with one to play.

Then team strategy on when Cassidy should take his Attack Mode power boost, and how Evans should back up Wehrlein for his team-mate’s benefit, left the pair with glum faces as Jaguar celebrated its first world championship since the Group C sports car days. An odd scene.

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But what did for Evans in the end was the Formula E equivalent of an own goal: he fa i led to trigger the activation point when attempting to pick up his final dose of Attack Mode, which meant he had to try again – and that allowed Wehrlein to get past. It made the difference as the ex-F1 driver claimed his first world championship.

World Endurance Championship

Honours were shared three ways at the pinnacle of sports car racing in 2024. Porsche’s drivers became world champions, Toyota claimed the manufacturers’ crown and Ferrari won the Le Mans 24 Hours.

From a bigger-picture perspective, Le Mans always trumps the world titles as the defining factor in how an endurance racing season is judged. But the rich influx of manufacturers – eight in the top Hypercar class, nine in the new LMGT3 category – has shifted the dial.

Winning the WEC is now much more than a consolation, at least to those in the paddock and pit lane. Ferrari even circled a WEC crown as its target for 2024, following the 499P’s historic debut win at Le Mans’ 100th-anniversary edition last year.

Nevertheless, the Prancing Horse will take a second consecutive victory at the Big One and the 11th in its long history at the race. A troublesome open door on the 499P driven by Nicklas Nielsen caused a flutter in the closing stages, but the Dane kept his head to deliver another narrow defeat of Toyota for Ferrari and a first Le Mans victory for himself, Antonio Fuoco and Miguel Molina.

The trio eventually finished a distant second in the WEC points to Porsche crew Kévin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and André Lotterer – the last-named a WEC champion for a second time at 42.

The Penske-run Porsche team put a surprisingly troubled first season with the 963 behind it to uncover both pace and reliability in the car ’s sophomore campaign. Estre and co won twice, at the Qatar season opener and the penultimate round at Fuji, and scored consistently in between to earn their crown. British team Jota added a historic first privateer win in this Hypercar era, as Will Stevens and Callum Ilot t steered their Hertz-backed 963 to victory at Spa.

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Toyota at least stole the limelight at the season closer in Bahrain. Sébastien Buemi’s charge from 10th to victory allowed the GR010 Hybrid to beat the Penske Porsches to manufacturer honours by just two points.

Meanwhile, Porsche’s Manthey-run 911 GT3-R proved the class of LMGT3 in the hands of Alex Malykhin, Joel Sturm and Klaus Bachler to cap a great season for sports car racing’s most successful manufacturer. Parallel to WEC glory, Penske Porsche’s 963s also won the Daytona 24 Hours and IMSA title in the US.

World Rally Championship

Tricky times for the pinnacle of rallying. The cars remain spectacularly fast, but hybrid powertrains have failed to inspire fresh interest from the world’s car manufacturers beyond current entrants Toyota, Hyundai and Ford (through M-Sport) – and when the reigning double champion decides he can afford to take a semi-sabbatical at the age of just 24, it ’s hardly a sign of a sport in the rudest of health.

Kalle Rovanperä turned out for seven of the 13 rounds for Toyota and won four of them. Meanwhile, Sébastien Ogier also continued to rally part-time, only to find himself pulled into the race more than originally planned when his three wins made him a title contender.

But their absences meant this was Thierry Neuville’s year. No one will begrudge Hyundai’s champion his first title, especially as the 36-year old has previously finished runner-up five times. He won the Monte Carlo opener and was never headed in the points, even if it took him until September to add a second win, in Greece.

Neuville was made to sweat by Ott Tänak, the 2019 champion returning to Hyundai after a year at M-Sport, and he pushed their internal battle all the way to the final round.

But the Estonian’s crash in Japan allowed Elfyn Evans to record a win in 2024, and it lifted him to a distant second in the points – for a fourth time. The Welshman knew he had wasted a golden chance to win a WRC crown. Evans did at least contribute to Toyota pipping Hyundai to the manufacturers’ title, by just three points.

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Indycar

Álex Palou is the shining star in America’s premier single-seater championship right now. At 27, the Spaniard strode to his third Indycar title in four years on the Nashville oval back in September – to the surprise of no one.

Palou has stoked controversy in recent years, first by trying to switch to Arrow McLaren from the Chip Ganassi Racing team that gave him his big chance, then by going back on an apparent agreement to join McLaren for this year having decided to stay put with Ganassi after all.

Now, apparently content with life where he is (we think) and without any obvious route to F1, which would have been the case even if he had joined McLaren’s US arm, the glaring hole in his career is the absence of a win at the race that counts for more than any other.

The Indianapolis 500 in late May fell to Penske's Josef Newgarden for a second year running, following a four-hour rain delay and a thrilling last-lap pass on McLaren's Pato O'Ward. The Mexican was heartbroken, having drafted past Newgarden as they started the 200th lap only for the American to slingshot back ahead moments later. The win followed a tawdry cheating scandal over Newgarden’s illegal use of Indycar’s ‘push to pass’ boost at the St Petersburg season opener. For team chief Roger Penske, who also owns the series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, it was all a little awkward.