Martin Brundle on Abu Dhabi GP: McLaren's rise from last to F1 champions assessed and Lewis Hamilton's final Mercedes flourish
9 December 2024, 09:53 | Updated: 9 December 2024, 12:36
McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes all put on a great show in 2024 with multiple victories each, ably chased increasingly hard by the rest of the pack. But it's McLaren who took the Constructors' Championship in a well-deserved and impressive style.
Not least because McLaren are a customer engine team with Mercedes power units as opposed to a fully works team like Alpine, Mercedes and Ferrari.
It's easy to argue that McLaren have the equal-best duo in Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and those two drivers have been consistently fast. More importantly, they've not made many errors and have barely damaged their cars in this, the longest season in F1's 74-year history with 24 races and six Sprints scattered across the planet.
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That means most of their energy and budget cap has been focused on performance and not repairs.
The team has also been pragmatic and cautious in putting upgrades on the car, ensuring they know exactly what they have, and that it actually works, so as not to get lost as other teams have done.
That's been imperative on these complex cars which are nearing the ceiling of performance in year three of reasonably static technical regulations.
How the Brown-Stella double act transformed McLaren
The McLaren leadership of CEO Zak Brown and Team Principal Andrea Stella has worked extremely well.
Zak is the can-do, strongly commercially minded petrolhead and enthusiast, and Andrea is the calm pragmatic one with a longstanding technical background and is equally highly respected. Definitely yin and yang working in unison there.
They both engender loyalty and a strong following and it has worked very well in galvanising a great workforce along with the right tools and equipment, all properly funded, into one cohesive force.
The McLaren team needed that after a drought of 26 years, but an equally impressive Ferrari ran them close.
And McLaren's owners and commercial partners, particularly the majority owner Bahrainis, have been extremely supportive and patient through some scarily lean times, and are now thankfully reaping rewards.
They were ninth in the Constructors' Championship in 2017, and plumb last as recently as early-season 2023.
The '50/50' risk Verstappen didn't need to take
McLaren needed all their experience and calm when at the very first corner of the race Max Verstappen sliced his Red Bull up the inside second-place man Piastri and they made contact, both heavily losing out with Piastri falling to the very back.
Verstappen claimed he was fully alongside, but he wasn't. Perhaps Piastri could have left a bit more space, but I doubt he saw the late lunge.
Ayrton Senna famously said that if you don't go for a gap you're no longer a racing driver, but Max really didn't need to take that 50/50 risk for either of them.
After he received a 10-second penalty, angry Max in the car called the stewards "stupid idiots" which is not fair or smart of him at all, but calmer Max after the race went to apologise to Oscar and McLaren.
Meanwhile, Norris from pole position built a comfortable lead in the melee, Carlos Sainz seized second place from third on the grid, and Charles Leclerc in the sister Ferrari immediately jumped to 12th from a penalised 19th on the grid, and in relatively short order made that eighth and showing great pace.
This championship battle was suddenly far from over despite the McLaren front-row lockout.
A frustrated and recovering Piastri would then make contact with the back of Franco Colapinto's Williams to receive his own 10-second penalty. All thanks to that first corner incident.
All McLaren's hopes therefore rested on Norris's shoulders, given that a victory would seal the teams' title regardless of what Ferrari could magic up. And Norris was serene out front, little by little eking out an advantage over his former team-mate Sainz.
There was briefly a virtual safety car when Valtteri Bottas in his Sauber on his likely swansong connected with Sergio Perez in his Red Bull and effectively spun him out of what could be Sergio's last F1 race too.
Bottas would also later lock his front brakes and take out Kevin Magnussen's Haas, who was completing his last F1 race before moving into Le Mans racing.
Bottas, who also retired from the GP with suspension damage, would attract a five-place grid penalty for his next F1 race start, which may or may not ever happen.
The Sainz 'travesty' and Hamilton's 'vintage' Mercedes finale
Norris's lead was such that the team could afford to wait until a lap after Ferrari before pitting, which happened on laps 25 and 26 of the 58 scheduled.
It was so calm despite the pressure, and McLaren delivered a 2.0-second stop. Norris emerged with a two-second lead and gradually eased away again to win by just under six seconds.
Sainz was an impressive second as he is now obliged to depart the team for the incoming Lewis Hamilton, and Leclerc did make his way to a mighty third place from the back row of the grid.
Sainz has a perfect attitude and mindset about heading to current midfielders Williams, but it's a travesty that he's not in either a Mercedes or Red Bull next season.
Piastri somehow finished 10th for a world championship point. He hung on to fourth in the Drivers' Championship and McLaren won the constructors' by 666 to 652 points.
Hamilton's fourth place in the race, spectacularly passing team-mate George Russell around the outside of turn nine on the final lap, was another outstanding drive from 16th on the grid after a bizarre qualifying when he collected a corner marker bollard dislodged by Magnussen who was trying to get out of his way.
It was vintage Hamilton and a fitting end to his 84-victory, six-world-championship residence at Mercedes. Cue tears and emotion all around for him and the team.
Verstappen would recover to finish sixth having served his 10-second penalty, albeit 49 seconds behind Norris, in a race he's dominated in recent years. With Perez retiring on lap one it was a painful day for the Milton Keynes-based team.
Behind him, Pierre Gasly drove another great race for Alpine as the team secured sixth in the constructors' ahead of Nico Hulkenberg who finished eighth for Haas and yet more points.
Fernando Alonso capped a miserable season with two points in ninth for Aston Martin, not quite a lap down. They will all be hoping for dramatic improvements in the next couple of months and some magic dust from Adrian Newey sooner rather than later.
Can Norris now go one better in 2025?
It was the kind of performance from Norris that can win him a world championship, totally calm and reassured, he is now extremely comfortable out front of a Grand Prix as well as gunning for pole position.
He'll need to find a better way to manage Verstappen's aggressive driving and relentless speed and talent, but Lando must start as one of the favourites for the 2025 title.
But driver and team rivals will not stand still, including his team-mate Piastri, and so he'll need to bring this kind of completeness and 'A game' to every one of the 24 races. The team seem very capable of giving him a fast, predictable, and reliable car too.
It should be a classic season, but meanwhile 2024 has been most enjoyable too.
Thank you for your company once again this season and have a great break.
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(c) Sky Sports 2024: Martin Brundle on Abu Dhabi GP: McLaren's rise from last to F1 champions assessed and Lewis Hamilton's final Mercedes flourish
