All the way back in February, I made my Predictions for the upcoming 2024 Formula 1 Season! Now, that article was a lot of fun as per usual, but I always feel like this one is even more special, mainly because I usually suck! So, there will be 3 sections here, one for Starter Predictions, one for the Drivers’ Championship, and one for the Constructors’ Championship! So, without further ado, let’s see how I got on at predicting what was a pretty wild Season!
10 Starter Predictions
My first Starter Prediction was “There will be 4 different winners in 2024”! This is a great start, but one of those that I’m happy I got wrong as there were in fact 7 different drivers that won over the course of the 24 Race Season, and amazingly, they all won multiple times which is pretty damn cool!
My second Prediction was “7 different teams will stand on the Podium at least once in 2024”! This wasn’t correct in any shape or form as only the Top 4 teams and Alpine stepped onto the Podium, and all of their drivers did as well so yeah, I was wrong!
My third Prediction was “There will be 3 different Sprint Winners in 2024”! Amazingly, this was actually correct, so I guess I have to weirdly thank McLaren for this one!
My fourth Starter Prediction was “Pierre Gasly will be the driver who retires the most in 2024”! Firstly, this isn’t true, there were people who retired more than 3 times! And secondly, I’m pretty sure Pierre went the entire season without damaging his car, so I expect a thank you letter in the post Mr. Gasly!
My fifth Prediction was “Logan Sargeant will score more points than he did in his Rookie Season”! I can safely say that this didn’t happen because Logan failed to score a single point all year, and got dropped after Zandvoort! I clearly have too much faith in the LS’!
My sixth Prediction was “Not every driver will score points in 2024”! To be fair, this was very much the case as Valtteri Bottas, Logan Sargeant, and Jack Doohan all ended the year pointless!
My seventh Starter Prediction was “There will be at least one substitute appearance in 2024”! This was definitely correct, with Oliver Bearman, Liam Lawson, Jack Doohan, and Franco Colapinto all jumping in at various points of the season!
My eighth Prediction was “Kick Sauber will announce a brand-new Driver Lineup for 2025”! I think I’m starting to get good because this very much happened, with Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto coming in to replace Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu!
My penultimate Starter Prediction was “Lewis Hamilton will not win a Race in his final year with Mercedes”! It was going well, and even though Lewis’ season wasn’t the greatest, he did still manage to win twice this year at Silverstone and Spa, so I can’t get a point here!
And my final Starter Prediction of 2024 was “Max Verstappen will win 20 Races in 2024”! Oh gosh, well this very much didn’t happen, with Max winning “just” 9 Races, so I wasn’t even half way here, good job!
Drivers’ Championship
P20: Kevin Magnussen
This is a great start! I expected Haas to be pretty bad in 2024, and I honestly thought Kevin Magnussen would be at the back and fail to score a single point! However, that didn’t happen as K-Mag scored 15 points on his way to P15 in the Championship, and yeah, this was 100% wrong!
P19: Logan Sargeant
Amazingly, I managed to get Logan Sargeant wrong because he finished 4 places lower down in P23! I said I expected Logan to struggle again, but at least do better than he did last year, but honestly, he kind of did the exact same, if not worse, and getting dropped and finishing 23rd in the Standings is pretty abysmal!
P18: Zhou Guanyu
For lots of different reasons, I got Zhou Guanyu wrong! Firstly, I didn’t expect too much from him, but he technically did worse and finished P20 in the Standings! However, Zhou also beat his teammate Valtteri Bottas (on points), so that’s another thing I got completely wrong, so this was wrong all-round!
P17: Nico Hulkenberg
Oh my goodness me! Like I said with Kevin Magnussen, I expected Haas to struggle a lot and that Nico Hulkenberg wouldn’t score too many points! As we all know, that very much didn’t happen as The Hulk finished all the way up in P11, having scored points over half of the Grand Prix Weekends this year! Yeah, I can’t pretend like this isn’t bad because it very much is!
P16: Valtteri Bottas
2024 was not the year for Valtteri Bottas, and that meant that my Prediction was very much wrong! Even in a difficult car, I expected Valtteri to score some good points, but his Kick Sauber was ultimately too slow to muster up any points as the former 10-time Grand Prix Winner petered out in P22!
P15: Alex Albon
I was nearly right here as Alex Albon ended up finishing 16th in the Championship! I expected Alex Albon to outperform his teammate Logan Sargeant, which he very much did, and I also expected him to be closer to the cars ahead than the ones behind, which didn’t happen! I wouldn’t say this was a good or bad Prediction; just incorrect!
P14: Yuki Tsunoda
Yuki Tsunoda outperformed my expectations in 2024 to finish 12th in the Standings! I said Yuki would potentially have his best year in the sport, but would be outperformed by his Visa Cash App RB teammate, and it’s safe to say that that definitely didn’t happen! So firstly, well done Yuki, and secondly, bad job me!
P13: Pierre Gasly
For a lot of this season, Predicting Pierre Gasly to finish P13 honestly would’ve been too high! However, after a terrific end to the season, Pierre managed to shoot himself all the way up into a Top 10 finish in this year’s Drivers’ Championship which is actually insane! Also, this means I had Gasly to get beaten by his Alpine teammate, and this for one definitely didn’t happen!
P12: Lance Stroll
Based on this, Lance Stroll finishing P13 in the Standings doesn’t actually seem that bad! However, this year has been far worse than I expected when it comes to Aston Martin’s car performance, and for Lance to not score a point since Hungary is just very underwhelming! But hey, my Prediction wasn’t too far off!
P11: Esteban Ocon
2024 was not a great year for Esteban Ocon, and my Prediction of him to finish P11 and ahead of his teammate was 100% wrong! Esteban ultimately ended up 14th in the Standings, 19 points behind his teammate, and I think the biggest issue with this Prediction is if you take away his P2 in Sao Paulo, Ocon didn’t score a single point in the Second Half of the Season!
P10: Daniel Ricciardo
This is without a doubt my worst one yet! I expected a massive year for Daniel Ricciardo, a whole lot of points, potentially a Podium, and for him to pile massive onto getting that second Red Bull seat in 2025! However, anything but this happened as Ricciardo scored just the 12 points to finish 17th in the Standings after being dropped with 6 Rounds to go! Danny Ric was also outperformed by his teammate Yuki Tsunoda so that only makes this pick worse!
P9: Fernando Alonso
Yes, my first correct Prediction for the Drivers’ Standings came from none other than Fernando Alonso! I felt like there was going to be a clear gap between the Top 4 teams to P9, and I expected Fernando to slot in there with a Podium to his name at some point during the year! However, whilst I’m correct, I didn’t expect this year to be as difficult as it was for Alonso and Aston Martin, and it’s crazy to think that he nearly scored half of his points in the first 6 Races!
P8: Lewis Hamilton
Whilst I wasn’t quite correct, this was actually one heck of a good Prediction! I said Lewis Hamilton would struggle in his final year with Mercedes, that things would go wrong, and that he’d just want the season to end! I think it’s fair to say that all of those things happened, even if he did end up one place higher in 7th (and with a couple of wins to his name)! I was also correct in saying Lewis would be beaten by his teammate, and that also happened, so I’ll take this one as a mini W!
P7: Oscar Piastri
Oscar Piastri performed better than I expected to end up 4th in this year’s Drivers’ World Championship! I was right about Oscar getting closer to his teammate, and I was also right in saying he’d be stronger this year than in his Rookie Season. However, Piastri still finished 3 places higher than I predicted him to, and I don’t think I saw him winning a Race either so I was a little bit off here!
P6: George Russell
Someone I wasn’t off with was George Russell as he finished exactly 6th in the Championship! I said George would beat his teammate, and that’s exactly what happened, and I said he’d finish P6, and that’s exactly what happened! It’ll be interesting to see where I put Russell next year though because I think that could be a very different story!
P5: Carlos Sainz
I just knew Carlos Sainz loved P5 as that’s exactly where he ended up! Carlos had a great year like I expected, made a lot of people think about whether Ferrari should’ve kept him or not, and he also won Races which I expected would happen! So this is a good one, but it’s just a shame that Sainz won’t be this high up come this time next year!
P4: Lando Norris
I expected a strong year from Lando Norris, and he in turn delivered more to finish as this year’s Runner-Up! Lando was the lead McLaren driver as I expected, but I said he wouldn’t win a Race, and he won 4 so that’s a big difference! I was correct in saying Norris would win a Sprint Race, but still, Lando exceeded my expectations this year (and in fact his own)!
P3: Charles Leclerc
I don’t know how, but I’ve managed to correctly predict both Ferrari Drivers this season! The simple part was I said Charles would have a strong year and win at least 1 Race, and he had a great year and won 3 Races, so that’s pretty good! I don’t really have much else to add about this Prediction, but I think Leclerc is another one to watch out for in 2025!
P2: Sergio Perez
Oh no! After being wrong about Sergio Perez in both 2022 and 2023, I went as high as I possibly could with him and had him to end up as the Runner-up! I also said Checo would win at least 1 Race this year, and ultimately, none of those things happened! Perez didn’t get close to winning, he finished 8th in the Championship, and he was some 285 points behind his teammate (which is pretty much the gap the year before)! This was a terrible Prediction and a shocking season for Perez!
P1: Max Verstappen
Well, the one Prediction that usually comes true did again as Max Verstappen ended the year as a 4-time World Champion! However, there were certain parts of this Prediction that were very wrong, I mean, I said Max would win more Races this year than he did last year (it was 20-9) and I also said he’d win the World Championship by around 250 points! Verstappen won it by “just” 63, so that’s not even close! I guess in a way though, this sort of describes well how much Red Bull have dropped off because this wasn’t a Bold Prediction at the start of the year at all!
Constructors’ Championship
P10: Haas
We’re already off to a great start when it comes to predicting the Constructors’ Championship correctly! I said I expected Haas to be slowest, and endure a pretty difficult year, but honestly, it was the opposite for them as the team scored a massive 58 points on their way to 7th in the Championship! Honestly, fair play to them!
P9: Kick Sauber
Whilst I wasn’t fully accurate here, I did say Kick Sauber would be languishing towards the back of the field in 2024, and that very much happened, with the team scoring just 4 points all season and finishing bottom of the Standings! Sauber need to do much better next year!
P8: Williams
Nothing, and I mean nothing about this Prediction was correct as Williams actually did worse than this and finished 9th! Also, I said that I felt like Williams would score more points this season than in 2023, and that also very much didn’t happen! So yeah, not great!
P7: Alpine
Oh, what could’ve been! I said that whilst 2023 was seen as bad, I thought 2024 would be a lot worse for Alpine, and for a long time, that was very much the case! However, a terrific double Podium in Sao Paulo followed by a Pierre Gasly resurgence in the Alpink ultimately meant the team finished 6th, which is both not bad for them, and also means my Prediction was wrong!
P6: Visa Cash App RB
I had so much faith and belief in Visa Cash App RB at the start of 2024 that I had them to finish up in P6. However, Daniel Ricciardo struggled more than expected, and the cars’ drop off in performance ultimately meant they were beaten by teams I didn’t expect them to lose to as they ended up 8th! Yeah, not great for me or VCARB!
P5: Aston Martin
Well of course I got Aston Martin correct! I said that I couldn’t see a world where Aston Martin finished higher or lower than P5, and given the gaps they’ve had to the teams above and below them this year, I’d argue this was very much true! However, Aston were still a lot slower than I thought they would be, particularly after Silverstone, and the team didn’t pick up the Podiums I really expected them to!
P4: Mercedes
Mercedes is an interesting one because firstly, I was correct, they did finish 4th! I was also correct to have concerns about the team after Lewis Hamilton decided to leave, and given they’re kind of in no man’s land in the Championship Standings, this was also fair! However, the weird thing about it all is I didn’t expect Mercedes to win a single Race this year, and yet they won 4! So yeah, an interesting one to say the least!
P3: McLaren
I took a bit of a gamble at the start of the year to put McLaren to break into the “Big 3” teams, and ultimately, the gamble wasn’t enough as McLaren only went on and won the Constructors’ Championship! That was not in my expectations whatsoever, I’m not sure it really was for anyone, but yeah, they smashed it so well done to them!
P2: Ferrari
However they got there, Ferrari finishing second in the Constructors’ was indeed correct! I said that I felt like Ferrari would have the second fastest car for most of the year, and I kind of think that’s true in that they were behind Red Bull at the start of the year, and then McLaren shot past them! However, I was definitely wrong with saying Ferrari would be nowhere near the Title because they were just 1 overtake off it!
P1: Red Bull
“Can it really be anyone else” was the question I posed when I made these Predictions, and yes in fact, it very much could be someone else! I said there would need to be a monumental downfall for Red Bull not to win this Championship, and I’d say that happened, with the car plummeting in performance as the season went on whilst Sergio Perez’s performances were pretty woeful! In the end, Red Bull finished third in the Constructors’, 77 points off P1, so yeah, this was completely off (but I can imagine a lot of people also got this wrong)!
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