Why thrilling battles for F1 race wins are killing the title race

Although a gradual convergence in performance between Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari has now opened up the possibility for more race winners — as Norris, Leclerc and Hamilton displayed in Miami, Monaco and Britain respectively — it has also meant that there’s no clear championship rival. Verstappen might not be winning the number of races he did in 2022 or 2023, but with up to eight drivers able to fight for each race win, the damage to his title lead remains limited.

The Dutchman’s title lead was brought down to as little as 31 points following defeats in Miami and Monaco but has since ballooned to 84 points as Norris failed to finish in Austria and secured third-place at Silverstone. His previous closest challenger, Leclerc, has dropped back after scoring only 12 points in the past four races during a period of intense struggle for Ferrari.

Even if Verstappen finished no higher than fourth for the remaining 12 grands prix and three sprint races of the season (while also missing out on every additional point for the fastest lap), he’d still have accrued a total of 414 points — a tally good enough to have made him world champion in every season since 2010. If Norris — who is currently second in the drivers’ standings — finished two-places ahead of the Dutchman in every race within the same time frame and won every sprint, he’d still be three points short of the title.

It’s a different case altogether in the constructors’ championship, as the consistent underperformance of Sergio Perez is already damaging Red Bull’s chances of retaining the top spot.

While McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all possess driver pairings which have run each other close this season, maximising their teams’ points scores, the contrast between Verstappen and Perez at Red Bull has been stark.

Since Imola, the Mexican has scored just 14 points to Verstappen’s 119, giving Red Bull a total tally of 134 points over the last six races. Of the four front-running constructors only Ferrari have scored less (115), while Mercedes has scored 157 points and McLaren an impressive 171.

But while it may look bad on paper, Perez’s poor performances are yet to have an actual impact on his team’s standing in the constructors’ championship. After a 1-8 finish in Imola the Milton Keynes outfit held a 52-point lead over Ferrari, but due to the now tight-knit performance of the trailing pack making big points gains much more difficult, Red Bull’s lead has actually grown to 71 points following the British GP.

Unlike in the drivers’ championship, the chances of another constructor catching Red Bull are high — especially if Perez continues to finish outside the point-scoring positions. Even if Verstappen won half of the remaining races as well as every sprint — replicating his results from the first half of the season — McLaren and Ferrari would need an average of 21 points from every race weekend in order to pass the reigning world champions. Both teams have averaged north of 24 points per race so far this season.

Realistically, Red Bull’s historic lack of empathy for its struggling drivers suggests that its Perez problem will be fixed before another constructor can get close, and Verstappen’s lack of mistake-making could mean that the drivers’ title is well in hand too.

But while Red Bull’s early advantage has open up a daunting gap in the championships, the genuine competition for race wins and the thrilling battles it produces are helping to make up for the current lack of a title race. 2024 has already produced its fair share of great headlines from Oliver Bearman’s emphatic debut drive in Saudi Arabia and Norris’s first win, to Leclerc’s first victory in Monaco and Hamilton’s ninth Silverstone triumph.

With the performance gap between the front runners looking ever closer, an uneventful championship race might be the price we pay for action-packed race weekends.