Qatar GP conclusions: Sainz exposes Hamilton with FIA under severe scrutiny

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen claimed his ninth victory of the F1 2024 season in the Qatar Grand Prix at the Lusail International Circuit.

Verstappen bounced back from a grid penalty to dominate after snatching the lead at the start, with Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc second and Oscar Piastri third as McLaren missed the chance to seal the Constructors’ Championship. Here are our conclusions from Qatar…

Conclusions from the 2024 Qatar Grand Prix

Red Bull only need to get Max Verstappen close to win again in F1 2025

All eyes may have been on Max Verstappen, but his victory at the Brazilian Grand Prix last month was just as important to the other man stood on the podium in Red Bull uniform.

It was no coincidence that Pierre Waché, the Red Bull technical director more commonly known these days as ‘The Adrian Newey Replacement’, was the one chosen to collect the trophy for the winning constructor at Interlagos.

After a run of 10 races without a win, his longest barren streak in four years, Verstappen’s return to the top step of the podium in Brazil had the feel of a milestone moment for the new regime at Red Bull, proof that there can be life after Newey after all.

It did not reflect well on Waché and his technical department that the RB20’s stumbles just happened to begin in Miami, a matter of days after Newey’s departure was announced.

And the unsuccessful attempts to right the car’s course over the following months only added to the sense that Red Bull had lost something – an indefinable something – they would not easily get back.

It took right until the autumn break, between the Singapore and United States grands prix, for Red Bull to finally make a breakthrough, the team’s experience over the years of identifying, troubleshooting and remedying a car’s issues coming to the fore during those three crucial weeks when the engines fell silent yet the factories remained open for business.

It was not exactly perfect when the season resumed in Austin, but it was better. Just enough for Max to finish the job.

Let it be a warning to the rest ahead of next season.

There is a school of thought that Verstappen’s period of dominance will end here, that without the best car and a 60-point headstart to play with at the start of next season he will struggle to make it five Championships in a row in 2025.

Yet to overlook Verstappen and Red Bull as title favourites for next year is to ignore both Max’s genius and competitive spirit, as well as the agility of the team behind him.

They were not favourites in Qatar this weekend either, the layout and cool temperatures playing to the strengths of the McLaren and the Mercedes.

Indeed, there was a flashback to the darkest days of that mid-season slump when Verstappen himself commented that the car “couldn’t have been worse” in the sprint.

Yet the changes between the mini race and the main qualifying session (Red Bull left the wing levels untouched, altering only the ride heights and damping), combined with Verstappen’s commitment and precision on his inch-perfect Q3 lap, managed to put the RB20 on pole position just a few hours later.

And after overcoming a rare one-place grid penalty to take the lead at the start, there was no catching him on this track where clean air is so vital through all those winding, high-speed, long-duration corners.

It really did feel “a bit like old times” on this occasion, as Max himself put it after his sprint win in Texas some six weeks ago.

In an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com earlier this year, Waché admitted that Red Bull had made the mistake of chasing too much downforce with the RB20, to the extent that it had introduced some undesirable characteristics for the drivers.

It has been a common complaint among teams throughout this highly volatile ground-effect era, in which efforts to improve the car can often have the opposite effect and, in the worst-case scenarios, reawaken the dreaded porpoising/bouncing phenomenon.

Where, you ask, was the absence of Newey felt most acutely this year? Right there.

It is hard to imagine Adrian, as much a race engineer as a designer such is his feel for the sensitive relationship between the driver and his machinery, being drawn down the same maddening path.

Waché and his technical team face a compelling fork-in-the-road decision for next season when it comes to either trying again with this design concept and doing it better, or rowing back and reintroducing some elements from the great RB19 of 2023.

It is the call upon which Verstappen’s next title defence hinges.

Whatever they ultimately do come up with, Red Bull only need to get Max close in 2025.

Rest assured that he will do the rest.

Carlos Sainz’s dignified Ferrari exit has put Lewis Hamilton to shame

Clearly this has been a strange year for Lewis Hamilton, forced to spend the whole season with Mercedes in the knowledge that he will part ways with the team at the end of 2024.

Yet Carlos Sainz finds himself in the same situation at Ferrari and he, with considerably more to be upset about, has handled it a whole lot better.

That comparison has not been a flattering one for Lewis as his final year with Mercedes has faded into a numbing nothingness.

Sainz has almost been re-energised by his rejection, determined to finish on a high at Ferrari and inspired somehow by the possibility that that his next podium or victory could well prove the last he ever achieves in F1 as he prepares to move to what, at best, will be a midfield car at Williams next year.

Hamilton?

Too often in recent weeks he has carried the air of someone who just wants it all to be over. He has become distant to the point of disinterested at Mercedes.

A man with his heart on his sleeve at the best of times, the emotion has never been far from the surface for Hamilton in 2024.

See, for instance, how he spoke at Monza about the way he was left overwhelmed to see the seat he has occupied for so long allocated to a different driver on the morning Andrea Kimi Antonelli was finally confirmed as his successor.

Suddenly it hit him. Suddenly it all felt a little too real.

That weekend, the last European race of the year, was also the final time Hamilton used his personal driver room in Mercedes’ hospitality unit ahead of the season-ending flurry of flyaway races.

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“This is such a unique time in my life, one that continues to bring out a lot of emotions,” he wrote on social media in a tribute to his little home away from home.

It is tempting to picture Hamilton ticking off these small yet significant milestones – the last time I will do this, the final time I will do that – as all roads lead to his last ride with Mercedes in Abu Dhabi this coming weekend.

Yet as poignant as it may be to leave the team he has called home for the last 12 years, nothing stirs the emotion in Hamilton quite like the realisation that his powers may be deserting him.

Often he has looked a diminished figure this side of Abu Dhabi 2021, damaged by the way that season ended and the historic opportunity lost.

Yet the Qatar Grand Prix was the weekend that finally seemed to break his spirit, his latest heavy defeat to George Russell in qualifying convincing him for good that his one-lap pace, once so accessible, really has gone and ain’t ever coming back.

That outburst was followed by the most extraordinary drop in standards as Hamilton committed a false start for the first time in living memory, before being hit with a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane and later asking the team to just retire the car and put him out of his misery.

That request was flatly denied by the team but the sooner it is all over now, the better.

Still it feels unwise to rule him out completely and Ferrari’s strongest season in some time in 2024 should offer lingering hope that Hamilton’s career could yet end on a happy note.

Before Fred Vasseur can even begin to dream of providing that golden eighth title, however, he must first find a way of piecing him back together and help him rediscover his mojo.

Was it really worth taking out a servant like Sainz, and throwing away his well-balanced and productive partnership with Charles Leclerc, for this?

Will a lack of alternatives save Sergio Perez once again?

He may have survived in the end, but do not forget just how exceptionally close Sergio Perez came to losing his Red Bull seat in the aftermath of the Belgian Grand Prix in July.

All the talk on that bright Sunday evening at Spa was about those stricter performance clauses in his recently signed contract extension, specifically the one (widely reported but never confirmed by the team) that gave Red Bull the freedom to replace Perez as he was in excess of 100 points behind Max Verstappen entering the summer break.

Put simply, you do not get to the stage of arranging a shootout test between Daniel Ricciardo and Liam Lawson at Imola, as PlanetF1.com first reported before qualifying in Belgium, unless you are giving serious, serious consideration to making a change.

And after he fell from second on the grid to a distant seventh on race day at Spa, Perez looked for all the world like a goner.

Yet when they met at the factory in Milton Keynes the following day, Christian Horner, Helmut Marko and the rest just couldn’t bring themselves to go through with it.

So the saga ended in Horner informing Red Bull’s workforce that afternoon that, despite everything, Perez would remain in place for the second half of the season.

Why the change of heart?

We revealed in the aftermath that high on Red Bull’s list of concerns was that Ricciardo and Lawson might actually not represent much of an upgrade on Perez, that all they risked doing was swapping one set of problems for another.

From that moment, the second half of 2024 was all about gathering information to make a more informed choice for 2025 – “we desperately need answers,” Horner said after Lawson replaced Ricciardo after Singapore, a ruthless act specifically designed to deliver those answers – if Perez’s struggles continued.

With one race remaining in 2024, however, the situation remains as uncertain as it ever was.

And Horner’s astonishing revelation on Sunday evening in Qatar that Perez will be allowed to “come to his own conclusions” with “nobody forcing him one way or the other” for 2025 was effectively an admission that Red Bull’s fact-finding mission has failed.

Lawson has acquitted himself well upon his return to a race seat, but is yet to outqualify Yuki Tsunoda in five qualifying sessions since replacing Ricciardo at Austin.

For all the attitude and aggression he has shown, waving his middle finger at Perez and taking on Fernando Alonso whenever he gets the chance, he is just not doing enough.

And the time it took to hand him a race seat in the first place – Lawson was tellingly made to wait for his debut in the same way Pierre Gasly was in 2016/17 – strongly suggests that Red Bull already held some reservations over his ultimate potential anyway.

How about Yuki, you say? Don’t go there.

True, he keeps surprising, rising to every challenge he has faced since Gasly’s departure at the end of 2022, yet his volatile temperament long ago ruled him of contention for a promotion to Red Bull.

Exposing him to a team-mate of Verstappen’s ability and ruthlessness would be the F1 equivalent of sending a lamb to slaughter and carry the risk of ruining all the progress Tsunoda has made over recent years.

For some weeks it seemed Franco Colapinto, that charismatic Ayrton Senna regen illuminating the Williams team, would be the answer Red Bull were looking for.

But PlanetF1.com understands that the team’s interest has cooled considerably in light of a number of costly mistakes in Brazil and Las Vegas.

What now, then? F1 people tend to be very good at pointing out the problem, not so much at advocating a solution.

Increasingly it seems a strategic mistake to have allowed Ricciardo, now out of sight and out of mind, to disappear from view so quickly when there was an opportunity to keep him engaged with behind-the-scenes simulator work and the tantalising hope of reclaiming his old seat if Perez proved unable to arrest his struggles.

Daniel was not the Daniel he used to be come the end, no doubt. But for as long Ricciardo was still around, Red Bull always had a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency replacement for Perez ready to go if required.

Marko confirmed last month that a final decision on Perez will be taken in the aftermath of this week’s season finale in Abu Dhabi.

So unless there is a major development between now and then, what might Horner and Marko say to each other when they sit down for Red Bull’s end-of-season review?

Yes, he is slow. Yes, he is frustrating. And, yes, his lack of performance alongside Max this year has pretty much cost us the Constructors’ title.

But you know what?

Max is clearly comfortable having him around. He’s no threat to him. By being Sergio Perez, he allows Max Verstappen to be Max Verstappen.

And we can never, ever underestimate the advantage that gives us when McLaren have Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri constantly taking points away from each other and when Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc are about to light the fuse at Ferrari.

Let’s not forget all that lovely sponsorship Sergio brings from Mexico either. Or the fact that he is more commercially valuable than our newly crowned four-time World Champion.

And, at the end of the day, if Max Verstappen does not win the title next year, it will not be the fault of Sergio Perez.

An early Esteban Ocon, Alpine split has been on the cards all year

There are three ways to leave an F1 team.

You can do it the Carlos Sainz way, all hugs and kisses and this-team-will-remain-a-part-of-me-forever platitudes.

There is the Lewis Hamilton way, in which you can see out the remainder of your contract and look utterly bereft as you do so.

Or you can choose the Esteban Ocon way and go out with a bang.

PlanetF1.com revealed during the race on Sunday that Esteban Ocon, already signed to race for Haas for next season, is to part company with Alpine ahead of the season finale in Abu Dhabi.

It comes after the team applied pressure on Ocon to vacate his seat for the final race of the season or risk being blocked from representing Haas in next week’s post-season test, a suitably bitter end to a relationship that has been threatening to end in tears all year long.

When a team publicly threatens to bench their own driver, as the hapless then-Alpine team boss Bruno Famin did in the aftermath of Ocon’s ugly clash with Pierre Gasly in Monaco, there is no coming back.

Ocon’s departure from Alpine was announced, you’ll recall, ahead of the next race in Canada, by which time Mr Famin had rowed back on his post-Monaco threats.

There was a possibility that the split could have happened even earlier than this, with James Vowles revealing in July that Ocon had undergone a seat fit at Williams prior to the British Grand Prix with a view to replacing Logan Sargeant.

According to Marcin Budkowski, the former Alpine boss, “everyone” at Enstone found out about this secret visit when the GPS tracker on Ocon’s company car revealed that he had spent five hours parked up at the Williams factory.

Over recent weeks Ocon has appeared to have been suffering from the same competitive paranoia as Hamilton this year, dropping little hints here and there that, with one driver heading for the exit, the Alpine cars are no longer built equally.

Two Q1 exits in Qatar, including a P20 start for the main race despite a clean lap in qualifying, would only have crystallised those nagging thoughts in his mind this weekend.

If there is any surprise at all here, it is that Alpine should put their hopes for a race of such importance in the hands of a 21-year-old debutant without a single lap of racing to his name all year as the team enter the Abu Dhabi GP weekend nursing a five-point lead over Haas in the Constructors’ Championship.

It is a tricky situation for Jack Doohan to be plunged into, particularly in light of recent reports indicating that Alpine are keen on signing Franco Colapinto in a last-minute change to their driver lineup for next season (Doohan was officially confirmed as Ocon’s replacement in August).

That’s the same Colapinto who was pictured exclusively by PlanetF1.com (see bottom) in a brief encounter with Alpine adviser Flavio Briatore, as well as his manager, Maria Catarineu of Bullet Sports Management, on Saturday in Qatar.

Talk about make or break…

The steady hand of Charlie Whiting is so badly missed by F1 and the FIA

It is at times like this when the loss of Charlie Whiting is felt most keenly.

It would have not have happened in his day, a stray wing mirror left to linger in the middle of the track until a car ran over it and turned one easily retrievable object into a thousand tiny, tyre-cutting shards of carbon fibre.

If the watching world knew what was about to happen, it is not unfair to suggest that Rui Marques, the FIA’s third permanent race director since Whiting’s death in 2019, should have seen it coming too.

Yet the mismanagement of the Qatar Grand Prix, by a race director overseeing just his second race weekend, is merely symptomatic of the wider dysfunction engulfing the FIA under its controversial and chaotic president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem.

Barely a week seems to go by these days without someone of some importance leaving some senior position within the FIA.

Never before has F1’s governing body appeared so weak. Never before has the temptation to rip it all up and start again been so alluring.

Few have been brave enough to say it yet Ben Sulayem’s tenure has been undermined from the very start by a harsh and inescapable clash of cultures.

His views on women, for instance, are at odds with F1’s own principles in this era of equality and corporate kindness and his crusade over recent years against such minor matters as drivers swearing and wearing jewellery positively bizarre to all outside the president’s office.

The good news?

Only a year to go now until the next FIA presidential election and a chance to bring the organisation back kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

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