How each driver's F1 2024 race pace stacked up

‘The stopwatch never lies’ is a Formula 1 cliche for a reason. Every weekend, the emptied fuel tanks and top engine power modes engage in qualifying and, typically, the quickest car/driver combination will prevail. But the races in the modern age, with their fragile tyres and mandated fuel rules, are masked-up different contests altogether.

Possessing the quickest car remains the key advantage, and so often the drivers with this X factor are victorious. But the need to manage the tyres and fuel while doing real and tactical battle means a car lacking the purest performance in qualifying can be coaxed to victory. The 2024 season summed this up well. Max Verstappen and Red Bull dominated early on, before the rest caught up – led by McLaren – and suddenly wins and poles were being split aplenty.

From this jumble we can plot distinct trends, which tells us plenty about who really had that critical quickest car overall in 2024. We’ve therefore created a race pace ranking – reviving a feature for Autosport we first ran in the February 2023 issue of our then sister title GP Racing. The overall formula (see below) remains the same – it all comes down to each driver’s quickest race lap – but there are a few important differences this time around.

Once again, we’ve discounted any wet races – so that magical GP at Interlagos isn’t counted. Nor are the sprint races – up to six compared to the three we had to discount when looking at the 2022 campaign. A first point of difference is how these days, more often than not, the sprint contests are flat-out blasts rather than the dull processions of the earlier iterations of this format thanks to the parc ferme and format tweaks.

Still, however, with tyre management remaining the critical factor in F1 race success, we note how in a typical GP the quickest race laps still come in the early tours for each driver after the final round of pitstops. This is when fuel loads have lowered, the last tyre sets are still fresh, and the track has really rubbered up.

Low degradation in Saudi Arabia meant this race was an outlier in terms of fastest lap timings

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

But some races in 2024 were outliers on this – such as in Jeddah due to a very low thermal degradation factor, or in Hungary when scorching temperatures meant the opposite and wider spread of when the fastest laps came in. Tyre tactics can also have a big impact on rankings, and we had to take laps set earlier in the race for drivers running unorthodox strategies to avoid them being artificially boosted.

For this 2024 ranking we again omitted occasions where a driver retired before reaching the typical fastest lap phase or left in times when they retired after this. Examples of car problems hindering drivers throughout races, such as Sergio Perez getting a visor tearoff stuck in his floor early on in Melbourne, are discounted. Damage from 50-50 incidents (often at Turn 1) and how that impacts ensuing races must be left in, unless it clearly wasn’t a driver’s fault – such as Oscar Piastri due to Lance Stroll bowling into him at the Chinese GP restart, or Valtteri Bottas from his early contact with Liam Lawson in Qatar.

This time, we took out Monaco because, unlike in 2022, it was a procession throughout with so many of the usual race factors either nullified or exaggerated (for example, deliberately slow pace of some cars limiting others). But pace around events with varying strategies in 2024 – China, Italy, Austin and Abu Dhabi – or that had major tyre/car management requirements (Bahrain, Japan, Mexico, Austin, Abu Dhabi) is included because nailing such fluctuations is key to success in this era.

Finally, it’s worth noting how the impact of the now removed fastest lap bonus point impacted more 2024 races versus 2022. This time, with constructors’ championship points critical across the grid (and with RB and Haas wanting to give Daniel Ricciardo and Kevin Magnussen positive F1 sendoffs), there were many more occasions when we had to adjust fastest lap counts for certain drivers who had been pitted late on to chase it.

The times this occurred were Ricciardo and Magnussen in Singapore and Abu Dhabi respectively, Esteban Ocon, Franco Colapinto and George Russell stopping late on at Austin, plus the late fastest lap chasers from Imola, Austria, Spa and Mexico (twice for Fernando Alonso, who actually stayed quickest at Imola based on his second-best time set much earlier, plus Perez and Leclerc at Spa and in Mexico).

The 2024 quick list

Norris and McLaren grew stronger as the year wore on to surge to the top of the list

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

We took each driver’s fastest lap from every counting race and worked out how far that was behind the race’s best time. For example, Max Verstappen’s 1m32.608s from the season-opening Bahrain GP = 0.0s. Charles Leclerc was next best and his deficit was 1.482s. We then added together each deficit for each driver and divided that by the number of valid races for each to create an average.

1. Lando Norris +0.363s
Adding to the argument that McLaren had the year’s best car for longest, Norris topped our adjusted races 11/22 times – all of them after June’s Canadian GP.

2. Max Verstappen +0.622s
Verstappen’s Bahrain and Japan fastest laps help his score – from the phase when Red Bull was by far the quickest car. But he had many tiny deficits elsewhere.

3. Oscar Piastri +0.797s
The substantial 0.434s difference in fastest lap time average versus Norris suggests he still has more work to do on tyre management gains for 2025.

4. Charles Leclerc +0.898s
This position reflects how Ferrari’s mid-season car struggles cost it the 2024 constructors’ crown and that Leclerc is far from a one-trick qualifying prancing pony.

5. George Russell +0.921s
These times show how it wasn’t just in qualifying where Russell excelled next to tyre management master Hamilton in their final season as Mercedes team-mates.

Russell also had the edge over Hamilton in terms of race pace

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

6. Carlos Sainz +0.923s
We can see here yet again how well Sainz compares to drivers he now leaves behind in ‘Class A’, as he heads to Williams.

7. Lewis Hamilton +0.931s
Narrowly down on Russell in the area he’s supposed to excel – race pace – but he had three counting fastest laps to his team-mate’s one.

8. Sergio Perez +1.258s
Another metric that shows exactly why Red Bull was right to drop him. Just 0.116s quicker on average than the best of the clearly fifth-quickest 2024 car.

9. Fernando Alonso +1.374s
Comfortably clear of his team-mate is exactly where you’d expect Alonso to be, and yet he had a lot of his best times adjusted upwards in line with our rules.

10. Lance Stroll +1.760s
Being so nearly overcome by a much slower package shows how Stroll continues to let Aston down compared to where its cars can really reach.

Stroll is only one place, but nearly half a second, slower than team-mate Alonso's average

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

11. Pierre Gasly +1.768s
Circumstances inflate the 0.434s gap to outgoing team-mate Ocon, but this highlights another reason why Alpine wants Gasly around.

12. Nico Hulkenberg +1.869s
Hulkenberg led the 2024 line superbly gain for Haas – incidentally replicating its best place (for Mick Schumacher) in our 2022 ranking.

13. Kevin Magnussen +1.883s
Here we can see clearly how car performance matters so much in this exercise, with Magnussen showing very well versus Hulkenberg – in-race pace much more his forte.

14. Alex Albon +1.907s
Again Williams’s clear team leader, but Albon played his part in many of the incidents that reduced his counting races here down to just 16/22.

15. Zhou Guanyu +1.972s
Qualifying pace was so often lacking, but Zhou – now out of Formula 1 – could eke out a decent race return in a bad car.

Zhou enjoyed a surprising advantage over Bottas in the Sauber battle

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

16. Yuki Tsunoda +2.105s
Another with more heroics in qualifying, but such is the midfield life he seems unlikely to leave while remaining in the Red Bull fold.

17. Logan Sargeant +2.126s*
Not as bad as you’d expect, but we must highlight how his average is calculated from a smaller sample size (10/22) and is therefore artificially boosted.

18. Daniel Ricciardo +2.179s*
Must take the same caveat as Sargeant, but it should be noted that on 10-lap-best-average he was 14th overall from his 15 counting starts.

19. Esteban Ocon +2.202s
The caveats (see Gasly) mean this isn’t quite as bad as it looks, plus Ocon often suffered in our enforced contra-strategy changes. But this is poor versus his team-mate.

20. Valtteri Bottas +2.210s
Another driver where strategy calls again meant he couldn’t often show the fastest laps at the typical time, but a 0.238s difference to Zhou is alarming.

* Smaller sample size due to missed races

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The sun set on Bottas' race career with him in last place in the quick list

Photo by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Images