Inside the technical battlegrounds that made F1 2024 a classic

The idea of converging technical prowess among the top teams was long sold as F1’s land of milk and honey, a utopia where multiple squads could compete for victories. And, in 2024, it happened at last. But not right away – Red Bull appeared to have taken another step forward at the start of the season. What would it take for the rest to catch up?

As it turned out, McLaren’s Miami GP upgrade in May and Ferrari’s improved race pace were key aspects, as was Red Bull’s regression on balance, a slide that translated to a streak of 10 races without a win. There were even times when Mercedes was ahead, albeit with greater inconsistency versus its top-four rivals.

Despite its start, then, Red Bull was not only challenged for victories on a regular basis but at times struggled to guarantee itself even podiums. The progress by McLaren and Ferrari through the season, allied to their significantly smaller power imbalances between drivers, ensured that they could dethrone Red Bull from the teams’ title despite the hefty early points deficit. 

Mercedes’ inconsistency was too great to shuffle Red Bull down to fourth, as it blew hot and cold in line with marginal changes in conditions. It therefore ploughed a lonely furrow, while Aston Martin did not make the inroads to the top four that it had anticipated after an impressive 2023.

Instead, the Silverstone squad’s developments did nothing to stop it sinking into the recesses of the midfield battle. Only its early points haul from the start of the year kept the team ahead of the battle over sixth in the championship.

The regular fluctuations in the order after Verstappen's early domination made for a close fight in the constructors' championship

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

This was a hotly contested arena, seemingly a two-way fight between Haas and RB until Alpine threw itself into the mix with its Brazil double podium. Haas greatly improved from its 2023 woes, having spent testing focusing on tyre management and basing its upgrades around that data into the season. RB, for its part, benefited from a greater relationship with the lead Red Bull team, and its continual evolution of last year’s car bore fruit in the early part of 2024. 

Alpine began the year with its car overweight but, under the new technical leadership of David Sanchez, slowly began to shed some pounds and tack on the downforce – something that carried the Enstone team above the accident-prone Williams. The latter’s FW46 also suffered from weight issues at the start of the year, but the car at least improved more over the season versus the Saubers mired at the bottom of the order – at least until the very end.

Here’s a look at how each of the teams developed over 2024, with the help of illustrations from Giorgio Piola.

McLaren comes on strong from Miami GP

After its precipitous rise through the order over 2023, McLaren hoped to find the trajectory needed to start winning races in 2024, although the early season iteration of the MCL38 was arguably the third or fourth-best car. There were similarities to its predecessor, albeit with a revised ‘overbite’ sidepod inlet [1a] and revised front suspension. It could at least challenge for podiums in the opening period of the season. 

Then came the Miami update, a wide-ranging package detailing a new front wing, suspension, floor, rear wing and bodywork – particularly around the sidepod [1b] – to accelerate the team’s performance. And, albeit with a little help from the safety car, it got McLaren back onto the top step of the podium.

The Miami approach was in line with the other upgrades introduced by McLaren, in that the engineers elected to spend more time verifying that the parts worked before including them in a larger package, rather than drip-feeding them through the year.

The greater level of performance McLaren experienced after Miami put it in the title hunt but, aside from a new front wing in Austria [2] and a few different specification rear wings, it held off from bringing anything else major before the summer.

A new floor had been in the works throughout the summer, but McLaren did not include this as part of its Zandvoort package of upgrades. Instead, it waited until Mexico in October to introduce it, although August’s Dutch GP push did include a revised floor edge wing, along with new suspension fairings and front brake scoops.

McLaren’s rear-wing experiments included a novel approach to the beam wing, featuring a cambered lower element and a raised, low angle-of-attack upper element, all to get the DRS working more effectively. [3] The team had also experimented with a ‘mini-DRS’, introducing further intrigue and irritation in the flexing wing debates over 2024. We’ll get to that shortly…

Red Bull’s roller-coaster ride

During pre-season testing and at the Bahrain opener, it appeared that Red Bull’s RB20 was set to successfully preserve the considerable lead the team had enjoyed in 2023. A 0.3-second advantage was cited by the other teams in the early stages of the year, leaving a hefty margin to overcome. But, while the likes of Ferrari and McLaren found development room in their 2024 machines, Red Bull struggled to find a way in – and slipped back.

Red Bull was coy with its sidepod design at launch time, keeping the inlet position conspicuously hidden. The high-sided engine cover, reminiscent of Mercedes’ W14, suggested that the RB20 might later be equipped with its own zero-pod solution. Instead, the team had opted for an overbite sidepod shape [1], with the inlets recessed into the heavy undercut.

At April’s Japanese GP, the team added another inlet to each flank of the cockpit sides [2], and an Imola package of a new front wing and floor was intended to contain the improving McLaren. However, this made the car much more difficult to set up; Max Verstappen struggled through that weekend until the team finally got the car in the right window in qualifying.

Mercedes technical director James Allison suggested Red Bull’s new parts were downgrades, although this could scarcely stop Red Bull from winning in the European leg of the season. The RB20 was a touch erratic in the low-speed corners and, for Hungary in July, the team introduced a new body kit that disposed of the cannon-like cooling outlets [3]. Red Bull stated that, although the upgrades had worked, they delivered nothing like the gains expected. 

After a dismal weekend at Monza, Red Bull made the decision to scrap the development path it had planned. Fixing an unstable rear end had worsened the situation at the front, with Verstappen frequently finding he had no bite on the brakes.

A small floor upgrade meant to redress the balance of the car arrived for Baku in September, and this was continued with revisions to the floor and bodywork at Austin [4]. This put Verstappen back in victory contention but, with Sergio Perez’s underperformance, the constructors’ title was long gone.

Ferrari recovers from mid-season wobble and bounce

Ferrari had closed out the 2023 season with the second-best car. At the opening of 2024, the Prancing Horse had preserved that place in the pecking order. Off-season work on the team’s tyre management had given it a boost in race trim, although qualifying performance took a small hit in recompense. 

Ferrari sought to build on its solid early-season performance with a wide-ranging set of upgrades at Imola in May: there were new front and rear wings, along with a suspension package, floor and bodywork to raise the SF-24’s performance level. The team also adopted the overbite sidepod inlet, allowing it to create a P-shaped aperture to open up its cooling closer to the car’s centreline [1], a cobra-like winglet next to the halo that remained on the car throughout the rest of the season.

These changes helped Charles Leclerc win in Monaco, but the next step caused Ferrari to falter somewhat at Barcelona. A new floor taken to the Spanish GP proved to be a problematic upgrade [2]. Although it produced the expected uptick in downforce, it also exacerbated the car’s proneness to bouncing in high-speed corners, and so created inconsistent tyre grip at a vital part of the circuit.

This forced the team to roll back to the Imola-spec floor after just two races, but at least it managed to fast-track a course correction for Hungary. This set the tone for the developments over the summer break, and Ferrari got another new floor together for Monza, featuring a different distribution of floor fences [3]. It gave the team renewed vigour in the constructors’ championship, allowing it to take the fight to McLaren into the final round.

This was followed by a new front wing at September’s Singapore GP [4], and it has been suggested that this new wing took advantage of the clarification on flexi-wings from the FIA. Although the car still displayed a weakness in high-speed corners, the bouncing woes had been largely mitigated overall.

Perhaps figuring that the reversal of its Barcelona package was a job well done, Ferrari subsequently wrapped up its 2024 development to plant its full focus on next year.

2024’s technical controversies

A furore over flexible aerodynamic parts seems to occur at least every other season, as engineers seek to skirt the boundaries of legality and derive an advantage. Flexing wings are an effective way of doing this. If a wing can be smaller in certain situations, then this can deliver a much more efficient trade-off between drag and downforce. In 2024, there were two separate instances of flexi-wing controversy, and each ended in different outcomes.

There were few indications that anybody was truly on the edge of the regulations until the FIA issued a clarification over the front wing designs of Mercedes and McLaren. It is understood that Ferrari and Red Bull were behind the query. Although the wings had passed the flex tests set out by the FIA, Ferrari and Red Bull were concerned by the level to which the wings were moving under load, reducing straightline drag. 

While the FIA stated that it was not looking to ban anything in 2024, it installed additional cameras from the Belgian GP in July to track the movement of each team’s wing as an information-gathering exercise – using dots [1] on the endplates to demarcate the focal points and assess movement.

As the FIA declared itself satisfied that there was no wrong-doing, Ferrari seemed to get in on the act. Although the team did not declare a new front wing for the US GP, it was understood that the team had worked on increasing the flexibility of its existing design. Regardless, the situation seemed to calm down after the FIA’s clarification.

That said, another flexi-wing storm came – and, very quickly, went – during the Azerbaijan GP in September. In Oscar Piastri’s sterling defence against Charles Leclerc for victory, the reverse-facing onboard cameras on the McLaren appeared to show its rear-wing slot gap opening slightly [2] as soon as the Australian got onto the 2.2km (1.4-mile) Neftchilar Avenue section. This had passed the FIA’s deflection tests, but allowed McLaren to gather a lick of extra speed before the full DRS could be opened. Although legal, McLaren was asked to change it to ensure it couldn’t benefit from it again.

Red Bull had a rules furore of its own prior to the US GP. The FIA was tipped off that it potentially had an adjustable front floor tray [3], or ‘bib’, which theoretically could be changed in parc ferme – conferring a more optimal ride height between qualifying and the race. Red Bull openly stated that it could adjust its bib height, but that it could not be done by the drivers in the cockpit. It demonstrated that the only way to do so was with a socket on a long pole.

A later FIA inspection of Red Bull’s factory cleared the team of having used it under parc ferme conditions and, although it admitted it could not check retroactively, the governing body considered the case closed.

Mercedes battles with its sensitive beast

When Mercedes came out of the blocks in 2024, it was evident that the team had buried the last remaining hallmarks of its zero-pod experiments across 2022 and 2023. The Brackley squad had in fact devised more conventional sidepods as early as last year’s Monaco GP, but these had been limited by the car’s architecture.  

Perhaps the most striking thing about the all-new W15 was its early season front wing, which featured the four mandated elements but with a twist in the central section. Between the flap adjuster inserts, Mercedes had produced a wing with a chord length of about a centimetre [1a], purely to satisfy the four-element rule. This was done to take load out of the central section to balance the car with the rear end, but also with an almost-detached outer wing to theoretically generate vorticity.

The front suspension was also modular in design [2], allowing the team to change the inclination of the rear leg of the front wishbones.

The team needed time to get its head around the new design philosophy, but it seemed to unlock a lot more when it came to the introduction of a new, more conventional front wing [1b]. This not only added more peak downforce, again balancing the rear thanks to aerodynamic gains with the floor, it also allowed the team to explore the bounds of flexibility.

Mercedes had designed its front wing to help create more stable downforce when running the car as low as it could, but during the summer schedule encountered two big weaknesses with the W15: bumpier circuits and warmer temperatures. 

In cold, wet conditions like this year’s British GP, the car worked rather nicely. It also performed well in Belgium, although that weekend was a double-edged sword; there was George Russell’s disqualification after his victory, but the team also had to scrap the floor [3] it had introduced that weekend – and did not run in qualifying or the race.

This floor arguably delivered the expected downforce but it hurt the W15’s balance. Instead, the team persisted with the older floor and introduced a new front wing and suspension package at Austin in October for its final upgrade package of 2024.

The rest of the field

Aston Martin finished well clear of the hotly contested battle for sixth in the championship, but this was purely down to its early-season form. Few, if any, of its upgrades over 2024 made a real difference to the car. Rather, the reasonable form with which the team had opened the year – there were points in the opening seven races – ebbed away as its development curve escalated [1]. Aerodynamic changes to the sidepods in Japan and a new front wing introduced for Imola offered little except making the car more difficult to handle.

By comparison, Haas enjoyed a season in which the majority of its upgrades worked – a stark contrast to 2023. Detail changes to its sidepod design [2], where it implemented the overbite sidepod inlets introduced by McLaren and Red Bull, helped inject further performance at Silverstone in July.

RB was up against Haas and, later, Alpine in the battle over sixth in the constructors’ championship. But its challenge was interrupted when its Barcelona-spec floor did not deliver the gains expected, forcing the team to roll back on its design.

Alpine made considerable gains into the top-six battle with a series of late-season upgrades. A new floor in Las Vegas in November gave the car a considerable performance boost, enhanced in Qatar with a new nose [3] and front wing combination.

Williams also took advantage of a new floor at Zandvoort [4], which gave the team a slender chance of beating Alpine before the French team’s double podium in Brazil, while Sauber also moved things forward with its own new floor in Las Vegas, which gave the team an estimated three tenths in lap time.

The competitive order at the end of 2024 looked very different to how it did at the start. How will it change come 2025?

Photo by: Colin McMaster / Motorsport Images