Until Lewis Hamilton dropped his Ferrari bombshell the driver market was looking a bit staid. The 20 drivers who finished 2023 are in the same seats for 2024. That’s not rare, it’s unique. Why is that and what intrigue remains for ’25?
WORDS MATT YOUSON
Behold! The new season is upon us. Time for GP Racing to deploy well-honed analytical skills, scrutinise driver moves, evaluate rookies’ junior records and prognosticate on the risks teams are taking with new hires. Only we can’t. Conservatism has swept the paddock, with every team retaining the pairing that finished 2023.
Remarkably this is the first time these circumstances have come about since the world championship began in 1950.
Were F1 powered by rainbows and fairy dust, one might assume a joyful inertia had taken hold: 20 drivers doing a bang-up job, teams thrilled to have them. The realities are a little more complex. Not everyone covered themselves in glory during 2023, and some movement was to be expected – but nothing happened. Musical chairs without the music. Just one of those things? A statistical fluke? Well, no, not really.
This Is Season 2023b
The FIA has taken a rare break from tweaking the technical regulations between seasons. While that won’t necessarily stop all 10 teams reinventing the wheel, it does mean there isn’t going to be anything outlandishly different on the grid in 2024. Pirelli certainly hopes not – it’s planning to bring the same family of tyres as last year.
This, combined with winter testing being a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gambol around Sakhir, makes continuity quite attractive. It would be mid-season before a rookie figured out how to extract the maximum – while a retained driver should be hitting his straps before the Bahraini bagpipers have inserted their reeds. Unless you had a lightspeed replacement lined up, change was going to hurt.
Formula 2 Isn’t Cutting It
Part of the problem – if, indeed, it is a problem – is that Formula 2 offers no one with their hand in the air, screaming ‘pick me, pick me!’ F2’s last two champions, Felipe Drugovich and Théo Pourchaire, were both third-season veterans, and that doesn’t light any fires. It might seem unfair on two decent pedallers who, in a just world, would have been handed their shot – but compare and contrast with the way in which rookie champions Charles Leclerc and George Russell were ushered immediately into F1 seats, or the tug-of-love that had Oscar Piastri fending off unwanted suitors with the proverbia
