🇺🇸 F1'24: R22 - Pitlane Politics

When you’re serving your notice in a job, I’ve always felt that sooner is better. People start treating you differently, knowing that soon, you’ll just be memories and a scapegoat for mistakes made in the past. What’s meant to be a 28-day victory lap turns into a series of awkward encounters, remarks and jokes of “oh, they won’t be like that at the new place!” 

Before this turns into a LinkedIn post and I tell you what the Las Vegas Grand Prix taught me about B2B sales, there is a point. Imagine those awkward handover conversations when you happen to be a 7-time World Champion, all of these conversations happen in public and your notice period to go to a rival firm is almost a year. Everything is amplified and by the end of it, you think you might not even show up to the last few days of work.

After the race in Interlagos, there was a cryptic radio message from Hamilton that got all the usual clickbait merchants banging on their typewriters. A Q1 exit, combined with a 10th-place finish and backache led him to say:

Obviously, he was never going to miss the final triple-header linked vaguely by erm, deserts? After F1 decided to back-to-back Baku and Singapore under the tenuous link of them both being street tracks, it was this third visit to the USA in 2024 where Mercedes got it just right.

Mercedes had been quick all over the Nevada desert. The time differences in the cooler air suits the car far more than other teams, and at Round 22, Mercedes have worked out how to get the best of the W15, and the team led every practice session before George Russell put it on pole.

For Hamilton, though, qualifying seemed to go a bit wrong after leading the grid at the end of the first two practice sessions of the year. Two uncharacteristic errors meant that he started the race in 10th, denying us the true intra-team battle that seems to have quietly bubbled under the surface all season. Russell took the win, gliding down the Vegas strip almost unnoticed by the television cameras who focused on the title mathematics, but Hamilton had clawed his way up to second and even started chasing down Russell before his tyres fell off. 

But compared to Brazil, this race was a dream for Hamilton, and also acted as something of a response to Toto Wolff, although the team principal did clarify his “shelf life” comments as not being a dig at his departing driver, who will be 40 when he suits up for Ferrari from 2025.

A decade since the day of Hamilton’s first world title with Mercedes, he turned in a classic drive, slicing his way through his rivals and getting his fifth podium finish of the season - still a low total, such are his standards, and the fewest since 2013 - a year when a Red Bull driver won his fourth world title.

And while Hamilton is waiting for the day when he officially swaps silver for scarlet, he can look at his new employer. Over the team radio, he expressed his admiration for how quick the Ferrari was down the long back straight, but inside the car he was chasing, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were running their own personal wars.

Leclerc isn’t moving next year. He’ll be joined by Hamilton, but spent the Grand Prix angry at being too nice, eventually finishing fourth behind Carlos Sainz, another man who is serving his notice.

Sainz is also making a statement as he’s being turfed out, scoring his third podium in four races. For context, Williams, the team he’s joining, scored its last three podiums in Belgium 2021 (well, sort of), Baku 2017 (getting beaten for second on the line) and Canada 2016. Sainz may seem like he is driving with nothing to lose, having a rare sense of freedom as his employment near the front of the grid comes to an end, but unless Williams take a dramatic step forward in 2025, he may have the wost of all worlds of having a new job that’s worse than the situation he’s leaving.

Williams have had a horrible couple of weeks. Seeing their cars delivered in carbon fibre cubes and their hard-working mechanics assembling the machines in time for Las Vegas. Franco Colapinto then utterly wrecked his car with a trip into the wall that registered at over 50G, forcing him to start from the pits and another long night for the Williams team.

Into the race itself, and Alex Albon suffered another DNF. It was his sixth of the season, and his form guide reads Ret-16-Ret-DNS-Ret. Miserable form, and his frustration was notable over the team radio as he was told that his car was suffering a cooling issue as he tried to chase down Oscar Piastri.

Barring a miracle, Williams will finish ninth in the Teams’ Championship, a regression from the 27 points and seventh they (well, Albon) scored in 2023. Sainz is joining what should be a team on the up. They have all the pieces, it seems (and I don’t mean the car), but if they don’t hit the ground running, it feels easy to see the frustration setting in early.

Hamilton, Sainz and all the other driver changes coming next year have two races and a sprint before they get sent their new colours. After Pirelli’s predictions were utterly, laughably wrong in Vegas, with predictions of a one-stop being burned out by lap 12, Qatar will be interesting. You’ll remember that last year, this track required a one-off rule saying that drivers could not do more than 19 laps on any one set of tyres during the race (sidenote: do this in Monaco), so the Qatar weekend will be one to watch. 

While a lot of these drivers are looking forward to 2025, the man at the top will be looking for his fifth title in a row. For Red Bull, and a lot of newer F1 fans, this is uncharted territory. Only one driver has ever won five in a row, and 2025 will see Max Verstappen aim to equal Michael Schumacher’s consecutive championship record, but a bunch of new faces, and older faces in new places will aim to stop him.