Lando Norris, Zak Brown, McLaren, Yas Marina, 2024

Norris achieves feat which eluded Hamilton by taking McLaren to constructors’ title

2024 Abu Dhabi GP report

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There were many ‘lasts’ on the starting grid for the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

It was the last time either Sauber driver would start a Formula 1 grand prix for the foreseeable future. The same was also true for Kevin Magnussen and, it seems increasingly likely, Sergio Perez as well.

Franco Colapinto seems likely to bag a return after his last appearance for Williams before making way for Carlos Sainz Jnr. But the driver who triggered the Ferrari man’s move was always going to be one of the night’s biggest stories.

Lewis Hamilton, in his 245th and final start as a Mercedes driver, lined up only 16th – and that was two places better than he’d qualified, thanks to others’ penalties. The stage was set for a recovery performance worthy of one of the sport’s greats, but could the same driver who’d struggled so terribly in Qatar deliver it?

Start, Yas Marina, 2024
Verstappen’s turn one lunge sent Piastri spinning
Hamilton had enjoyed tremendous success since leaving McLaren 12 years earlier. His former team, meanwhile, had been in the doldrums for much of the time, and only now were poised to clinch the constructors’ championship for the first time in a generation – providing they could see off Ferrari.

McLaren held the whip hand at the start. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri had annexed the front row ahead of Sainz. The second Ferrari of Charles Leclerc languished even further back than Hamilton – 19th, thanks to a penalty for a battery change and a deleted lap in Q2.

World champion Max Verstappen looked well placed to capitalise on the championship-minded drivers ahead of him from fourth, though he only moved up to that position thanks to Nico Hulkenberg’s penalty from qualifying. When the five red lights went out, however, Verstappen proved far too eager to assert his advantage.

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The RB20 made another of its faultless getaways from a low-grip starting position. Verstappen was immediately alongside Sainz and fancied a look on the inside of Piastri. But this was too much – he understeered wide at the exit and thumped the McLaren, sending both into a spin.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Yas Marina, 2024
Leclerc passed more than half the field on the first lap
Further on the opening lap, Valtteri Bottas knocked Sergio Perez sideways at turn seven. The Red Bull suffered terminal damage, ending Perez’s race and possibly his F1 career. The Virtual Safety Car was briefly summoned but once the race resumed they were flat out to the final flag.

Norris aced the restart and led Sainz, followed by Pierre Gasly who looked well-placed to secure sixth place in the constructors’ championship for Alpine. George Russell, fourth, made fruitless attempts to pass Gasly into turn nine over the following laps. Hulkenberg gave chase in fifth, followed by Fernando Alonso and Kevin Magnussen who had profited from the first-lap dramas to run seventh.

Leclerc, however, had done even better out of the chaos and vaulted 11 places to eighth. The first lap had gone even better than Ferrari dreamed: Leclerc had gained five more places than any other driver had on the first lap of a grand prix this year, and one of the McLarens was now running in the 19th position he had started from.

Hamilton, the only driver to take the start on hard tyres, could be reasonably satisfied to find himself 12th. But further progress proved difficult: While Liam Lawson offered no resistance to ‘stable mate’ Verstappen, who took 10th off him on lap three, the RB driver kept the Mercedes behind far longer.

Norris couldn’t build up a satisfactory gap over Sainz through the first stint. He also noticed his team’s situation become much more precarious after the start.

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“I was watching the TV screens and I saw Charles was P8 after lap one, so I was a little bit nervous,” he admitted afterwards. “Carlos was never far away. I think the biggest I got the gap was to, like, 4.2 seconds in the first stint, and that’s not a very nice gap in my opinion. It’s a bit too close to my comfort.”

Lando Norris, McLaren, Yas Marina, 2024
Rapid pit service helped Norris keep his lead
Sure enough, when Norris pitted in reaction to Sainz’s lap 25 stop, even though he enjoyed the quickest complete pit stop of the race, the gap between them slashed. Sainz spent just four thousandths of a second longer on pit road than Norris, and had the gap down to 1.6 seconds briefly – threatening to get within DRS range.

At the same time, Sainz knew he couldn’t afford to mistreat the set of tyres which he needed to take him 33 laps to the chequered flag. “I did a very fast out-lap to try and get within DRS range, trying to overtake Lando after the pit stop,” he explained. “Also in case they had a half a second to a second slower pit stop that could put us within reach – that’s why we sent the undercut.

“Then after he came out in front of me, you go through this thought process: Do I push like hell now to get within DRS, but Lando can also push and keep me out of the DRS and that means I’m going to destroy my tyres and not have a chance at the end of the race of putting him under pressure? Or I save my tyres to try and put them under pressure at the end like I did in the first stint?

“So it’s a very difficult thing to judge with these tyres to use the first three laps to extract the peak of the tyre or to save that to the end of the race.”

But given the way the final stint panned out, Sainz doubts there was anything more he could have done. “I don’t think it would have mattered,” he reflected. “I think McLaren and Lando today, with a hard tyre, they were just one or two tenths quicker and he could have used that pace whenever he wanted, to keep me at bay.

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“On the medium I really strongly believed we had a chance. But little by little with the hard, it just seemed like it was getting tougher and tougher. That’s where I think the weakness of our car started to also appear and the strengths of the McLaren started to appear again and it slipped away from us a bit.”

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Yas Marina, 2024
Hamilton’s late stop jumped him ahead of Verstappen
Leclerc moved his way up to third by picking off the Haas drivers and Alonso, none of which were inclined to waste their time fighting him, then pitting early to jump ahead of Russell. Gasly held third until he made his very early pit stop, which satisfied Alpine’s target of covering off the Haas drivers, a task made easier by Magnussen suffering a slow pit stop and then being harpooned by Bottas.

Despite pitting later than Leclerc, Russell didn’t have the pace to chase him down. Instead after lap 43 the second Mercedes of his team mate began to loom larger in his mirrors.

Mercedes had delayed Hamilton’s pit stop as long as they could, aided by the knowledge Verstappen had been handed a 10-second time penalty by the stewards. “Stupid idiots,” fumed the Red Bull driver when his team finally informed him as he entered the pits on lap 29, long after the penalty had been issued.

Once Hamilton picked off Hulkenberg and Gasly he began to chase down Russell. He came close to reaching DRS range on the penultimate lap. Then Liam Lawson’s RB came to a stop and the DRS zones were briefly disabled, threatening to deny Hamilton a last-lap attack.

They were reactivated just in time, however, and Hamilton zoomed up behind his team mate on the back straight. Heading into turn nine, he swept around the outside of the other Mercedes and into fourth place, as Russell heeded team principal Toto Wolff’s warning to “keep it clean”.

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That was some measure of recompense for Hamilton’s miserable Saturday, where an ill-advised strategy in qualifying and misfortune with a bollard conspired to leave him 18th. Behind Russell, Verstappen was a lonely sixth on a rare day when he never figured, Gasly secured sixth in the points for Alpine with seventh place, followed by Hulkenberg and Alonso.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Yas Marina, 2024
Piastri plugged away for the final point
The second McLaren of Piastri claimed the final point. But he could have done more to help his team had he not rear-ended Colapinto after the VSC period, which earned him the same penalty Verstappen got for ruining his race.

Piastri’s plight meant McLaren suffered a nerve-shredding wait over the second half of the race, to confirm their first constructors’ championship in 26 years. With Norris leading the two Ferraris, any drama for him threatened to send the title their rivals’ way.

But there was no repeat of the yellow flag drama which wrecked Norris’s race a week earlier. And the MCL38 continued its unprecedented run of never letting its drivers down all season long.

Lewis Hamilton spent the first six years of his career driving for no one other than McLaren. He won the drivers’ title with them, but never took them to the constructors’ championship.

Lando Norris has now spent as long with them, but ended his sixth year at the team by delivering the constructors’ crown they have waited for since before he was born. The team erupted in joy.

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“I’m very, very happy,” he beamed afterwards. “Just as I’m sure everyone in the team is.

Lando Norris, McLaren, Yas Marina, 2024
McLaren have had a long time to plan their celebrations
“Today was a very special day for all of us. It was ours to lose today and I’m sure at certain moments people thought that it was not far away from being lost: Two Ferraris up there and Charles doing a great job to get back to the podium.

“Oscar was super-unlucky. He got taken out in turn one so, for a minute, my heart was like, ‘oh God, it’s not looking as likely’.

“But if I just kept my head down and kept focused, I knew I could deliver and do what I got to do.”

Norris came to terms with losing the drivers’ championship to Verstappen two weeks ago, and declared himself proud to have returned the constructors’ crown to the historic team which brought him into F1.

“The bigger picture, us winning a championship for the first time in 26 years, you wouldn’t have thought that. When you say the name ‘McLaren’ it feels wrong to say that they’ve not won a championship in 25 years. But for me to be part of that, for Oscar to be part of it, is something we’re incredibly proud of.

“Delivering that for the team has put the biggest smile as possible on everyone’s face. This is the biggest reward you can give back to everyone who designs the car, builds the car, gets the partners. Everyone has played such a big part, so just proud. Proud is my biggest thing. Of course, I’m happy I finished the season this way, but I’m way more happy for the team than I am for myself.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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40 comments on “Norris achieves feat which eluded Hamilton by taking McLaren to constructors’ title”

  1. Looking at Hamiltons late race pace on mediums would like to see how Sainz would have gone if he stopped with like 12 to go for softs. Mclaren could have covered but at least move them off the spot and put Leclerc in their mirrors.

    1. notagrumpyfan
      9th December 2024, 10:27

      For the last rounds of the last race it would be a smart all or nothing strategy. The chances for Norris to lose P1 all by himself were very small.

    2. He would have had to gain back over 2 seconds per lap AND overtake by the time those softs would have started to go off (especially if they’d be driven hard like that), that is unlikely to have worked. Norris did have pace in hand on the hards, so he could have upped the pace a tad more to make it harder to catch him as well

      1. notagrumpyfan
        9th December 2024, 14:20

        But as a strategy it probably had a better chance than waiting 15-20 laps for Norris to have a problem or make a mistake.

        Norris did have pace in hand on the hards, so he could have upped the pace a tad more to make it harder to catch him as well

        Even without overtaking Norris, pushing him would increase the chance of a mistake a little bit. And that’s all they could hope for.

    3. The first couple comments were originally all those pointing out what a questionable and misleading this was (all deleted now lol) as that would obviously steer the direction. A disappointing practice I must say.

  2. Lots of people will say McLaren/Norris bottled the drivers championship.
    Nah, Red Bull fumbled the constructors title. If their number 2 was minimally competent, they would have won both easily.

    1. Yes, this is absolutely true, there was only an occasion for the title for ferrari and mclaren because of how bad perez has been, but given these teams didn’t win that title for 16 and 26 years I’d say perez did something useful at least!

    2. Very true. And no doubt people will soon say “Verstappen so good he won in third best car!1!”. Verstappen is good. Great, even. But that Red Bull was a podium contender pretty much everywhere except Monza and maybe one other race.

  3. Briton single-,handedly drags rapidly fading F1 team to their greatest triumph!

  4. What an awful headline. It’s disrespectful to Lewis, and to the entire McLaren team apart from Norris, who presumably were only able to fight for the WCC because of Lando.

    Racefans continuing their slide into tabloid journalism.

    1. I have to admit that, even though I don’t look much into these things, this headline is indeed a bit of an odd choice: I don’t think there was any realistic chance at titles for mclaren back then except 2007 and 2008: 2007 they were up there but lost the points because of spygate, and even without that, there was a race where they got docked enough points to let ferrari win the constructor’s title anyway, the car also looked marginally better, so I wouldn’t blame the mclaren drivers.

      And in 2008 they had kovalainen as 2nd driver, which basically took them out of contention.

      But very happy for mclaren, they had the overall best car this year and deserved at least this title, and also nice that ferrari ran them close in the end, with norris not being allowed to drop even 1 place; a good fight between the 2 most historical teams, that were also the best teams when I started watching 25 years ago.

      1. I will disagree here. Had Lewis performed better during the best post-2009 McLaren years, a WCC was possible (he had a better car on balance than Alonso during those season), but it would not have been easy and Lando would have come nowhere close. More importantly, in 2007 he did even if the record books don’t show it.

        1. Every driver can perform better and single handedly win the WCC for their team but it’s not realistic at all. Lewis won the WDC, so the only reason Mclaren didn’t win the WCC was because of Kovalainen. It’s just a fact.

          1. I’ll point out my original comment, which was the first one in the comments sections, said “he did win a WCC alongside Alonso so this is misleading and seems designed to anger Lewis fans into commenting.” The next replies and comments agreed or said the same thing. And then were deleted. lol

            So, yeah, while it might not be in the record books. Nothing eluded Hamilton. And I don’t mean this in an AD21 way. I don’t consider 2021 LH’s title.

      2. Yeah in 2007 McLaren would have won the constructors with 218 points vs Ferrari with 204, but spygate DSQ prevented them.

        I don’t really agree with the headline, as it isn’t up to one driver to deliver a constructors, rather it is the combined effort of Norris, Piastri and the team.

    2. Coventry Climax
      9th December 2024, 9:37

      Exactly.
      It’s a constructors title they’ve won, not a driver trophy, and Norris has not, singlehandedly, designed, built and developed the car he drove this season. Plus, it completely disregards the context of what all the other teams and drivers did or did not do this year.

      Let’s hope the fact Norris -and McLaren- didn’t massively drop the ball this time means they’ve grown up and learnt something, and will be delivering better competition next time around.

      This tries to paint Norris as a champion, which is something I will need to see first before I believe it.

    3. notagrumpyfan
      9th December 2024, 10:44

      What an awful headline.

      Indeed!
      And it’s probably not even close to the truth.
      It could’ve said “Nigel Stepney achieves feat which eluded Hamilton taking McLaren to constructors’ title”. Still an awful headline, and missing important details, but closer to the truth.

    4. +1

      Some people asked why Hamilton got his own spot on the grid after the race yesterday. This is exactly why. Because if you add his name to the conversation you drive up interest.

      A bit of a tasteless article, but I look forward to the next one: Hamilton achieved feat which eluded Norris by taking McLaren to Drivers title.

  5. That headline doesn’t make any sense…

    1. nor does the deletion of comments who dare to question it!

      1. Coventy Climax
        9th December 2024, 9:40

        That happens all the time.
        Do it often enough, make it the norm and it’s justified?

        1. Very true. We must not question our overlord.

      2. notagrumpyfan
        9th December 2024, 10:51

        Easier to make comments disappear than to change the headline ;)
        But a very nasty practice indeed which stopped me financially supporting this site and being registered.

        1. It was done because if the first comments were all of that type (questioning the headline), none of the comments would go the way they wanted and it wouldn’t look good for them. I’ll probably get (it rhymes with canned) for pointing this out all over the comments section.

      3. First time I notice that. Disappointed.

        1. Once you notice it you’ll become aware to how often it happens. Usually the whole comment thread gets deleted too, which often removes valuable comments.

      4. Mine was too despite being incredibly innocuous:

        “This headline doesn’t seem at all intended to trigger Hamilton fans.

        And it’s only technically true. In reality he and Alonso did just that in 2007.”

        1. Though not triggered (as a ‘Hamilton fan’, reductive but it doesn’t bother me) I’m puzzled by the headline too. Surely it’s Norris and Piastri who won the constructor’s title for McLaren, while Hamilton (like Verstappen this year) was ‘unable’ to achieve the same for reasons to do with poor team mate performance or other extraneous reasons? So why imply some kind of failure on Hamilton’s part? Not sure if that was the intention, but it is how it reads.
          Personally I read the situation differently: Norris (and Piastri) failed to win a WDC for McLaren despite ample opportunity. A bit harsh given they drove way better than Pérez in the other Red Bull and Verstappen is the most formidable driver on the grid. But still, more accurate.

          1. Lewis and Alonso are the only drivers I’m around to watch. So, it triggered me. Once they’re both gone. I’m gone.

          2. And, yes, I read the situation the same as you. The WCC is evidence of what LN and OP failed to do. However, I credit Norris with an amazing final drive. He withstood amazing pressure and didn’t put a foot wrong in the final race.

  6. While Bottas’ & Zhou’s (& Checo’s) times racing in F1 ended for the time being at least, Magnussen’s time ended for good in all likelihood this time around, given how many chances he’s already received, so further back-&-forth returns are unlikely anymore.
    Simply put, all cards have been looked for him, like with Ricciardo.
    As for Colapinto’s return chances for 2026 or beyond, GM Cadillac is one option if they’d be willing to provide financial compensation for his Williams contract termination, unlike Red Bull.
    Another aspect within this article I point out here is that the only way Lando could’ve realistically known about his position is by getting informed via radio because reading the graphics at racing speeds is simply impossible & even making out what happens on screens unless directly facing one when exiting a slow-speed corner, as most of them in the entire championship are located either beside a straight or a high to medium-speed corner section, not to mention in blindspot angles.
    Reading the TV graphics font isn’t always easy even from the opposite grandstand in a stationary position despite having time to focus on them (I know from experience), so definitely impossible from a single-seater driving angle when in motion, even on slow laps.

    1. I don’t know exactly how much information the drivers get off the TV screens but they do frequently check them (I noticed Hamilton glancing at the one at turn 5 when there was a driver facing on-board shot of him, so I’d imagine the others do as well)

      1. I’ve heard drivers mention that they’ve seen replays in the past where for example there’s been a crash involving their teammate

    2. Coventry Climax
      9th December 2024, 9:50

      The only information that screens deliver to drivers as it happens is the real-time action. You need to be in the exact right place at the exact right time to be able to see and follow that.
      Any and all other information is shown with a delay, so I imagine getting information from the pitwall should be faster.

  7. notagrumpyfan
    9th December 2024, 10:23

    As the Championship points article hasn’t been posted yet, I’ll share the final Best of the Rest ranking here.

    Best of the Rest Championship:
    1) Haas 711 (HUL 402, MAG 281, BEA 28)
    2) RB 580 (TSU 307, RIC 211, LAW 62)
    3) Alpine 573 (GAS 310, OCO 255, DOO 8)
    4) Williams 422 (ALB 244, COL 98, SAR 80)
    5) Sauber 323 (ZHO 174, BOT 149)

    Drivers championship:
    1) HUL 402
    2) GAS 310 (overtaken MAG in Qatar & TSU in ABD)
    3) TSU 307
    4) MAG 281
    5) OCO 255
    6) ALB 244
    7) RIC 211
    8) ZHO 174
    9) BOT 149
    10) COL 98
    11) SAR 80
    12) LAW 62 (5 races)
    13) BEA 28 (3 races)
    14) DOO 8 (1 race)

    As the cars are much closer at the end of the season, and hopefully next year, I don’t think this listing is needed in 2025.

    1. Aston Martin should be in there. Haas had a better car for most of the season than AM.

      1. notagrumpyfan
        10th December 2024, 9:00

        The bottom five were picked at the start of the season.
        Including AM would make them run away with the titles (based on a quick calc a few races ago).

        1. I want to know where Stroll would finish.

  8. Whybwas only hamilton on the straight making donuts while he is not even leaving. Amd not bottas and others? Or sainz

    1. Because they didn’t face the adversity of losing the 2017 fashion awards in Paris.

Comments are closed.