Formula 1 2024: Vote on the best moments of the 2024 F1 season after Max Verstappen and McLaren claimed titles

After a thrilling 2024 Formula 1 season, Sky Sports‘ digital F1 journalists have selected their favourite moments for you to vote on.

Along with the familiar faces you saw throughout the season on Sky Sports F1‘s award-winning television coverage, a member of the digital team was in tow pacing the paddock to bring you all the best stories via the Sky Sports website and app.

It was a great season to follow with F1, with seven different race-winners from four different teams creating a hugely unpredictable year of action.

Max Verstappen was ultimately crowned world champion for a fourth successive season, but after the Dutchman’s dominant start to his campaign, the sport was as open as it’s been for many, many years.

McLaren ultimately chased down Red Bull and held off Ferrari to end a 26-year wait for a Constructors’ Championship, with the contest going down to the final lap of the final race in Abu Dhabi.

Given the unrelenting drama, there were plenty of great moments to choose from, but Sky Sports‘ Nigel Chiu, James Galloway and Sam Johnston have selected their favourites.

You can join in the festive fun by reminding yourself of these moments via the video clips provided, and then having your say on our vote for each category.

Races to remember

NC: The Azerbaijan Grand Prix was the most underrated race of the year. Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc treated us to an intense race-long battle, with the McLaren driver pulling off a brave, bold overtake into Turn One after the pit stop phase.

After that, Piastri defended brilliantly – not defending fresh air when he didn’t need to as both drivers gave it everything. A race for the purists and some top-quality driving all-around.

JG: I’m going for Canada, as this was the first time it really started becoming clear that the 2024 season might just be a little bit special in terms of more than two teams being in the mix for race wins on any given weekend. In truth, the prospect of more than one team challenging for regular wins hadn’t looked especially likely in the campaign’s early weeks.

George Russell impressively took Mercedes’ first pole of the year and then, in cold and wet race-day conditions, the Briton duelled for victory with Max Verstappen and Lando Norris in a topsy-turvy race which featured four changes of lead and two Safety Cars phases.

In the end, after a day of mistakes, great racing and unpredictability at the front, it was a race win that Verstappen and Red Bull truly earned the hard way.

SJ: Just when it started to seem as though the day might not come, Lewis Hamilton ended a 56-race winless streak in the most spectacular fashion to claim a record ninth victory at Silverstone.

The dry-wet-dry race had everything as Hamilton saw off Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, cueing unforgettable celebrations for the Brit in his final season with Mercedes.

The biggest shock

JG: Max Verstappen and Red Bull going 10 races without a win (and indeed winning only two of the campaign’s final 14 rounds).

Given the season had started with Verstappen being described as operating in “a different galaxy” by Mercedes’ Toto Wolff in the hours after the Dutchman won the Bahrain GP by more than 20 seconds, no one could have seriously seen the erosion of the defending champions’ previous dominance happening quite so quickly and emphatically. Not me anyway, that’s for sure.

SJ: Mercedes’ decision to replace Lewis Hamilton with Italian teenager Andrea ‘Kimi’ Antonelli is extremely bold, and only really comparable to when the Brit entered the sport with McLaren in 2007.

The 18-year-old added further drama by, just a day before his signing was announced, shunting the W15 into the barrier at Monza on his F1 practice debut. Expect fireworks in 2025!

NC: There’s no other contender. No one saw this coming. When Lewis Hamilton signed a new Mercedes deal in the middle of 2023, it seemed like the Ferrari dream move was over.

Hamilton to Ferrari was so big that it wiped out all of the football news on Transfer Deadline Day back on February 1.

Pole position perfection

SJ: Lando Norris’ pole position at the Spanish Grand Prix was special for several reasons.

It was his first since his maiden pole at the 2021 Russian Grand Prix, it signified that McLaren were able to compete with Red Bull at a circuit where they had previously been untouchable, and the Brit delivered what he described as the “perfect lap” to edge Max Verstappen.

JG: As he finally lifted his so-called home Monaco ‘curse’, Charles Leclerc was on imperious form all weekend long in the Principality and his pole lap around the famous street circuit was no exception.

If you ever needed an illustration of the phrase ‘threading it needle’, Leclerc’s pole-winning lap of 1:10.270 around Monaco’s tight and twisty, barrier-lined confines would work well. Heading the grid on F1’s shortest track by 0.15s, the Ferrari driver was clearly operating at a level above – as he then proved on the Sunday by winning the race too.

NC: Max Verstappen did not have the fastest car in qualifying at Imola but he delivered a stunning lap in Q3 on an old-school track to beat the McLarens.

Verstappen tactically got a cheeky slipstream on the long main straight from Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg to snatch pole by less than a tenth from Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

Considering how hard it was to overtake at Imola, pole was crucial and Verstappen needed track position to deny Norris the win in the race.

Radio drama

SJ: I was in total disbelief listening to the messages between Lando Norris and his race engineer Will Joseph as the McLaren pit wall attempted to persuade the Brit to hand the lead back over to his team-mate Oscar Piastri at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Norris eventually gave in, but the extraordinarily public guilt-tripping process that preceded that moment was astounding, and also telling in terms of both the team and driver’s philosophy.

NC: Also in Budapest, we had Max Verstappen’s outbursts throughout the race after he felt he was forced out wide by Norris at the first corner and was unhappy with his strategy. He was then later left frustrated by losing track position after a pit stop, and sarcastically told his team: “It’s quite impressive how we let ourselves get undercut”.

I personally enjoy Verstappen’s radio and love the straightforwardness he has with engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. Perhaps he went a little too far in Budapest, but we should not forget these F1 drivers are full of adrenaline and risking their lives at over 180mph.

JG: Ever sworn at your boss in public before? That’s a box George Russell ticked in Austria after giving short shrift to Toto Wolff’s excitable message over Mercedes team radio of “you can win this, George!” after Max Verstappen and Lando Norris’ collision had gifted the Briton the lead late on in the race.

An embarrassed Wolff later described the timing of his message as the “single dumbest thing I’ve done in 12 years” at Mercedes. Hard to argue.

Memorable media moments

JG: Let’s go back to pre-testing in Bahrain for this and Lewis Hamilton’s first appearance in a press conference since his stunning 2025 Ferrari move had been announced a few weeks beforehand.

While inevitably slightly awkward to be almost exclusively fielding questions about a rival team he was joining in 11 months’ time while sitting in the colours of his current employers, Hamilton handled the situation well and, from the enthusiasm of his answers, it was clear how much he was already looking forward to his next big career adventure.

NC: Max Verstappen’s protest against his punishment for swearing in a press conference at the Singapore Grand Prix was remarkable. Verstappen chose to give very short answers of no more than a sentence, or two, during Saturday’s FIA press conference after Qualifying, instead opting to hold an impromptu briefing with journalists in the paddock.

Several of us huddled and slowly walked down the stairs and into the paddock as Verstappen explained his side of the “ridiculous” decision from the stewards, as photographers quickly gathered around, before a Red Bull press officer almost acted as security and brought an end to the incredible scenes.

SJ: The best was saved until last, as George Russell delivered an astonishing response to a double dose of criticism from Max Verstappen following the Dutchman’s slightly controversial qualifying demotion at the Qatar Grand Prix.

A few days later in Abu Dhabi, Russell accused Verstappen of threatening him before the Qatar race and said the four-time world champion was a “bully” who needed to be stood up to.

The best overtakes

NC: Yes, I’ve gone for Piastri on Leclerc in Baku. To brake that late without locking up and finding the wall on the outside was brilliant. A superb overtake under pressure and a race-winning move.

JG: From the same Montreal race I chose earlier, but further back in the pack, Alex Albon’s inch-perfect double pass on Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon at the final chicane.

With the Williams aided by a double slipstream as all three cars ran in close company down the back-straight from the hairpin, Albon drafted past the RB on the outside before opportunistically – and brilliantly – cutting back in front of Ricciardo to take the inside line for the upcoming right-hander to set up an immediate move on Ocon’s Alpine too. All expertly navigated by Albon without contact while running in slippery wet conditions too.

SJ: In the final lap of the final race of the year, Lewis Hamilton pulled off an audacious pass around the outside of his team-mate George Russell to cap a stunning comeback drive from 16th on the grid.

It doesn’t quite make up for an even more famous final-lap Abu Dhabi overtake that Hamilton was on the other end of, but it was the perfect way to end his 12 years with Mercedes.

Brundle’s best grid walk moment

SJ: “It’s alright mate, I’m in charge around here.” – Martin Brundle, May 26, 2024.

The great man added another legendary moment to his grid walk reel as he sidestepped Kyliann Mbappe’s security to serve up a charming exchange with the French football star.

NC: At a wet Montreal, Martin found a former motorcyclist in Mary McGee, the first woman to compete in motorcycle road racing and motocross events in the United States back in the 1960s.

McGee explained she only stopped riding bikes in 2012 at the age of 75. Sadly, she passed away in November.

JG: Martin Brundle had never met Williams new boy Franco Colapinto ahead of his Austin grid walk… and still hadn’t by the end of it after the Argentine hurried past to take his position with his fellow drivers at the front of the grid just as Martin attempted to introduce himself.

“I think he thought I was trying to steal his umbrella, to be honest,” quipped Brundle later on. Fortunately, the pair caught up for the first time properly a week later in the Mexico paddock to clear up any misunderstandings.

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