Formula 1 resumes, and it's actually a race

After two-plus seasons of Max Verstappen dominance, the Dutchman has a pack snapping at his heels this time. Will he hold them off?

In the four-ish seasons that I have been closely following Formula 1, I admit that I’ve never really heard an explanation for the summer break. It’s the middle of the season and everyone just … goes home?

My best guess is that because the series goes all over the world and they can use most of the calendar for racing, they decided on the mid-season break because it made more sense than expanding the off-season.

Fortunately, you don’t have to rely on my best guess. Here’s the word of Williams Racing, via their website, which says the key reason is:

One of rest and recovery for our team members. The F1 schedule is relentless and, with 24 races all over the world in 2024 from Monza to Melbourne and Silverstone to Singapore, there has never been a more important time to recharge the batteries.

Anyway, I feel like I was in the ballpark. But summer break is over now, with the Dutch Grand Prix this weekend. Let us consider the storylines:

It’s a race!

After two consecutive seasons in which Red Bull’s Max Verstappen cruised to the world title, he actually has some work to do in the second half of the season this year. He still has a fairly comfortable lead of 78 points, though, largely because all three of the chasing teams, and each of the two drivers on those teams, have split the races that Verstappen hasn’t won. Seven drivers have won races, but other than Verstappen’s seven victories, the only guy with more than one is Lewis Hamilton, with two. (The record for most winners in a season is 11, in 1982.)

The other contenders

Hamilton, already a seven-time champion even if he’s now several seasons removed from his Mercedes dominance, has little chance of running down Max because the pre-break stretch was his best performance in years. He’s still only sixth in the standings, more than 125 points back of Verstappen. If anyone has a chance of catching the leader it’s most likely to be Lando Norris, who has had the quickest car for much of the season but still only has the one victory. Winning these things is hard, and Norris is proof that it takes some time running near the front of races to figure out how to close the deal.

Musical chairs

One of the strangest things about the second half of the season is that many of the drivers are running down the last few races with their teams. Thanks to a cascade of changes that kicked off when Hamilton shocked the sport before this season even began by signing with Ferrari for 2025 and beyond, a whole bunch of dudes will be driving with one eye on next season. Here’s a rundown of the changes announced so far.

Hamilton: Mercedes ➡️ Ferrari

Carlos Sainz: Ferrari ➡️ Williams

Nico Hulkenberg: Hass ➡️ Sauber/Audi

Esteban Ocon: Alpine ➡️ Haas

Guys who might be fired

Daniel Ricciardo (Visa RB)

Valtteri Bottas (Sauber/Audi)

Zhou Guanyu (Sauber/Audi)

Guys who are definitely fired

Kevin Magnussen (Haas)

Logan Sargent (Williams)

New guys

Ollie Bearman (Haas)

Kimi Antonelli* (Mercedes)

Teams with unconfirmed seats

Alpine

Sauber/Audi

Visa RB

Mercedes* (The Antonelli signing has been reported, but not officially announced.)

Whew. That leaves, for those paying close attention, Ricciardo, Bottas and Zhou all without confirmed gigs for next season, plus Sargent and Magnussen seemingly SOL because they haven’t done much in their current seats and seem very unlikely to be attractive targets to any of the teams with openings.

The Checo question

Sergio Perez, teammate of Max Verstappen at Red Bull, has had a shit year. Is this because this is the first time in the past three seasons that I haven’t interviewed him? Probably not. But regardless, he’s just seventh in the driver standings, after finishing second to Verstappen last year and third in 2022. It’s a precipitous fall, and ahead of the summer break it was widely assumed that Perez would be punted out of the car for the final part of the season so that Red Bull wouldn’t lose its slim lead over McLaren in the team standings. The thinking was that they would hand the second Red Bull seat to someone like Yuki Tsunoda of Red Bull’s sister team Visa RB, or reserve driver Liam Lawson, who deputized for Ricciardo when he was injured last year.

Instead, Red Bull announced that Perez was safe for the rest of the season. Curveball! That all said, it’s unclear how much any such statement matters. If Checo crashes in the Netherlands, it’s entirely possible the replacement rumours start right up again.

The Red Bull question

This season began with a cloud over the sport’s dominant team due to allegations of “controlling” behaviour against principal Christian Horner made by a female employee. He denied them, was cleared, and an appeal from the now former employee was unsuccessful. So, all good? Not exactly. The controversy drew attention to a rift at the team between Horner and senior advisor Helmut Marko, who sounds like a super villain but is close to Verstappen and his father, Jos. The elder Verstappen and Marko have been shit-talking Horner for most of the season and, meanwhile, design legend Adrian Newey left while sporting director Jonathan Wheatley has agreed to take the team principal job at Sauber/Audi next season. None of this would be all that big a deal if Max and Red Bull were still crushing all their foes, but they aren’t any longer and won’t be favourites for 2025 unless they go on a hot streak to end the season. Horner built a hugely successful team after taking over at Red Bull in 2005, winning four world driver’s titles, then gave way to the Hamilton-Mercedes era of dominance, and managed to climb back atop the mountain with three more wins behind Verstappen beginning in 2021. You’d think he’d be untouchable, but it is also starting to look like the foundations are creaking underneath him. Which brings us to…

The Max question

Verstappen is going to win a fourth straight F1 title unless something really weird happens. A $10 bet on him to be 2024 champion right now would net you $11.54. (Seems like a good time for Drake to drop one of his $500K bets, come to think of it.) But the sharp-eyed reader might note that there were a few asterisks back there when explaining the Mercedes situation. It remains at least theoretically possible that Mercedes hasn’t publicly committed to a second driver for next year because they are hoping to swoop in and steal Max away from Red Bull. He has a long-term contract, but Hamilton was also under contract with Mercedes next year and ended up at Ferrari. The drivers, especially the stars, have the leverage. Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, is already on record saying he would love to have Verstappen if he was available. (Which, duh.) And also: Wolff and Horner seem to hate each other with the power of a thousand suns. I covered the Canadian Grand Prix a couple of years ago and the two of them lobbed pissy comments back and forth the whole weekend without mentioning each other by name. It was like Mean Girls. (I’m guessing.)

The point is, the rest of this season will obviously determine whether Max locks down the 2024 championship, but also might just indicate what happens in the future. At this time last year, Red Bull were imperious. Now? Let’s watch.