A bonkers debut, titanic on-track engagements and shock departures – The five craziest storylines of 2024 so far

The 2024 season has been nothing if not a giver. A red-hot slice of driver market news here, some cloak-in-dagger team personnel changes there – to say nothing of the seven different winners in 14 races, the most in a season since 2012. An F1 website editor’s dream, in short.

So with half the year in the bank and the F1 drivers all hanging out with Salt Bae in Mykonos – or whatever they get up to these days for the summer holidays – let’s comb through the five storylines that have sent our jaws to the floor so far in 2024.

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Hamilton sees red

‘Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari’ has been such a frequent rumour over the years that it’s become a bit of a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation for everyone in the F1 media when it’s doing the rounds. As such, when the rumour rolled around this year, I jadedly treated it with the usual degree of wariness/weariness that I give it every year. That is, until it became clear that this year, THIS WAS NOT A DRILL!

With a certain degree of inevitability, details started trickling their way into the media, before the shock official news came that, yes, finally, Hamilton in red was set to become a reality.

It’s a decision that, as with seemingly everything associated with Sir Lewis, has proven contentious, inviting all manner of debate around whether people think it’s a good move or not – with Hamilton set to join only the third team of his illustrious career.

READ MORE: ‘The stars aligned’ – Hamilton reveals the key factors behind his shock Ferrari switch

Whatever your opinion though, seeing #44 on those red haunches next year is going to be something else…

Steiner and Haas part ways

2024 was but 10 days old when news came from Haas that it’s totemic Team Principal Guenther Steiner was departing.

In a way, it was unsurprising. Plotting Haas’s championship results since the heady days of their P5 finish in 2018 makes for grim reading, and seemingly, tensions between Steiner and team owner Gene Haas had reached tipping point.

EXCLUSIVE: 'It came down to performance’ – Gene Haas on Guenther Steiner's departure and what it means for his team’s future

But despite seemingly parting brass rags from the team that he’d helped mould into a plucky midfield outfit since 2014, as our F1 Correspondent Lawrence Barretto noted at the time, “you’d struggle to find a person in the paddock who wouldn’t make time for the Italian”. And as Lawrence wryly added, in F1 “that in itself is an incredible feat”.

Haas, now under the stewardship of long-time engineer Ayao Komatsu, look to have taken a step in 2024, currently running P7, with over double the points they managed last year – and with the promise of an all-new line-up for 2025, in the form of Esteban Ocon and the promising ‘pseudo-rookie’ Ollie Bearman (more on whom later).

And as for Steiner, perhaps the people who’ll be reeling most from his departure are fans of Drive To Survive, given the effervescent Italian’s starring role in the Netflix series. Fear not though, because you can still read Guenther’s columns on Formula1.com…

Newey off to pastures new

There have been few non-driver figures in the F1 paddock since 1950 whose departure from a team could be described as seismic. Adrian Newey is one of those few.

Like Lewis Hamilton, Newey does not change F1 teams lightly, his famous drawing board having graced the design office of just six teams since 1980. So when it was announced on May 1 that Newey would be leaving the Red Bull team he’d joined in 2006 – with rumours and whispers having swirled in the days and weeks leading up to that announcement – it came close to eclipsing Hamilton’s Ferrari move in terms of magnitude. It was that big.

EXCLUSIVE: Newey on the RB17 hypercar, his ‘amazing ride’ at Red Bull and what’s next

Newey’s stats speak for themselves, having banked 12 constructors’ and 13 drivers’ titles since 1992.

The next big news – and who knows when that will come – is where he’ll end up next, with Ferrari, Aston Martin, Williams or even permanent retirement having all been touted as possible options in recent months.

Meanwhile, Red Bull will need to assess the hole that will be left by the departure of one of the greatest design minds that motorsport has ever seen.

Bearman’s bonkers debut

Appendicitis is no picnic – just ask Alex Albon, who missed the 2022 Italian Grand Prix after suffering from it, later revealing that complications from his surgery had forced medics to put him into an induced coma.

Unfortunately for his future Williams team mate Carlos Sainz (another big story!) the Spaniard was the next F1 driver to go through the appendicitis ordeal, with Sainz’s case ruling him out of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

TIMELINE: Ollie Bearman’s ‘whirlwind’ 24 hours in Jeddah that saw him go from F2 pole to F1 debut

It had begun with Ferrari informing the media in the Jeddah paddock that Sainz was unwell and would miss his Wednesday PR duties – the race weekend having been brought forward by a day due to Ramadan – while resting up in his hotel.

Despite then running in both Free Practice 1 and 2, by Friday Sainz had been diagnosed with appendicitis, the official announcement coming at 1419 local time. In the background, Ferrari had been preparing F2 racer and reserve Ollie Bearman for a shock F1 debut – Bearman afforded just one hour of practice in FP3 around one of F1’s most demanding tracks before qualifying.

In the end, the Briton acquitted himself magnificently, qualifying P11 before racing to P7, in a rookie performance that legendary journalist David Tremayne described as “one of the most accomplished and impressive F1 debuts I’ve witnessed in 36 years of F1 reporting” – a sentiment that’s hard to argue with.

Norris and Verstappen come to blows

It’s easy to be friendly with your fellow rivals when you’re not competing for the same big trophy. Hence Max Verstappen’s beatific smile on the sporadic occasions his pal Lando Norris would join him up on an F1 podium – with Verstappen usually standing on the big step in the middle, and McLaren driver Norris simply happy to be up there at all.

With Norris’s maiden victory in Miami this year though – a victory part-owed to luck, part-owed to skill, and part-owed to a massive McLaren upgrade package that has made the MCL38 arguably the car to have ever since – that dynamic between the two drivers was bound to shift. And shift it did at the Austrian Grand Prix.

READ MORE: Best moments, biggest shocks and star drivers – Our writers reflect on 2024 at the midway point of the season

A thrilling battle for the lead between Verstappen and Norris – who, it’s worth noting, have competed as team mates for the Team Redline esports squad in the past – finally spilled over from unfriendly thrusting and riposting to full blown contact on Lap 64 of 71.

F1 editors starved of a serious threat to Max Verstappen’s dominance – and the accompanying headlines that go with it – since Charles Leclerc’s 2022 tilt went off the boil, duly licked their lips…

Following his DNF from the contact, Norris’s reaction was blunt and emotive, the Briton claiming he felt “let down” by his friend Verstappen, who for his part railed on team radio against a 10-second penalty handed out to him.

Tensions had cooled by the time the paddock regrouped at Silverstone just four days later, with Norris declaring he was “happy to go racing” with Verstappen once more. But the tone for future on-track engagements had been set.

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Or as former Renault F1 driver Jolyon Palmer put it: “Lando and Max have been friends and respectful to one another for a long time in their careers – but I think after Austria it might be difficult for things to be the same between them in wheel-to-wheel combat.”

Here’s hoping for plenty more storylines when racing resumes at Zandvoort – with a battle for the drivers’ and constructors’ titles, the identity of Mercedes’ new driver for 2025 and plenty more still to come this year.