IN NUMBERS: 12 stats that highlight just how competitive F1 is after an unmissable first half of the 2024 season

Fans have been treated to a thrilling F1 season so far, with moments of huge drama, fine margins and multiple winners all playing their part. While the drivers and teams take a break over the summer, we have compiled some of the best statistics from the opening half, showing how close and competitive the sport is ahead of what looks set to be a fascinating 10-race run to settle both championship titles…

-- 0 --

We start, quite literally, with zero. That’s because there was nothing to separate Mercedes driver George Russell and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen during the final stages of qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix.

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Both drivers incredibly pumped in identical times of 1m 12.000s in Q3, with Russell coming out on top thanks to his effort being posted slightly before the Dutchman’s.

It brought back memories of an even more remarkable qualifying session at the 1997 European Grand Prix in Jerez, where Williams team mates Jacques Villeneuve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher all achieved the same lap time.

-- 0.647 --

After some early-season domination from Verstappen and Red Bull, race wins have recently come down to the finest of margins – none finer than the 0.647s that separated the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and the McLaren of Oscar Piastri in Belgium.

Russell had taken the chequered flag first in that race by just half a second, only for the stewards to disqualify his car when it was found to be underweight. That promoted Hamilton and Piastri, who were pushing to catch their one-stopping counterpart in the closing laps.

-- 2.5 --

As touched on above, we’ve witnessed some extremely close race finishes this season, with no fewer than seven – or half – of the 14 Grands Prix held to this point being won by a margin smaller than two-and-a-half seconds.

-- 4 --

For the first time since 2021, four different teams have tasted victory across a single F1 season, with Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all triumphing in the opening half.

POWER RANKINGS: Where do the drivers rank at the halfway stage of the season?

Red Bull have seven wins to their name (five of those coming from the opening seven races), while an ever-improving Mercedes have racked up three (all claimed in the last four races), and McLaren and Ferrari have two apiece.

It’s the same number when it comes to pole positions, which have been scored by Verstappen (eight) and Russell, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc (two each).

-- 7 --

The number gets even bigger as we move on to the different drivers who have won a race so far in 2024, with a whopping seven getting victories on the board – including first-time triumphs for Norris in Miami and Piastri in Hungary.

Mercedes pair Russell and Hamilton, Ferrari duo Carlos Sainz and Leclerc, and Red Bull’s Verstappen are the other names on the list, meaning Sergio Perez is the only driver from the top-four teams yet to get off the mark.

-- 8 --

Perez does make it onto the podium finishers’ table, though, ensuring that the full contingent of Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes drivers are represented on this front.

-- 9 --

We go up another notch when turning our attention to fastest laps, with that same group filling eight spots and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso joining them – aided via a couple of late pit stops at the Chinese and Austrian Grands Prix.

GRILL THE GRID: Watch and play along as the drivers take on the A-Z challenge!

-- 10 --

One of the standout statistics from the first half of the campaign came last time out at Spa-Francorchamps, where every driver who finished in the top-10 places was a Grand Prix winner – the first time this has happened across more than seven decades of F1.

Making history were Hamilton, Piastri, Leclerc, Verstappen, Norris, Sainz, Perez, Alonso, Alpine’s Esteban Ocon and RB’s Daniel Ricciardo, with Russell’s disqualification preventing that record from going down as 11.

-- 13 --

Leading on from that, there are now 13 different race winners on the current F1 grid – for the first time since the 1980 season – thanks to Pierre Gasly of Alpine and Valtteri Bottas of Kick Sauber also playing their part.

-- 18 --

Another stat reinforcing the strength in depth across the grid is that 18 of the 21 drivers to start a race in 2024 have points to their names, with only Kick Sauber pair Bottas and Zhou Guanyu and outgoing Williams racer Logan Sargeant yet to score this season.

This includes Ollie Bearman’s brilliant stand-in performance for Ferrari at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where he just missed out on a Q3 appearance before working his way into the top-10 positions and eventually crossing the line in seventh.

F1 NATION: Why Red Bull have stuck with Perez, Antonelli’s prospects, plus Vowles on how Sainz will turbocharge Williams

-- 20 --

More F1 history was made at the very start of the year when all 20 cars finished the Bahrain Grand Prix to mark the first-ever F1 season-opener with no retirements – showing that the competition is not just fierce in terms of performance, but also reliability.

-- 42 --

Throwing it forward to what promises to be an exhilarating second half of the campaign, just 42 points separate championship leaders Red Bull and second-placed McLaren in the constructors’ standings, with Ferrari only 21 further back, meaning it’ll be all to play for from Zandvoort onwards…