Stressed parents, naps and emotional home races – 10 moments you may have forgotten from 2024 so far

The 2024 F1 season has been unforgettable so far, with seven different race winners and plenty of incredible Grands Prix. But there have also been some remarkable moments that you may have forgotten in the midst of the intense competition. From the absurd to the heartwarming, we take a look at a few events you might have forgotten from this season...

Alpine's disastrous Friday in Bahrain

The opening race of the season got off to a dire start for Alpine, after they hoped to continue their 2023 form that saw them take sixth place in the constructors’ championship. Following on from an underwhelming pre-season test, a lacklustre qualifying performance saw Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly exit in Q1 to lock-out the back row of the grid.

Gasly lamented a compromised final out-lap that he believed impacted his chances of making it to Q2, especially after he found himself as one of the last cars on track alongside Sergio Perez. Despite this costly error, neither Frenchman expressed surprise at the team’s lack of pace, with Gasly stating that “we knew it was going to be tough”.

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The race itself saw little improvement as the pair crossed the line in P17 and P18, maintaining the order they started in as they finished ahead of Valtteri Bottas and Logan Sargeant.

Since then, the team has continued to have its ups and downs, scoring 11 points, while there have been a host of staff changes again this year, including the arrival of new Team Principal Oliver Oakes, who has replaced Bruno Famin.

Early unrest at RB

Team mate-related frustrations usually take at least a few races to set in, but the freshly rebranded RB team saw them as early as the opening race due to an unwanted team order – at least from the perspective of Yuki Tsunoda.

With just five laps to go of the Bahrain Grand Prix, the Japanese driver was battling for P12 with the Haas of Kevin Magnussen, when a message from race engineer Mattia Spini came over the radio. Tsunoda was instructed to let Daniel Ricciardo past in an attempt to claim P12 for good, as his team mate had recently bolted on a new set of soft tyres that had more life than Tsunoda’s hard tyres.

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After questioning whether the team were kidding, he moved over to let Ricciardo improve to P13 while Magnussen eventually clung onto 12th position. Then, in a bold display of anger, Tsunoda seemed to dive-bomb his team mate before he came close to taking the Australian out entirely as he merged back onto the track, prompting Ricciardo to take his vexation out over the radio: “F***, what the f***? I’ll save it."

He later branded Tsunoda’s move as a sign of “immaturity”, while his team mate pointed out that Ricciardo “didn’t overtake as well so… whatever”. Things seem to have settled down since then, with Tsunoda outscoring his colleague eight times over the season.

Bearman's mighty F1 debut

It was a whirlwind weekend in Jeddah for Ollie Bearman as he started it by claiming pole position in F2 for PREMA and ended it as the youngest Ferrari driver in F1 history, in addition to claiming a solid points haul as he crossed the line in seventh.

At just 18, Bearman has Carlos Sainz and his faulty appendix to thank for his shot at driving for Ferrari, which also helped propel him into contention for a permanent F1 seat. That came to fruition as he was confirmed as a Haas driver for next year over the British Grand Prix weekend.

READ MORE: Bearman keen to learn from Hamilton as he says seven-time champion will bring 'winning mentality' to Ferrari

Whilst his efforts in Saudi Arabia were lauded as “impressive” by Lewis Hamilton, it was Bearman’s dad who unexpectedly found himself in the spotlight of the F1 broadcast. As the youngster competed in a car that was 14 seconds faster than the F2 cars he was used to, his dad’s evident nerves were tracked by cameras for the duration of the race.

He looked ready to faint at times, appearing more panicked over the 50 laps than his son seemed over the entirety of the weekend. With Bearman securing a full-time seat for next season, his dad has plenty more opportunities to dramatically widen his eyes every time he even comes vaguely close to a barrier.

Sargeant on the sidelines

In what was one of the most controversial moments of the season, Logan Sargeant was ejected (not literally) from his own car in favour of Alex Albon at the Australian Grand Prix.

During the first practice session of the weekend, Albon critically damaged his chassis as he hit the barriers twice in a heavy crash that wrote off his car for the remainder of the weekend. Williams had neither the time nor the required parts to fix it trackside, and the team had failed to bring a spare chassis to Melbourne.

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They made the decision to bench Sargeant and hand Albon his FW46, leaving the American with nothing to do but watch from the garage as his team mate competed for the rest of the weekend, eventually finishing just short of the points in P11.

Team Principal James Vowles called it “the hardest decision” he had ever been forced to make, but said that asking Sargeant to step aside was what he had to do “for the team”. Albon may have proven himself over the last few years as Williams’ most reliable points scorer, but there was plenty of debate over whether that justified substituting Sargeant, who was not the driver to significantly damage his car that weekend.

Super Max’s pole position streak

Max Verstappen’s dominant form from the previous two seasons may have slipped slightly this year, as he hasn’t won a race since the Spanish Grand Prix back in June, but that definitely isn’t to say that he’s losing his racing prowess.

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In the opening seven races of 2024, the Dutchman took pole position in every single one, extending his streak to eight in a row when including the Abu Dhabi finale last year. From the narrow streets of Jeddah to Albert Park, he beat the other 19 drivers to the front row week in, week out.

He therefore matched the legendary Ayrton Senna’s pole position record, which the Brazilian achieved between 1988 and 1989. The shared streak was made even more meaningful as Verstappen reached it in Imola, a track where Senna’s legacy is immortalised after his tragic fatal crash there in 1994.

Zhou’s first home race

After the Chinese Grand Prix was unable to be held for several seasons amidst the pandemic, Zhou Guanyu didn’t get a chance to compete in his home race until his third year in F1. When the opportunity finally rolled around, emotions ran high as the Kick Sauber driver became the first Chinese racer to contest a home Grand Prix.

An estimated 60,000 fans filled the grandstands each day over the weekend as Zhou put on an impressive performance, missing out on points in the Sprint by six seconds to George Russell. Sunday was trickier after he qualified in P16, but he improved two places and was directed to his own parking spot along with the top three drivers on the main straight.

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

Climbing out of his car, Zhou waved to the crowd in front of him before he collapsed to his knees and buried his head in his hands, overcome with emotion. He explained: “This just gets me, you know, this journey to get here – I’m just super proud and honoured to be finally the first Chinese driver to compete in the Chinese Grand Prix for 20 years. Emotional of course, it was a very special moment for me.”

Alonso’s controversial penalties

Aston Martin have undeniably had a significant drop in pace compared to their impressive 2023 performance that saw Fernando Alonso take P4 in the drivers’ championship. The team currently sits fifth in the standings, a whopping 193 points behind Mercedes, and their underwhelming results have been exacerbated by incidents and penalties for the former world champion.

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In Australia, Alonso was handed a 20-second time penalty after stewards concluded that he drove in a “potentially dangerous” manner ahead of George Russell on the penultimate lap of the race. Approaching Turn 6, the Spaniard lifted “slightly more than 100m earlier than he ever had” at that corner, which he explained was an attempt to get a better exit.

Although there was no contact with the Mercedes, the penalty was given more than three hours after the end of the race, dropping Alonso from P6 to P8 in the classification. The team decided not to appeal that time, but came to a different judgement following the Sprint in China.

While fighting over third place in Shanghai, Alonso and Sainz made contact, resulting in the former retiring from the race and the latter staggering home in P5. The stewards determined that the Aston Martin driver “caused a collision” and dealt him a 10-second time penalty, which led to the team initiating a ‘Right of Review’ that was ultimately unsuccessful.

The two incidents, alongside an additional collision with Zhou in Austria, mean that Alonso sits at eight penalty points, just four away from a race ban.

A weekend to remember for Charles Leclerc

Seven years of competing in F1 and enduring the so-called ‘Monaco curse’ led some Ferrari fans to believe that Leclerc would never take victory in his home race. Gearbox failure and strategy errors were just a couple of the issues that plagued the Monegasque over the years at the historic circuit.

That all changed this season when he converted pole position into an intensely emotional race win, much to the delight of the home crowd and, of course, himself.

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In doing so Leclerc became the first Monegasque to win his home race since the championship began in 1950, prompting tears of joy from many of the Scuderia.

The 26-year-old’s celebrations continued long after his victory as he and team boss Fred Vasseur commemorated the moment with a dip in the Monaco harbour.

Press conference naps

Driving an F1 car at the limit is a gruelling task, so it’s no surprise that racers need a bit of a rest after the chequered flag every now and again. Most of them manage to stay upright for the post-race press conference, but this season a few drivers have taken one look at the inviting couches and used them as a chance to recharge.

After Leclerc’s long-awaited home victory in Monaco, he became the man everyone wanted to talk to, so much so that his fellow podium finishers – Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz – were left waiting in the conference room.

They elected to lie down and wait, with the McLaren driver using a towel as a pillow and concluding that he “slept longer than I did last night, waiting for Charles [Leclerc] just now.”

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Lewis Hamilton replicated this at the Spanish Grand Prix, where he achieved his first podium finish since Mexico last season. He crossed the line in third, 15 seconds behind an exhilaratingly close battle that saw Norris miss out on the win by just two seconds.

Arriving before race winner Max Verstappen, the Brit took the time to stretch out on the sofa, blasting Bob Marley’s ‘Could You Be Loved’ from his phone. When the Dutchman got there, he couldn’t resist commenting that Hamilton was “clearly getting a bit old” and recommended that he get a massage. Clearly, that press conference sofa is the perfect post-race luxury.

One-off liveries

This season’s racing action has undoubtedly been the star of the show, but teams across the grid have also introduced some striking one-off liveries that may have passed you by.

Enzo Ferrari reputedly said that a child asked to draw a car will colour it red, but Ferrari adjusted their iconic design in Miami, adding flashes of light blue to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Ferrari’s presence in North America. The two shades, Azzurro La Plata and Azzurro Dino, used to be part of the Scuderia’s identity between the 1950s and 1970s, but fell out of use as red was prioritised.

Leclerc, Sainz and all team members sported a similarly shaded kit across the weekend, paying homage to the colours intermittently worn by racing legends Alberto Ascari, Clay Regazzoni, and Niki Lauda during their stints with the team.

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Elsewhere on the grid, RB competed in a vibrant “chameleon” livery featuring a flurry of colours associated with Miami. The unmissable blend of pink, blue and orange performed on track as well as visually, with Tsunoda matching his best finish of the season in P7.

Likewise, McLaren saw some stellar results when they switched out their papaya livery for a Senna-inspired green, yellow and blue in Monaco. They may have missed out on the win, but their drivers crossed the line in second and fourth place, with Piastri claiming his first podium of 2024.

Alpine also had a one-off livery to showcase at the Belgian Grand Prix, their usual blue number changing to a striking red and yellow design that was inspired by the Deadpool & Wolverine film.