Verstappen has a double victory Chinese takeaway, but more issues for Mercedes emerge in Shanghai.
Formula One returned to China for the first time since 2019, and to add a further unknown aspect to the race, it was also the first sprint race weekend of the season. Despite these variables, Max Verstappen dominated the weekend as he completed a sprint race and main Grand Prix double to take home the maximum 33 points on offer.
Verstappen has now been in pole position for all five Grand Prix in the 2024 season and has gone on to victory in four of the five races, the only blemish being his retirement in Australia. With the added sprint race victory in China, it seems inevitable that he will claim a 4th successive World Title this year, no matter what is put in his way during the record 24-race season (plus six sprint races).
The current issues the Mercedes F1 team faces are probably bringing an extra smile to the faces of Verstappen and the Red Bull team. Mercedes and Red Bull have developed a fierce rivalry over recent seasons. This rivalry, at times, has gone beyond the acceptable limits regarding sporting behavior, never more so than during the 2021 World Championship fight between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.
Since the new ground-effect aerodynamic regulations were introduced in 2022, Red Bull has dominated Formula One, and Mercedes has been way behind the leading pace. This is now the third season of the new regulations, and Mercedes is showing no signs of returning to the front and challenging Red Bull for victories and Championships; if anything, they seem further away than ever.
Mercedes came into the 2024 Formula One season with a new car concept that they were confident would bring them closer to the front and to challenging Red Bull; however, after five races, that couldn’t be further from the truth. After finishing 2nd in the Constructors Championship in 2023, after five races in 2024, Mercedes are in a distant 4th place, already trailing Red Bull by 143 points. Mercedes is also behind Ferrari and their customer team, McLaren (McLaren uses Mercedes engines). George Russell’s place finish in the opening race of the season in Bahrain remains the team’s best result so far.
To add to Mecedes’ s seven-time World Champion status, Lewis Hamilton announced he would join Ferrari in 2025, a very public showing of a lack of faith in MeMercedes’s ability to turn around their fortunes shortly.
Mercedes wants a replacement for Lewis Hamilton, who signed up soon and wants the best driver available to lead the team back to the form that saw them win seven consecutive Drivers and Constructors World Championships in 2014. However, unless their current form significantly improves, it is hard to see any likely future World Champion drivers moving to the team. It is almost erasure current stars Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris at Ferrari, and McLaren will not leave their respective teams to move to the Mercedes team in its current predicament. Even Carlos Sainz, the driver Lewis Hamilton is replacing at Ferrari, may see it better to move to a different team than Mercedes in the long term. For example, Aston Martin is ready for when they team up with Honda in 2026 or Audi when they take over the Sauber team next season with high ambitions.
Mercedes must get on top of their car performance problems as a great history of winning championships means nothing in Formula One, and teams can quickly fall from the top to the midfield or below, as evidenced numerous times in Formula One history. Mercedes only need to look at the Williams F1 team, who won 4 out of 6 World Championships from 1992 to 1997 but have failed to win a Championship since and are without a Grand Prix victory since the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix.
Despite their long and proud sports history, Ferrari and McLaren have been without a Drivers or Constructors World Title since 2007 and 2008. Mercedes must not allow such a long, barren period to happen to it.
