Marko reckons the size of Norris’s win in the Dutch GP means he cannot be counted out of beating Verstappen to the 2024 drivers’ title, with McLaren bearing down in constructors’ standings too
Constructors is definitely going to McLaren if you ask me, and that’s Piastri vs Perez ultimately.
If a bad weekend for Max still returns second place, I think he has done enough to hang on, but let’s see! Couple of DNFs and we’ve got a title fight
Couple of DNFs
Reliability issues are rare for Red Bull, I wouldn’t put much stock in that.
Piastri and one of the Merc needs to keep Verstappen out of podium positions, and Lando needs to keep scoring podiums or race win(s) to mount a challenge.
Mechanic failures are rare, but if Verstappen finds himself staring 2nd, 3rd, or further down there’s always the risk he’ll crash with his aggressive “style”. See Austria and Hungary
Redbull are having reliability issues this year with both already taking engine penalties. And they’ve been limiting the high engine modes.
Yeah I agree with you there, I don’t think it will happen and we’re looking at Verstappen WDC and McLaren WCC right now
Who mentioned reliability? I’m thinking of the red mist taking himself out forcing an overtake that isn’t on.
Even a single DNF blows the title race wide open (assuming a Norris win). Max is still the favourite but it’s mathematically possible for Norris even without any DNFs. Marko isn’t wrong about the implication of the pace advantage - if Norris can win by 22 seconds and easily take fastest lap last lap on old hards then he might have a shot. Winning all remaining races and taking 7/9 fastest laps will have him win even with Max getting all second places.
Unlikely, but enough to make Max sweat and enough to give us viewers a bit of hope and uncertainty.
I can’t see max losing the drivers title without the other mclaren and at least a ferrari or merc getting between lando and max for the rest of the season, the gap is still too big. I won’t rely on dnfs as red bull just don’t suffer from them in large enough numbers since the PU got sorted
Max has a 70 point lead with 9 races left, if McLaren is truly that dominate they will have no problem taking the title. I imagine there is a grain of truth in what Horner said, that they set the car up for more downforce, but every good liar weaves the truth into their deception so who knows how much that played into it. My guess is McLaren got the setup perfect with Lando, missed with Oscar while RB missed with Max.
Constructors should be easy for mclaren as they have two cars that score good points but drivers it’s such a gap and max isn’t dropping enough points without dnfs and other teams getting between max and lando. There are 8 races left so even allowing only one bad race for lando he needs 10 points more a race, which is max in third, just not been happening enough.
I count 9 left on the calendar, is one not being run?
If McLaren is as dominate as Lando showed this weekend Oscar will certainly be ahead of Max in a few of the remaining races. Oscar has show to have similar pace to Lando so it’s not Perez with RB.
Ah my fault, miscounted.
The problem is it still needs to be 7 races in a row that lando wins and Oscar beats max, not a few. That’s a huge ask, especially when the likes of Merc or Ferrari have been stealing wins here and there and it’s highly unlikely that Max would win zero races between now and the end of the season.
The constructors title is in danger, there’s no doubt about it. For the drivers title however, Verstappen still holds a comfortable cushion. Even if Norris goes full domination and wins the 6 remaining feature races, Verstappen can defend his lead by only finishing 3rd each race. Norris’ only chance are basically DNFs from Verstappen or another constructor stepping up and consistently finishing between him and Verstappen
There’s 9 race weekends left and 3 of the are sprints, not 6.
More like finishing 2nd if Norris goes on that dominant a streak, which doesn’t seem super likely given he’s had a great car for ~7-9 races now and has 2 wins to show for it
Oh, you’re absolutely correct. My bad. In my defense, I was confused by this slightly broken table in the German Wikipedia. I didn’t realise there were normal race weekends after USA, Brazil and Qatar.
Oh that is a weird table. It looks good on the Wikipedia app.
Either way, very excited for the season to go so long into December this year. A shorter off season might be worse for everyone in F1, but it’s nice for me :)
