The curtain will fall on the 2024 Formula 1 season on Sunday when the checkered flag flies at the end of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and for the first time since Brawn won the title in 2009 a team other than Mercedes or Red Bull will be crowned Constructors’ champions.
Heading into Sunday McLaren is in pole position, literally and figuratively. McLaren arrived in Abu Dhabi with a 21-point lead over Ferrari in the title chase, and on Saturday they locked out the front row during qualifying. Lando Norris starts up front, with Oscar Piastri alongside him in P2.
As for Ferrari, Charles Leclerc will be at the back of the grid thanks to a ten-place grid penalty incurred when the team installed a new Energy Store (ES) on his SF-24, one more than the two allowed for each year under the rules. Leclerc was eliminated in Q2 Saturday in P14 and is slated to start 19th, barring additional penalties.
As for Carlos Sainz Jr., he will start right behind the McLarens, as he qualified third on Saturday. That gives Ferrari a fighting chance at the front, but Sainz admitted after qualifying that the team faces “mission impossible” when it comes to the Constructors’ Championship.
“Yeah, I think it was already extremely difficult. It was, like I said, a bit of a mission impossible already before the weekend started. Then we arrived to FP1 and Charles’ battery died before running and the grid penalty obviously was a huge shock, a huge blow. On top of that, you get the Q2 situation for Charles,” said Leclerc in the FIA Press Conference after qualifying. “It just makes things obviously a lot more difficult. But at the same time, It is very likely that even in a perfect weekend where we both nail laps in Q3 and we even fight for the win, these two guys are still up there. So it was always going to be difficult.
“It’s just made our life even more difficult. But until the chequered flag comes down tomorrow, you know, anything can happen. And I’m going to keep fighting for whatever comes. And I’m sure Charles from the back will push flat out to get every single point available and see what happens with the McLarens.”
Sainz also made an emotional appeal regarding the Constructors’ Championship in general, outlining just how important that title is to each F1 team.
“I think every fan or every journalist or maybe every person that is not fully or doesn’t fully buy the Constructors’ Championship, the moment you visit a Formula 1 factory, you understand why it exists and why it’s so important,” began Sainz. “Because when you visit a Formula 1 factory and you see more than a thousand people working for just us drivers to take the car and make it perform.
“We are just the last bit of the chain that there is behind all these teams and every single guy from the team counts in that difference and it’s the drivers’ job and team principal’s job and the main engineers’ job to make these people feel like it counts,” continued the Ferrari driver. “So every single one can make a hundredth of a difference in the team and those hundredths add up to the last tenth that maybe made McLaren quicker today and that is where all that last difference is and why it’s so important.”
Sainz then talked about the state of play in F1, with the most competitive season in recent memory coming to a close.
“On top of that, I think Formula 1 is in a good space right now, with a level playing field between driver being important, but also the team. I think teams are given more equal opportunity to fight,” added Sainz. “And it’s not only all about budget. It’s the people, it’s the infrastructure that you can have, that you can achieve. And you can see it with McLaren, you can see it with the top four teams right now, we are all within a couple of tenths of one another, and it makes the Drivers’ Championship more fair because the driver can make more of a difference, but also the Constructors’ Championship more fair.”
Sainz has a chance to achieve that dream in his final race with Ferrari before moving to Williams for next season, even if it is “mission impossible.”
