Do We Have a Title Battle on our Hands in 2024?

McLaren’s win in Miami has shown that Max Verstappen can be beaten, even when his brakes are working as intended! Granted we did need that safety car but is there actually more behind this Norris victory than we initially realized? Let’s take a look!

Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCihjJgRm3Th-quKmTW-9AwQ/join

DISCORD: https://discord.gg/hUwWmvrc4N
TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@fp1will?lang=en
TWITCH: https://www.twitch.tv/fp1will
PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/FP1
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/FP1Will
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/fp1.will/
Don’t forget to LIKE, COMMENT and SUBSCRIBE for weekly F1 content!

Fancy some F1 Merch, check out my Fanatics Affiliate link below to support the channel at the same time! https://f1.pxf.io/FP1Will
For any Business Enquiries: FP1.sponsorship@gmail.com
————————————————————————————————————————–

Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. There are certain scenes from the Formula 1 calendar where race footage is used. All those rights are property of FOM. Other photos and news elements are used solely for the purpose of assisting the original content illuminate a more in depth story

new year but no new winner Max ven still the driver to beat Max ven wins the season opener he takes the bin Grand Prix oh great we all thought we’re in for another 12 months of this now someone hide my shotgun it’s too much of a Temptation after 2023 became the most dominant showing by a team and driver in Formula 1 history many looked at this season to be the one where someone might finally take the fight to Red Bull and Max for stappen McLaren had made a miraculous turnaround in just half a season finally building a gap between the quality of their car and the quality of their merch if they could carry that momentum through into 2024 we may just have a title fight on our hands if you can even remember what one of those is the papaya team have one key weakness however no matter how strongly they end the season they always end up starting the next one a million miles off the pace that leaves them on the back foot throughout most of the year and once the car is finally in a position to challenge Max has one hand on the championship trophy there many reasons as to why this keeps happening perhaps forcing the development later on in the season limits the progress of the following Year’s car or perhaps the McLaren designers twiddle their thumbs and play raid Shadow Legends on their phone over the winter this isn’t an ad by the way no need to skip forward 90 seconds I remember scripting my season predictions video back at the start of the year and initially I ripped into the team hard suggesting that they would be the most disappointing outfit in the first rounds of the championship and then spend the year continuing to follow that catch-up cycle then if you remember back I I got rather ill and couldn’t upload for a month in that time one of my symptoms was apparent delusion as I did the complete 180 on my script and said there actually be strong challenges this year and come race one in Bahrain I thought i’ cocked it up as usual the opening round wasn’t bad by any means and still miles better than 2023 when the McLarens went round the sakir circuit pissing themselves but P6 and p8 at the flag was still viewed as a disappointment given just how close the woking squad were to Red Bull just a few months prior the first proper of Promise came two rounds later where Max brought a bomb on board which wiped him out of the race in Australia and Ferrari picked up the pieces with a one-w Down Under right behind them with the McLaren pair of Norris and piastri beating out the second Red Bull of Perez who was meant to be picking up the pieces but instead was falling back into Old Habits Norris would then go one better in China this time being best of the rest behind the stappen AL while the team expected to be a laughing stalk due to the nature of the Shanghai circuit we won’t mention pastri here as he became the silent victim to the Canadian s of Hamas Aston Martin that brings us to Miami then another track with lots of low speed Corners which the McLarens look forward to about as much as one looked forward to a circumcision the light at the end of the tunnel lied with Lando’s car however the team able to get one set of their rimar upgrades ready ahead of schedule and while Zack Brown was referring to this as an almost BP car he was still cautious of expectations Reckoning the team would need to double their advantage if they wanted to come anywhere close to the stappen and Red Bull but as the cars began to hit the track Norris and piastri performed better than expected particularly evident in Friday’s Sprint qualifying when Norris looked the class of the field on the medium Tire when the field was forced onto softs for the top 10 shoot out however the Britain’s rear end decided to join half the country and just go on strike granted everyone was struggling but McLaren’s Advantage disappeared in the space of 10 minutes having to settle for sixth and Ninth on the grid a particularly precarious situation when we remember that L stroll was seventh sure enough norz found himself a victim of the Canadian down at turn won and well yes I know it probably wasn’t all strolls fault it’s not like I can offend anyone by saying it was with no idea over how they almost Beast back McLaren would Faire in the race we turned to Grand Prix qualifying which saw the McLaren do slightly better than the day before and line up fifth and sixth much further away from strolling 11th piastri up making the better start capitalizing from Perez near the ending his career in vapens diffuser to move up into thirds and at this point the McLaren’s Pace really began to surprise people first the Aussie got past for second next thing we know the 81 cars pace is ringing alarm Bells at Red Bull who asked for Sten to try a tiny bit harder just to sustain the Gap this potentially played a role in the Dutchman’s mistake on lap 21 the murdered Ballard causing a pretty inconsequential VSC for the leaders though little did we know that a handful of laps later things would get really interesting just after everyone besides Norris came into the pits Kevin Magnuson killed Sergeant to bring out a full safety car it was of course this safety car that allowed Norris to jump the Red Bull and take his madeen win could he have won it without this though well if we look at the car’s pure Pace then we can see that Norris was the class of the field once he got into the lead running at a pace that even ven was able to match on his more worn hard tires the Dutchman had already had a falling out with even prior to the yellows Norris was lapping very competitively but he was running behind both Red Bulls Ferraris and his teammate given it was impossible to be overtaken around Miami unless your name is Daniel Ricardo there’s no way Lando would have been able to fight his way through to Victory on on top of that Rebel have since claimed that upon inspection of a sten’s car they found evidence of flaw damage from the Ballard earlier in the race while this would explain Max’s struggles late on the Dutchman strangely decide to refute the excuse claiming that Lando would have been quicker regardless now whether he’s being nice here or not the promising fact is that we likely still haven’t seen the true pace of the papaya upgrades in 2024 just yet as I said before the Miami circuit wasn’t best suited to their car which refers the high-speed corners and Donald Trump apparently we’ll see a slightly better rep presentation of that pace kamima and so with that I POS the question in this video’s title have we finally got a title battle on our hands well the short and frankly boring answer which you’ve probably already spammed into the comments is it’s way way too early to tell there’s also a 53p gap between the staff and Norris in the standings and the rb20 which seems to be quick no matter where you put it will likely still Prevail over the much more picky McLaren but if we revisit that cycle of pain I mentioned right at the start of this video the team’s resurgence has finally come at a point early enough in the season to make a significant difference in Norris and piastri you have arguably one of the strongest pairings on the grid and if they can keep going from strength to strength in 2024 there’s a real chance they could start to catch up to the dominant Dutchman in P1 and even if they don’t if czecho decides he wants to be mid again from round seven onwards the more consistent McLaren could pose a more serious threat to the constructor’s table really we’ll have to wait and see until the covers come off in IMA and even then we won’t get a proper picture until like mid-season but you know what I’ve got a good feeling now about this year I had a good feeling about Daniel Ricardo a few years ago but hear me out that the Sapp and domination we predicted after bar might not quite be as dominant as we all thought I appreciate that I’m jumping the gun incredibly early on this one but I’m curious to know your thoughts on this down in the comments below could we have a title battle on our hands in 2024 and could it be McLaren they finally able to challenge at the front after so many years of false Dawns if you enjoyed the video be sure to drop it a like and get subscribed for more in the future and a big thank you to all my patrons and channel members as well for all of your continued support if you’d like to get involved in that and get some of my videos early then you can head down to the links in the description down below now I’ll be back very soon with another video but until then have a good one [Music] [Music]