My name is Jethro Michaelson, and I have loved fast machines for as long as I can remember. For most of my life, that meant road cars, but in the summer of 2022, I found something new.

I had known of Formula One for a long time. However, after binging all of Formula 1: Drive to Survive, I was converted. I knew that the show drastically overdramatized the sport, even fabricating rivalries and storylines. It did, however, portray the legendary 2021 season well and showed me the peak of modern Formula One, with the incredible battle between Mercedes’ seven-time driver’s champion Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull’s superhuman Max Verstappen. Verstappen eventually won after a very controversial finale, but that’s not what this article is about.

This article is about an even greater season. It’s about the single greatest season since 2012, where there were a total of eight different winners. But first, we need to look back to 2023.

Max Verstappen won the opening race in Bahrain eleven seconds ahead of his Red Bull teammate, Sergio Perez, and 38 seconds ahead of Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, who wasn’t predicted to finish that high, and would go on to be the underdog of the season, dragging that car to places it didn’t belong.

Red Bull would go on to win every single race but one that season. Perez won two at the start of the season (Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan), but when he hit the wall on his first lap of qualifying in Sainte-Devote, his confidence and skill would be left there. He would only reach the top ten in qualifying 13 out of 22 times, just five more times than Nico Hulkenberg, who drove for the team that finished last in the constructor’s championship that season.

Verstappen, on the other hand, couldn’t have been further from Perez. He won every single race except for three. In the second race in Saudi Arabia, he had a transmission issue in qualifying that caused him to start down in 15th but he pulled off an incredible drive to recover to 2nd. In Azerbaijan, Verstappen would start second, but would only finish second after Red Bull messed up his pit strategy. That third race, Singapore, however, would easily be the most entertaining race of the season.

All the teams behind Red Bull had been extremely close the entire season, with Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, and even Aston Martin in the hunt for second in the championship. During practice all season, Red Bull had often set worse times compared to other teams. So when Red Bull were around the middle of the field during practice, they were still the favorites to win.

In qualifying, however, Verstappen would be knocked out of the top 10 by Liam Lawson, a Red Bull backed driver deputizing for the injured Daniel Ricciardo on Red Bull’s junior team: AlphaTauri. This made Lawson the best qualifying Red Bull backed driver at Singapore that year in only his third race in Formula One, with Verstappen starting 11th, Perez starting 13th, and his AlphaTauri teammate Yuki Tsunoda starting down in 15th.

Up front, meanwhile, Carlos Sainz would take his second consecutive pole position ahead of George Russell and his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc.

At the start of the race, Sainz’s teammate Leclerc would pass Russell and make it a Ferrari 1-2. However, that 1-2 was lost after a safety car came out causing most of the field to pit, and Leclerc had to slow down in the pit lane so that Sainz could get his stop done. Leclerc then had to wait even longer for traffic to pass so he could come out.

However, when Esteban Ocon’s Alpine broke down on lap 43/62, a virtual safety car was triggered and the two Mercedes of Hamilton and Russell pitted for fresh tires. The two Mercedes were much faster than Leclerc, McLaren’s Lando Norris, and Sainz. Eventually, on the last lap, there was an incredible four-way fight for the win. However, at turn 10, Russell clipped the wall and careened into the barrier. He had a very good chance to win the race, and a small mistake cost him a top-three finish.

The rest of the season would be much the same as before Singapore, with Verstappen winning everything, and that incredible race being nothing but a blip. Little did we know, however, that race would be the teaser for the incredible season we’ve had in 2024.

On February 1, 2024, Lewis Hamilton announced that he would be leaving Mercedes, the team he’d won seven constructor’s and six driver’s championships for, and going to Ferrari in 2025. This kicks Sainz out, kicking off an incredible “silly season” (drivers joining new teams or renegotiating with their current teams).

Verstappen won the opening round in Bahrain by 22 seconds, in another Red Bull 1-2 finish. However, come Australia, Verstappen’s brake went on strike and exploded in the early laps, giving Sainz the win just after he had missed the previous round due to appendicitis. Verstappen would win a couple more races, then Lando Norris would claim his maiden win in Miami thanks to a well timed safety car. Verstappen would win again in Emilia-Romagna, with Lando close behind.

In the crowning jewel of Formula One, the streets of Monaco, home hero Charles Leclerc would finally win his home race, after four times trying and four times failing. Verstappen would win an incredible, extremely rainy Canadian Grand Prix, and then win a boring Spanish Grand Prix.

In the Austrian Alps, Red Bull were looking the favorites by far to win their home race. Verstappen got pole and led the majority of the race comfortably. However, a slow pitstop spat him out close to Lando Norris, and on lap 64, the pair came together, and both sustained damage forcing both of them to pit, and for Norris to retire from the race. Mercedes’ George Russell, who was third when the incident occurred, assumed the lead and proceeded to win the race, Mercedes’ first victory since Brazil 2022.

The next round in the UK saw an incredible race, with Lewis Hamilton winning his home Grand Prix, in an “I’m not crying, you’re crying” moment rivaled only by Leclerc’s own home win. This was also Lewis Hamilton’s first win since almost three years ago at Saudi Arabia 2021.

In the following race in Hungary, Lando Norris would take pole, but at the start, his teammate Oscar Piastri would get a good launch, along with Max Verstappen. They went three wide into turn 1, with Verstappen running off the road and Piastri taking the lead. McLaren gave Norris the preferential strategy, pitting him before Piastri. McLaren seemingly just changed their minds and started telling Lando to let Oscar pass. The team literally told him “We’d like to reestablish the order at your convenience”. They also told him to manage his tires practically everywhere on the track, trying to get him to slow down.

They eventually resorted to guilt-tripping Norris, saying things such as “I know you’ll do the right thing”, and “The way to win a championship is not by yourself, it’s with the team. You’re gonna need Oscar, and you’re gonna need the team”. Lando let Oscar by with just three laps to go. It overshadowed Oscar’s incredible inaugural grand prix victory. If McLaren had just pitted Oscar first, there would have been no issue. McLaren’s indecisiveness led them to somehow ruin a 1-2 finish.

In Belgium, George Russell did a bold one stop strategy while everyone else made two pit stops. He crossed the line first and got an incredible second win of the season. However, he was disqualified after his car was 3.3lbs underweight, giving his teammate Lewis Hamilton the win.

The summer break followed Belgium, and at the next race in the Netherlands, many (including myself) predicted that Verstappen would win a race for the first time in over two months. However, Norris would dominate and claim only his second victory by 22 seconds.

In Italy, the home of Scuderia Ferrari, Charles Leclerc pulled off an incredible one-stop strategy similar to Russell’s in Belgium. However, Leclerc’s car wasn’t underweight, and he got Ferrari’s first home win since 2019 (which he coincidentally also won).

Finally, this is being written a couple days after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Oscar Piastri got his second grand prix victory, this one truly on pure pace, and a well-deserved win. This also pulls McLaren to the top of the constructor’s standings.

Even though Max Verstappen will still win the driver’s championship this year, there is a fight for the constructor’s championship. The fact that all the teams are just so close to each other will truly put the 75th Formula One World Championship in the history books as one of the greatest seasons of the century.