Magnificent seven – A look at F1’s most competitive season since 2012

Oscar Piastri’s Hungarian Grand Prix victory made him the seventh different race winner in 2024, the most in a Formula One season since 2012.

Here, the PA news agency takes a look at the most competitive campaign in over a decade.

Magnificent seven

Max Verstappen, the dominant force in recent F1 seasons, looked set to power away once more when he put himself on pole position for the first seven races and won four of the first five.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz interrupted that run in Australia and McLaren’s Lando Norris earned his maiden grand prix win in Miami. Sainz’s team-mate Charles Leclerc became the first Monegasque winner of the Monaco Grand Prix since 1931, with Verstappen’s early-season form extending to seven wins out of 10 by the time the Spanish Grand Prix was complete.

Since then there have been three new names added to the list in successive races. George Russell won in Austria before Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton earned his first win in nearly three years and his ninth at the British Grand Prix.

Hungary saw Piastri become the 115th different winner in Formula One history and the fifth Australian, after Jack Brabham, Alan Jones, Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo. Norris was second and Hamilton third, his 200th F1 podium finish.

Piastri’s win came after Norris was ordered by his team to give the place back to the early race leader, despite his own pursuit of the driver’s title.

Verstappen has led the championship throughout but, whereas last season he finished with over twice as many points as team-mate and runner-up Sergio Perez, 575 to 285, this year his lead stands at 76 over Norris, having peaked at 84 after the British Grand Prix.

Perez was the nearest challenger through the first six races before the rest of the field caught up to Red Bull’s mechanical wizardry, with Leclerc briefly second in the standings before Norris came to the fore.

Wide open

Back in 2012 there were seven different winners in as many races to begin the season, starting with McLaren’s Jenson Button in Australia. Fernando Alonso won for Ferrari in Malaysia and Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg topped the podium in China.

Eventual champion Sebastian Vettel got in the win column for the first time in the fourth race in Bahrain. Red Bull team-mate Webber won the sixth at Monaco, the pair sandwiching the only win of Williams driver Pastor Maldonado’s career.

Hamilton, then driving alongside Button for McLaren, added his name to the list in Canada before Alonso and Webber became the first repeat winners. Kimi Raikkonen, in a Lotus, was the eighth different winner at round 18 in Abu Dhabi – his first win since 2009 and Lotus’ first since Ayrton Senna in 1987 in Detroit.

Vettel ended the season with five wins to Hamilton’s four, with three apiece for Button and Alonso. Webber won twice with a solitary win each for Rosberg, Maldonado and Raikkonen.

Vettel held off the consistent Alonso, who had 13 podium finishes including the last five races, by just three points to win the title.