Importance of track position in 2024: performance converges and overtaking is once again difficult. Encountering difficulties in overtaking even in Belgium is an alarm bell.

Performance converges, and overtaking disappears.

“We underestimated the difficulty of overtaking.” In Hungary, these statements were made by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, and in Belgium, McLaren’s top man Andrea Stella reiterated the same concept. In Budapest, Verstappen, with fresher tires, followed behind Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes in two stints, and the same happened to Lando Norris at Spa in his vain pursuit of Max Verstappen. Red Bull and McLaren are the best cars on the grid—based on the standings—but that wasn’t enough to overcome their opponents.

Budapest and Spa-Francorchamps are two completely different circuits, but encountering difficulties in overtaking even in Belgium is an alarm bell—or a fact that must be fully acknowledged—regarding the convergence of performance due to the flattening of the learning and development curves of the regulations introduced in 2022. This is contradicting what F1 governance intended to achieve with the return of ground effect. The goal was to make on-track battles easier, and indeed, at the start of 2022, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc crossed paths practically every Sunday. But after two years, being in dirty air now proves to be detrimental and often crucial in making overtaking, if not outright impossible, at least very complicated unless you have a significant performance advantage in car or tires.

Andrea Stella emphasized this while analyzing the end of the Belgian GP: “Even though Hamilton had much fresher tires, the dirty air prevented him from seriously pressuring Russell,” said the McLaren team principal. F1 is experiencing an exciting historical moment, as Ferrari’s top man Frederic Vasseur highlighted—”four teams within ten seconds without VSC or SC is something special for the championship”—and this is objectively true. In 2024, seven drivers and four different teams have already won, and it’s very difficult to predict the outcome of a race weekend accurately.

The Spa race, overtakes or not, was very thrilling. Reducing the DRS zone on the Kemmel straight by 75 meters might have excessively penalized overtaking, but it’s clear that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find the right balance between facilitating overtaking or excessively penalizing those who need to defend. Qualifying and track position are becoming decisive again in F1, and the team ‘captains’ are the first to realize it. The execution of the weekend, starting from the choice of tires to use in free practice—Red Bull regretted using a set of hard tires at the start of FP1—in a scenario where balance reigns and overtaking becomes more and more difficult, will make the difference from Zandvoort to Abu Dhabi. Max Verstappen’s lead over Lando Norris (78 points) is comfortable in the Drivers’ standings, but the Constructors’ title is wide open, with McLaren and Ferrari not so far behind a Red Bull that hasn’t won in four races—a drought Verstappen hasn’t experienced since 2020—and that will need to find that qualifying edge again (Max Verstappen took the first seven poles in 2024) to bolster their hopes of defending both titles, as in the race, it might be enough to ‘park the bus’ by exploiting track position.