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The 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix was a red-letter day for McLaren. Oscar won the race in Baku, and Lando put in a sensational drive to rise from P15 on the grid to P4 at the flag. The bigger story, however, was that the team now led the Constructors’ Championship.

A 115-point deficit after six rounds had been turned into a 20-point advantage after 17. It was the first time the team had led the Championship in a little over a decade. By now, you should all know how that ended. What we want to know, is whether that changed the team’s approach to strategy?

From the impact of challenging for the title, to the amount of overtakes, the number of pit stops and everything in between… with the help of FxPro, we’ve looked back on the strategy trends from the 2024 season…

Play the ball, not the man

Being in a Championship battle didn’t actually have a significant impact on race strategy. Certainly, up to and including the Qatar Grand Prix, the objective was to maximise the number of points the team brought home, rather than trying to cover Ferrari. In many seasons, those aims would be one-and-the-same, but in 2024, with four teams regularly winning races, they diverged significantly.

What did have an impact, however, was the competitive position. After the first round of upgrades in May, the MCL38 was a genuine contender. It had the one-lap pace to challenge for Pole position, and strong long-run performance that frequently allowed it to go faster, or go longer than the competition. At some races, that sort of performance doesn’t move the dial on the strategy choices, but at others, it introduces flexibility or extra options. Looking back, we can see what some of those were.

The caveats

It is, of course, very difficult to compare seasons like-for-like. This year, we had the longest calendar in F1’s history, with 24 races, up from 22 the previous season. The Chinese Grand Prix reappeared on the calendar after a four-year absence, and Imola made a welcome return after the race in 2023 was cancelled. Even comparing the 22 races that were carried over is fraught, given variables in weather, climate, tyre allocations, the provision of a Sprint, and even the number of Safety Cars. It is, however, a large enough sample to see some trends appearing…

Overtaking was more difficult

Consensus among the drivers – from all teams – was that it was noticeably more difficult to overtake in 2024. The stats agree with the perception. The 22 races of 2023 saw 801 successful overtaking moves (excluding first lap passes). Those same 22 races in 2024 saw 721 – a drop of 11 per cent. For the individual races, there are all sorts of reasons, but the holistic trend is the usual double-whammy of more mature cars generating more downforce and greater wake-turbulence, paired with that same maturity tightening the field with smaller performance gaps between the 10 teams. To put it another way, a greater pace advantage was required to make a successful move, in a season where the pace differentials grew smaller.

There were fewer pit stops

This tallies with a drop in the number of overtaking moves. 2023 saw 803, versus 726 across those same 22 races in 2024. The more difficult it is to execute an overtaking manoeuvre, the less likely teams are to add an extra stop. Typically, in 2024, it wasn’t enough for a multi-stop strategy to be quicker on paper, it had to be at least six or seven seconds quicker to be considered worth the inherent risks – even on tracks with a pronounced race bias where overtaking was classed as ‘easy’.

Stronger Qualifying

Prior to the Miami upgrade, the MCL38 was in a similar position to the MCL60 that finished 2023: a solidly scoring car and a decent prospect for podiums, but perhaps not an obvious candidate for victory. After five rounds, the team was a solid third in the Constructors’ Championship, 99 points behind Championship leader Red Bull Racing, and 55 points behind Ferrari. Lando took his maiden victory in Miami, the first of six the team took across the season – but the upgrade also improved the single-lap pace of the car, which would go on to have 15 front row starts. By the end of the year, the improvement over the previous year was clear: in 2023, Lando’s average starting position was P8, and Oscar’s P10. In 2024, those rose to P4 and P5 respectively.

‘Insurance’ sets became popular

‘Insurance’ sets of Hard or Medium tyres became a regular feature of projected one-stop races, once the car was established as a front-runner. Of the regular (i.e. non-Sprint) weekends, the only places where the team went into Qualifying with five sets of Soft tyres were Monaco, Singapore and Barcelona, all of which see the Soft used as a race tyre.

Elsewhere, the extra set (Mediums for Imola, Zandvoort, and Mexico. Hards at the other non-Sprint races) provided cover against an ill-timed Safety Car or Red Flag, or simply against degradation being higher than expected. It could be seen as a luxury, but one that has the potential to decide a non-linear race – though only for a team confident in their ability to navigate their way through Qualifying with fewer sets of Soft tyres – or manufacture a good recovery drive on the occasions things go wrong.

Second attempts in Q3 were common

The target in the early stages of Qualifying became maximising the drivers’ chances of a front row start, by attempting to ensure they had two new sets of Soft tyres available in Q3. This required the cars to progress though the first two segments of Qualifying using only two sets of tyres.

This wasn’t always possible, and had an element of risk attached when it was, especially on circuits with high track evolution. The ideal situation would be to do a single run early in each of Q1 and Q2, good enough to proceed. The more realistic alternative was to go out again at the end of the sessions, reusing the original set of tyres, in the expectation that the gains from track evolution, would outweigh the losses from used rubber. The risks inherent in this approach were highlighted in Mexico, with Oscar eliminated in Q1, two-tenths out on his used set. However, we have to go back to 1999 to find a season when the team had more Poles, proving that the strategy bore fruit. 

Fastest on paper, but not through the speed trap

The team’s choices meant the cars were rarely at the top of the list through the speed traps: Lando, on his way to victory, was the slowest through the trap in Singapore – though this may have something to do with having very few opportunities to use DRS. A better example might be Oscar in Baku, winning the race despite being the 18th quickest car over the start-finish line at the end of the 2km main straight.

Go long

The combination of track position and better tyre life saw the team undercut less and go long more often in 2024, fulfilling the twin aims of covering-off their rivals and having shorter subsequent stints for a tyre advantage later in the race. Looking at the races after the summer break, the McLarens usually made their stops after like-for-like rivals.

Oscar was the final car of the lead group to make a first stop in Zandvoort, Singapore and Austin. Meanwhile Lando’s victories in the Netherlands, Singapore and Abu Dhabi all saw him pit from the lead a lap after his closest rival, and retain track position (at Zandvoort, he did briefly surrender the lead of the race, but to Oscar).

Overtaking

The two drivers have contrasting overtaking stats for 2024. In the 22 comparable races, Oscar did more overtaking than in 2023, rising from 41 successful passes to 50. Lando went the other way, dropping from 46 to 31. Going long, however, saw both making more genuine passes of rivals for position – six of Lando’s successful passes were on Max Verstappen – as opposed to making their way through long running midfielders as a result of an undercut.

Oscar’s numbers show perhaps the more accurate picture of the MCL38’s pace. The statistics become distorted as the cars run closer to the front of the field: Lando, who qualified higher on more occasions, had fewer opportunities to overtake by virtue of starting higher-up the field. He also led 271 laps, compared to Oscar’s 123 – and you can’t overtake anybody if you’re in front. Lando’s four victories, in Miami, the Netherlands, Singapore and Abu Dhabi featured just one overtaking move between them, and all involved going longer than the competition.

Everything changes again…

In 2023, a strong season saw us finish the Championship fourth with nine podiums. 2024 was a step forward from that, but perhaps a more subtle step than winning the Constructors’ Championship would imply. The top of the F1 field is tight and competition is ferocious. Getting upgrades out earlier, having a little more confidence in the car and the strategy, and being prepared to take a little more risk are the fine margins with which a successful campaign is fought. In technical terms, very little is changing for 2025, but the field will have different strengths and weaknesses. Changing driver line-ups will produce different pressure points and strategies will inevitably change. Our Strategy team in 2024 piloted our course to a first Constructors’ Championship in 26 years. We start again from zero in 2025.

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