With the 2024 Formula one season less than a week away, we thought it was a good time to have a look back at everything that happened during the off season.

Finlay McSporran
Published: 17:30, 25 Feb 2024

The winter break is usually the most forgettable part on the F1 calendar however this year provided us with plenty of drama that included driver transfers, new teams and even a new track!

Guenther’s Gone

Formula one team principle and star of Netflix ‘Drive to Survive’ Guenther Steiner was sacked by Haas at the start of January after a pretty disappointing season for the American outfit.

Steiner had been there since the very start in 2016 where they finished 8th in the standings, not bad for a new team. This momentum would continue for the next few years with the team finishing 5th in the standings in 2018 with 93 points.

However they failed to keep up this momentum, falling further and further down the order until team owner Gene Haas decided to sack Steiner after finishing 10th in the standings last year with just 12 points to their name.

Former director of engineering at Haas, Ayao Komatsu replaced Steiner as team principle.

F1 in Madrid

At the end of January it was announced that the city of Madrid would play host to the Spanish grand prix from 2026 onwards.

The new circuit will be a mix of permanent race track and existing roads around the IFEMA exhibition centre, with a contract to host the Spanish grand prix until 2035.

Andretti F1 Bid Blocked

Michael Andretti, son of F1 world champion Mario Andretti, is a well established character in motorsport, owning teams in series like IndyCar and Formula E. Andretti has seen lots of success in these series and it seemed only a matter of time until they made it onto the F1 grid.

After being accepted by the FIA, all they needed now was to be be accepted by F1, however this didn’t happen. Despite Andretti setting up a wind tunnel and hiring 100+ staff for the operation, they were denied entry from Formula one management to the disappointment of many fans.

Despite this setback Andretti is pushing on with their development and hopes to be on the F1 grid for 2028.

Team Name Changes

While we’ve yet to see a new team on the grid we did at least get to witness two teams change names however they were disappointing to say the least.

The first of these teams were Sauber. The Swiss team had ran by the name of Alfa Romeo for the past few years, the Italian manufacturer paying for the naming rights over the team. However it was announced that the naming rights had went to online gambling website ‘Stake’, giving us the ridiculous name of Stake F1 team.

However this wasn’t the worst team name as detailed in one of our previous articles.

That award went to Redbulls second team. Formerly known as Toro Rosso, then Alpha Tauri and now Visa Cash app RB. The greed and lack passion behind this change makes the Andretti rejection even more painful as we were denied a passionate, well-respected team and forced to watch a team that lets the highest bidder decide the name.

Hamilton in Red

It looked like the 2024 transfer season was going to be pretty average when it was announced that Lando Norris would be staying at McLaren and Charles Leclerc staying at Ferrari.

However on the 4th of February we got to witness possibly the biggest transfer in Formula ones history, as it was announced that Lewis Hamilton would be leaving Mercedes to join Ferrari next year.

Leaving Mercedes was no easy task for Lewis however, having won 6 driver and 8 constructor championships with the team he called this the “hardest decision he’s ever made”.

Having the most successful driver at F1’s most successful team is no joke, and this change will hopefully bring Ferrari back to their glory days of the early 2000s.

With the 2024 F1 season just days away be sure to follow us on Instagram @bloggp_8 and sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with all the latest F1 news throughout 2024.