We’re in the thick of an ever-shortening motorsport off-season, with the days ticking down until hostilities resume in February with testing and racing.
Formula 1 was dominated by Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing last season, but the title-winning combination will finally be challenged in a much closer 2023.
MotoGP is still recovering from a heart-stopping final-race title-decider, but Marc Márquez’s Ducati switch on year-old satellite machinery will ratchet up the stakes immensely this year.
And the Supercars is adjusting to a post-Shane van Gisbergen era in the second season of the Gen3 regulations.
Foxsports.com.au runs through its 24 predictions for 2024.
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FORMULA 1
1. Max Verstappen will win the title
Not exactly a bold opening gambit, but would you even consider any other driver in the frame after Verstappen’s record-breaking 2023 season?
The Dutchman is in perfect harmony with his Red Bull Racing team, and with a car that needs only evolution, not revolution, in 2024, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which he puts himself in a genuinely catchable position over a gruelling 24 grands prix and six sprints.
All that said, surely Verstappen and RBR can’t have things as easy as they did last year. They say records are made to be broken, but hope — pray — that the feats of 2023 aren’t repeated anytime soon.
2. McLaren will win multiple races
For long stretches at the end last season McLaren was comfortably Red Bull Racing’s closest challenger. In the six races between Singapore and São Paulo McLaren collected seven podiums and would have had an eighth had Lando Norris not botched qualifying in Mexico.
Norris even led United States Grand Prix and gave Verstappen a genuine run for his money in Brazil on Saturday and Sunday.
Double podiums in Japan and Qatar — plus Oscar Piastri’s breakthrough sprint win — were highlights.
McLaren’s development trajectory last year was extreme. It’s the only team other than Red Bull Racing that will take the same car concept into this season, meaning that trend could continue apace. Its new development infrastructure is fully online.
After a string of seconds, there’s only one step left to make.
3. Oscar Piastri will get his first victory
Oscar Piastri’s sprint win does not count as a victory. This cannot be stressed enough.
The Aussie’s breakout race win in Qatar was superb, as was his follow-up Sunday performance to finish a career-best second in the long race. But it doesn’t amount to a grand prix win, the only statistic that really counts after championships.
Right now Piastri’s CV features this blaring statistical anomaly. Luckily we likely won’t have to wait long for him to correct the record.
In a victory-contending McLaren car, we’re sure to see Piastri vie for his first genuine grand prix win.
He’ll have to overcome his race-pace weakness of 2023 and beat teammate Norris, but considering the Melburnian’s superb rate of development, the top step will be within his grasp in his sophomore campaign — and from there his career potential will only accelerate.
4. Ferrari will be Red Bull Racing’s closest challenger
Now we’re really getting bold.
In 2023 the team wedded itself to its flawed 2022 concept, but a midseason change of tack started delivering heartening results in the final months.
Before the end of the campaign Ferrari appeared to have a genuine understanding of its car — how it worked and how to set it up from track to track. Its late upgrade push proved it, delivering four podiums from the last five rounds along with three poles and five front-row starts.
The Italian team has the resource and the creativity to close the gap. Execution of course hasn’t always been a strong suit, but eventually the stars must align, and they’ll start moving into constellation this year.
5. Fernando Alonso will beat Lewis Hamilton to his next victory
No driver has won a grand prix after starting their 300th race. Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso are the 300 club’s only active members fighting against the curse.
Hamilton seemed sure to buck the trend with Mercedes in 2022, but a series of wallowing cars has left him with a win drought dating back to December 2021 and grim prospects.
Alonso hasn’t won since May 2013, the last time he had a winning car, but Aston Martin is suddenly on a clearer development path than Mercedes. It’s likely to start 2024 in a stronger position.
With a closer field — it could hardly be further apart than in 2023 — Alonso will need only a sniff to do what a year ago seemed grossly unlikely and take his fabled 33rd win.
6. Mercedes will slump to the end of its dominant era
This will be the year we stop talking about Mercedes as the champion in exile and start talking about the fallen German marque undertaking a rebuild.
Mercedes’s struggles in 2023 were alarming. At no stage over 23 races did it genuinely appear to understand its troubled car, the result of doubling down on 2022’s problematic machine.
James Allison, one of the architects of the team’s title run, was brought back in as tech boss, but the job of catching up to Red Bull Racing with effectively a two-year handicap and starting from zero is way too big a job to execute in one off-season.
And with new rules coming in 2026, Mercedes will be better off preparing to get the new rules right rather than chase the unreachable before then.
7. Fernando Alonso will race until he’s 45 years old
With 14 drivers out of contract next season, the silly season could be explosive.
Alonso will be a major cog. Aston Martin likely to be a frontrunner again, making this a sought-after seat, and the Spaniard’s willingness to commit to another deal that will take him past his 45th birthday will be central to the narrative.
But Alonso has said he feel no dimming of his determination, and he’s proved as much on track. Moreover, though he didn’t expect to be in podium contention when he joined Aston Martin as a project team, the potential prospect of race wins and maybe more over the horizon with the 2026 rules will be overpowering for F1’s most ferocious competitor.
Age will be no barrier to his contract talks, and he’ll sign on the dotted line for another two years.
8. Daniel Ricciardo will replace Sergio Pérez before the end of the year
The full glare of the spotlight will be trained on Sergio Pérez this year. If the field closes in on Red Bull Racing, the team can’t afford to have the Mexican score less than half Verstappen’s points if it’s to defend the constructors title.
Daniel Ricciardo has been brought into AlphaTauri — or whatever the team will be called this year — with the specific intention of replacing Pérez by 2025.
The Australian has shown the old race-winning Ricciardo is still in him, ready to be unleashed. A faster car this year will allow him to prove that unequivocally.
With Liam Lawson pushing for a seat at Faenza and Ricciardo pushing for a seat at Milton Keynes, Pérez will need to find a massive step to secure his seat.
That step will be beyond him. Typical Red Bull ruthlessness beckons.
9. F1 will pull the breakaway-threat card in negotiations with the FIA
Negotiations are ramping up over the next Concorde agreement, the deal that binds together F1 management, the FIA and the teams.
The Concorde document defines how the sport is governed, divvies up the political power and distributes the prize money. It’s hugely important, and it expires at the end of 2025.
But friction between F1 and the FIA is at almost unprecedented heights after a string of flashpoints instigated largely by governing body president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, including controversial commentary on the sport’s sale price, the admission of an 11th team, the organisation of race control and, most recently, a bizarre one-day investigation into unfounded allegations of impropriety against Toto and Susie Wolff.
In the past these sorts of rifts have inevitably led to someone — either F1 itself or a group of teams —playing the nuclear breakaway card, threatening to take the sport out of the FIA’s orbit by setting up a rival series.
Idle paddock chatter suggests tension is heading towards that level, and with F1 wanting this deal done before 2025, this could be the year the famous threat is made again.
10. A new era of terrible team names will dawn
American sport does sponsorship differently.
As just a few examples, next year’s IndyCar calendar features the snappily titled Bommarito Automotive Group 500 presented by Axalta and Valvoline, while NASCAR fans will probably be excited for the historic Go Bowling at the Glen or the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum.
Formula 1 has impressively avoided that sort of advertising oversaturation despite US company Liberty Media’s ownership.
But it might just be creeping in.
Sauber — formerly branded Alfa Romeo solely for sponsorship reasons — announced last month it would enter under the ludicrous name Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber, an unholy double nod to dual sponsors Stake and Kick. The team will be referred to as Stake this season.
There’s speculation AlphaTauri will also carry two American sponsor names in its anticipated rebrand as Racing Bulls.
For some teams the temptation to cash in is too great. And once the floodgates open, there’ll be no going back.
11. F1 will finally find a sprint format that works
Ask 10 different people what they think of sprint races and you’ll probably get as many different opinions.
Formula 1 is adamant that the inclusion of sprint races is the right way to go. The sport says TV ratings figures and online engagement makes it a no-brainer — not surprising given the alternative is more uncompetitive practice — but it’s so far yet to land on a format that delivers on an exciting 30-minute race without affecting the main event of the grand prix or muddling the weekend.
The format will change yet again this year. The prevalent rumour is that sprint qualifying and the sprint race will move to Friday afternoon and Saturday morning respectively. Grand prix qualifying will be returned to Saturday afternoon.
There’s also talk parc fermé rules will be dropped to allow for changes to the cars after the sprint race.
The final piece of the puzzle is to come up with a snappier qualifying format that isn’t just a watered-down version of what we already have.
The right mix feels very close, and the model applied this year might be it.
12. Complaints about the calendar will get louder
F1 is set for a record-breaking 24-race season in 2024. It will push the teams to breaking point.
For years the sport has nudged up the number of races. Each time the teams complain but ultimately do little to push back — after all, the additional hosting fees come back to them via prize money.
But 24 grands prix in 39 weekends — excluding the midseason break — is hitting up against the limit of human endurance for critical staff like mechanics and engineers, who earn unremarkable wages and will spend close to two full weeks crammed in economy class by the end of the campaign. More than half their year will be spend away from their families and friends.
Already at the end of last year there were complaints that the calendar was too gruelling. Even the drivers, who are the best looked after people in the paddock, were alarmed by the physical strain of back-to-back races in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi.
This year the season ends with a triple header spanning Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi — but expect calls for calendar rationalise to restart before then.
MOTOGP
13. Marc Márquez will win the championship
Everyone expected Marc Márquez to look good in the one-day post season test on his first Ducati, but no-one thought he’d look that good.
The smile said it all. For the first time since 2019, Márquez finally has a bike underneath him that can deliver him race victories. It is, after all, the bike that dominated last year’s championship.
In 2022 Enea Bastianini kept his year-old Gresini in title contention until the closing months. Marco Bezzecchi did the same with VR46 last season.
Márquez will be at least in victory contention this year — and when he’s in victory contention, the title almost always follows.
14. Honda will turn a corner with its troublesome bike
Márquez has left Honda because it appeared inconceivable that the basket case of a bike could be turned good by this year — even team boss Alberto Puig admitted as much.
Yet the bike it brought to the post-season test looked like a massive step forward — enough for Joan Mir to look and sound happier than he had been all last year.
Mir, the 2020 champion, was so badly beaten and bruised by the bike through 2022 that he considered retiring. It would have to have taken more than just a glimmer of hope to get him excited after a one-day test.
Márquez left Honda because he needed to win, but it might just be that it’s also what Honda needed to snap out of its funk.
15. Jack Miller will make the fight for his seat a genuine three-way contest
Jack Miller will be under immense pressure to keep his KTM seat in the last season of his two-year deal.
The Aussie’s inconsistent 2023 proved both what he can bring to the table and why management will be tempted to pull the trigger to replace him — he can be devastatingly fast and quick to adapt, but he’s also his own worst enemy.
In the wings is wunderkind Pedro Acosta at KTM satellite Gas Gas. Marc Márquez is also constantly linked to the Austrian brand via mutual sponsor Red Bull.
Miller will need some big results to keep himself in the fight against this star pair.
This year’s silly season is expected to move quickly. Luckily for Miller, he’s typically performed well early in the season. The opening six or so races are also at track he’s usually competitive at — he’s a winner in Spain and France and a podium-getter in the United States, as highlights.
It may not be enough to keep him at the factory team, but a big opening few months to the campaign will at least ensure him a 2025 seat.
16. Pedro Acosta will win a race in his first season
The hype around 19-year-old Moto3 and reigning Moto2 champion Pedro Acosta is immense — so much so that he was briefly a rider market player before KTM guaranteed him his premier-class promotion for 2024.
Many consider him the next Marc Márquez — no faint praise — and the parallels are clear.
Acosta stood on the podium in his first Moto3 race and won the next three grands prix on his way to a maiden title, bettering Márquez by two years.
He struggled in his maiden Moto2 campaign but then won his second at a canter, much like his older compatriot.
The circumstances of their MotoGP debut are dramatically different, with Márquez taking a factory Honda bike to the title. Acosta will start with minnow Gas Gas.
But the satellite KTM team won races only a few years ago and was good enough to power Augusto Fernández to a fourth place last season.
A rider of Acosta’s pedigree can and will bridge those four places.
17. Fabio Quartararo will blow up the rider market by leaving Yamaha
Fabio Quartararo spent 2023 looking constantly bitterly disappointed by Yamaha’s lack of progress. The Frenchman is out of contract this year and fast running out of patience.
Luckily for him, all but two riders — Brad Binder and Luca Marini — are also sitting on expiring deals.
In a wide-open market the title-winning 24-year-old will have massive negotiating leverage. Without a massive step up from Yamaha, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see him remaining in place — much like Márquez eventually decided to refresh his career in greener pastures.
He’s not the only big-name rider potentially on the move. Jorge Martin likes his Pramac team but is rankled by a lack of love from factory Ducati.
Marc Márquez is also on the market. He could end up shaking up the stable Ducati stable — Paolo Ciabatti isn’t ruling out a promotion to the factory team — or could cause chaos elsewhere. Potentially he could even return to Honda if he’s convinced of his old team’s progress.
With so many moving parts in the rider market, this year’s silly season is sure to be explosive.
18. Trackhouse will become MotoGP’s most valuable team
MotoGP’s newest team is arriving in the premier class making big promises — though they’re mostly off the track.
The former RNF satellite Aprilia squad has been bought by NASCAR disrupter Trackhouse Racing. The American brand has done much to inject some new life into the stockcar series with its approach to branding and media, most notably with its Project 91 entry bringing international stars to the largely domestic sport.
MotoGP, for all its strengths, could use a bit of American salesmanship to boost its profile, having tried and failed in recent years to capitalise on some tremendous championship storylines and big personalities.
RNF ended last season eighth in the championship. Trackhouse is unlikely to do much better. But its value to the sport will be significantly greater than fielding two bikes by the end of the year.
SUPERCARS
19. A Ford team will win the championship — but it won’t be DJR
Ford has won just three of the last 10 manufacturers titles, and a Ford-backed team hasn’t had a look-in at the teams title since Scott McLaughlin led DJR to the crown in 2020.
General Motors has had things all its own way since then via its Holden and now Chevrolet marques.
But Ford teams powered home late last season after the final set of parity changes. Cameron Waters, David Reynolds and Matt Payne split the last four wins between them in a sign the Blue Oval was finally getting a grip on Gen3.
Notably absent, however, was homologation team Dick Johnson Racing, which spent most of the year all at sea. It collected just four podiums all year, including just one victory.
This year Ford will carry through its momentum to regain the teams title — but it’ll be the other grandees — Tickford, Walkinshaw Andretti United and Grove — leading the championship charge.
Kostecki crowned driver’s driver of 2023 | 00:54
20. Cam Waters and Chaz Mostert will finally get their title chances
A Ford title is excellent news for Cameron Waters and Chaz Mostert, who will finally get a crack at the championship both so clearly deserve.
Waters has finished runner-up twice, albeit both times being fairly distant, while Mostert has a pair of third-place finishes.
But in 2024 both will at last find themselves in title-winning contention.
Tickford will be rejuvenated by its return to being a two-car set-up, allowing energies to be better focused. WAU, meanwhile, has a year as a Ford squad under the belt to launch from.
Richie Stanaway and Matt Payne will challenge for Grove, but Waters and Mostert have the experience to take the season in their hands and give us another title showdown.
21. No-one will mention parity
After a first Gen3 year dominated by parity controversy, the P word will be barely mentioned in 2024 thanks to the sport’s big spend on rectifying its problems in the United States and at home.
The Camaro and Mustang cars were sent to America over the off-season for wind tunnel testing, having been approved basely solely on straight-line runway analysis ahead of 2023. Transient dynamometer testing is also analysing the cars for powertrain disparity.
The result will be two car models that will be evenly matched this year, putting to bed complaints last season of an uneven playing field — and giving us a more competitive campaign up and down the grid.
22. Bathurst will be conquered by a new name
Just five of this year’s 24 drivers have stood on the top step of the sport’s most famous podium at Mount Panorama — a sign if ever you needed it of the ongoing changing of the guard between driver generations.
Brodie Kostecki, Broc Feeney, Will Brown, Thomas Randle, Matt Payne — among others — are the drivers who will dominate the top end of the sport for the next generation.
We came close last season to having a new driver tame the mountain. Feeney was running a competitive second late in the race before his transmission failure. Kostecki took a sizzling pole position but couldn’t convert on Sunday.
With Shane van Gisbergen out of the picture this year, however, and with the field equalising, a new name will be written into the sport’s most famous honour role for 2024, and you can bet they’ll come from the Supercars class of rising stars.
23. Triple Eight won’t miss Shane van Gisbergen
The upheaval at the Triple Eight team over recent years is complete with the departure of Shane van Gisbergen for the United States in 2024.
Team and driver are obviously interlinked, but SVG and T8 were hand in glove dominating the sport in 2021 and 2022, with only the Gen3 rule changes halting momentum.
This year the team will be spearheaded by young gun Broc Feeney in his third campaign and Will Brown in his fourth — a stark change from the usually more experienced line-ups fielded by Banyo.
But rather than suffer, Triple Eight will rapidly find its feet with its new-look line-up.
Feeney and Brown have proved much, particularly in 2023, when both vied for the championship. Feeney has long been considered the next big thing for the Supercars, while Brown has a title-winning history in other categories.
While SVG will be missed on a personal level, competitively Triple Eight won’t be left wanting, with Feeney and Brown charging towards their competitive peaks.
SVG shockingly crashes out on lap 1! | 01:54
24. Everyone will be taking a bigger interest in NASCAR in 2024
Following overseas sport is a commitment, particularly if it’s held in the daytime in the United States, with overnight hours and early mornings a requirement.
So you can expect bleary eyes in the Supercars paddock this year, with many sure to be following the excruciating 33-round second-tier NASCAR series more closely than usual to see how Van Gisbergen finds his feet.
SVG will undertake the full season in the feeder series along with at least seven races in the premier NASCAR Cup class with a view to moving up to the senior category full-time in 2025.
He sensationally won on debut in Chicago last year and finished 10th on his second outing in Indianapolis. Ovals remain a question mark, but few expect anything other than great things from the prodigious Kiwi.
And while he wasn’t to everyone’s taste in Supercars, overseas he’s sure to unite Australian and Kiwi audiences behind him.