2024 Qatar GP

Eventful Race Sees George Finish P4 With Lewis P12

George finished an eventful race in Qatar in fourth place, Lewis P12.

The penultimate Grand Prix of the 2024 Formula One season took the team to the Lusail International Circuit in Qatar. In an incident-filled race under the Qatari floodlights, George finished in P4 while Lewis finished in P12.

George started the race from pole position after a grid penalty for Max Verstappen moved him up to P1, with Lewis starting from P6. Both drivers were on the dirtier side and lost places at the start: George in P3, Lewis in P9.

Soon after, the safety car came out for the first time after several incidents on the first lap. There were many more incidents throughout the race, leading to more safety car periods. In the end, George crossed the line in fourth place; a subsequent 5-second time penalty for a delta time infringement during the final SC period did not affect his position.

Lewis was unlucky during the race, suffering a puncture and a drive-through penalty for exceeding the pit lane speed limit.

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix takes place next week, when the Yas Marina Circuit hosts the final race of the 2024 F1 season.

Lewis Hamilton

It was a pretty bad race for me overall, but these things happen. It started off badly with my false start which was my fault and resulted in a penalty which I served during my stop. Then I had the puncture which was just unfortunate, followed by the pitlane speeding which was on me, too. The car had a lot of understeer today because we didn’t have enough front wing in the setup. I gave it my best shot, but it all seemed to go downhill from the start.

This race weekend hasn’t been great but we have another week next week where we can try and finish a bit better and I hope we do have a better result. These last races don’t have an impact on all of the great things we have done together as a Team. Races are a rollercoaster ride of emotions, I’ve had great races in my life and bad races too. Ultimately, it’s not how you fall it’s how you get back up and we will try again next week.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

That was a difficult evening for the team. The underlying picture was that the car balance was very different to yesterday’s Sprint – and both drivers were limited with severe understeer in the opening stint, and lacking pace relative to the cars around us. However, we made too many other errors to earn strong finishing positions, and we were ultimately fortunate to salvage P4 with George thanks to retirements or problems for cars ahead of him.

It’s a valuable lesson in how quickly things can turn from a week ago in Las Vegas, and we have seen these kinds of performance oscillations for all teams at various points this season. There’s plenty for us to learn in order to improve, and we will be focused on doing so as we prepare for the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi – and what we hope will be a fitting farewell for Lewis.

2024 Qatar GP Result