In the explosive Formula One 2024 season, hardly any fight had been as grueling, divisive, volatile, and unforgettable as the Las Vegas Grand Prix. With a World Championship within reach, Ferrari took on McLaren and RedBull from both ends while also contending with an internal fallout between its two drivers at a crucial turning point between the laps.
As the 2025 season now prepares to launch its 24 drivers on race tracks across the globe, fans now wait for a Drive to Survive recap of the previous season that was high on drama and had tempers flaring every which way. However, nothing can compare to the sensationalism of the showdown at Sin City which deserves a whole behind-the-scenes breakdown and analysis episode of its own.
One team to rule them all; One race to end them
Ferrari has been the living, breathing soul of Formula One since its conception in 1950. It is not surprising, then, to find the Maranello team being tangled up amid the high-voltage drama that defines every race in a single season. In the last decade, however, the team has risen from its slump with the help of Sebastien Vettel, Charles Leclerc, and Carlos Sainz Jr.
Since Ferrari’s last title win in 2008, no teammate rivalry has been as fascinating and addictive to watch as Leclerc and Sainz during their 4 years of racing together since 2021. Clashing constantly on the tracks just as much as setting friendship goals off the grid, the pair have brought in a new wave of Ferrari fans with their fierce, aggressive, and unforgiving competitiveness.
This competitive spirit shone through on the Las Vegas Street Circuit on 24th November 2024. The Sin City Grand Prix was exhilarating, shocking, and highly divisive – merely from Ferrari’s standpoint alone based on a bad pitstop call, a lack of clarity in communication between the two race engineers and their drivers, and Leclerc’s profuse barrage of swearing on radio at the end of the race that has now become legendary in its own right.
Ferrari PR works overtime to mend an inside rivalry
The Las Vegas Grand Prix started strong with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz turning up the heat against one another by the start of lap 8. By the end of lap 17, Sainz’s tires had begun to suffer from graining and it was becoming incredibly difficult for him to maintain pace against Hamilton and close the gap to Verstappen.
On lap 24, Sainz obeyed his team’s call to let Leclerc through and asked to make a pitstop for a change of tires. His race engineer, Riccardo Adami confirmed the pitstop over the radio, but soon, everything went horribly wrong.
At the end of lap 27, Sainz drastically reduced his speed from 317 kmph to 160 kmph to enter the pit lane, costing him over 3 seconds on the tracks. Adami, however, canceled the pit stop at the last second, claiming ‘stay out, stay out!’ as the pit crew “were not ready” yet for him. This maneuver alone helped hand his position over to Hamilton who went on to finish one place ahead of him in the race.
After the messy pit call, Sainz was told ‘not to put Charles under pressure’ by his race engineer while Leclerc’s race engineer Bryan Bozzi errantly informed the Monégasque driver that Sainz ‘wasn’t going to overtake him, but he was going to be very close’. The latter, as per his instructions, overtook Leclerc without putting him under pressure on the straights to secure a much-deserved and essential podium win.
This launched Leclerc into a fit of rage-induced swearing that echoed across the radio with him saying, “I’m done being nice.” Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur and the Head of Communications Silvia Frangipane Hoffer scrambled to do some damage control as fans began to agitate over the poor race management that led to Leclerc and Sainz’s post-race animosity.
In the aftermath of the LV GP, Ferrari’s PR flooded all social media channels with the drivers appearing together as a sign of their mended relationship. However, Hoffer’s compulsive need to fix the team’s public image led to many fans calling out Ferrari for not addressing the root cause of the whole fiasco, including a Reddit fan deriding the Head of Communications by saying:
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byu/Aboubakr_D_Luffy from discussion
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The 2024 season marked a turning point in Ferrari’s history with the Las Vegas Grand Prix being one of the most important races needed to secure the World Championship title. It also marked one of the final few races where Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz would race together in reds, with Lewis Hamilton taking over from Sainz as Leclerc’s teammate from the 2025 season.
Drive to Survive Season 7 premieres on 7 March 2025 and will document the 2024 Grand Prix.
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