Max Verstappen returns home as the defending champion and winner of all the Dutch Grands Prix organized in the millennium. But this is where it gets interesting. His ex-nemesis, Lewis Hamilton, has seen a sudden resurgence of his form. This means Hamilton returns to Verstappen’s home as a defending race winner. For context, Lewis Hamilton has won 2 of the last four races and Max has won zero. The competition in Formula 1 now is very tight, almost as if we have been transported back to 2012. 7 race winners in 14 races is a ridiculous amount of entertainment factor and something that we have all been waiting for more than a decade. With this momentum, we enter the 15th round of the 2024 Formula 1 championship. Here are the top two storylines you need to know about it.

Despite Max Verstappen’s lead, can Red Bull still keep both its hands on the championship?

Max Verstappen enters the weekend with a decently comfortable lead of 78 points and that too over Lando Norris who has only won one race this year. Max sits in a relaxed position as too many cooks are spoiling the broth of the championship race, meaning he doesn’t have one dominant competitor to shave points off his lead. The win keeps juggling between Ferrari, Mercedes, and McLaren drivers apart from Red Bull’s lone wolf Verstappen. This is both a boon and a bane for Milton Keynes. This helps Verstappen keep the lead in the championship. However, Sergio Perez’s questionable form now has put Red Bull’s crown in peril.

Sergio Perez scored a meager 20 points in the last six races as opposed to Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri’s 80 each. Last year, due to a dearth of a competitive grid, Max’s championship points alone were enough to bring home the constructor’s victory. But this year both drivers of the Big 4 (excluding Red Bull) have been scoring points on par with each other enough to give Christian Horner sleepless nights. Perez’s out-of-shape performance is the biggest reason for this looming threat over the Austrian team, but one person’s loss is another person’s gain. As McLaren CEO Zak Brown told the BBC, “It’s gonna come down to: How does Sergio Pérez perform? If he can perform as he’s capable of performing, it’s going to be a hard fight. If he continues to perform as he has this year, we have a pretty good chance.” Despite Verstappen’s 4 score worth of lead, Red Bull’s lead in the championship is only 2 scores. Their closest competitor, McLaren, is fast approaching the top spot in the tally, but there is a catch.

Mercedes may unknowingly help Max Verstappen and Red Bull in the catfight

Is Mercedes helping Red Bull? Are we in a parallel universe? Apparently not. We are in the same one where Toto Wolff began openly flirting with the idea of Max Verstappen’s Mercedes move. While that was a well-thought-out strategic move, Toto Wolff’s pack helping their old rivals may happen as a byproduct of their sudden resurgence. George Russell told the media that Mercedes’ updates are something to watch out for. Mercedes introduced a new floor but took it off for meaningful events in Belgium. He said, “I’ve got no doubt in Zandvoort we’ll be returning to the new aero package and getting the car in a slightly different window mechanically.”

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, explained that Mercedes has found it different in the hotter events. He said, “In Austria and Budapest, we lacked stability, but that’s all down to the fact that we seem to be putting more temperature in the tires than the others, so we know we need to work in that area. We’ve got plans to do that, but that’s not the sort of problem you can fix with a single Aero update. It’ll be the result of quite a few developments. And hopefully, the net result of that is that we can compete with the likes of McLaren, the likes of Max [Verstappen] on the hot circuits.” 

While these developments look promising for Mercedes, they will be shaving points off of McLaren. The former has won three of the last four races and appears in hot pursuit of more. With McLaren and Mercedes fighting with each other, there are chances of a Red Bull clean sweep at the top. What are your predictions for the second half of the season?