Hey folks, Dre here! Now that all of the major Motorsport series are finished for the season, as well as Formula E, I’m about to do something I’ve never done before on Motorsport101 – I’m going to reveal the inner workings of my mind, and reveal my full M101 Awards ballot!
This is the ninth M101 Awards we’ve done here on the channel, and I want as many of you to get involved as possible! So to help push things along, or give you a helping hand, here’s my ballot! If you want to get involved and vote for the best and worst in Motorsport in 2024, you can do so at the link below. Remember, you have until this Sunday, December 15th 2024 to get your ballots in. But PLEASE, one per person, this IS a democracy here.
Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScIN-Z2C6H3qz3DFOoeCHPN73_qExwtdY_DzJ-C2JOYniTLwA/viewform…
Race of the Year – The 2024 Indianapolis 500
Kind of wins this one by default as it was the only 10/10 score I’ve given for a major series race in 2024. Officially. I don’t normally review Sportscars, but if I did, I would’ve considered the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona this year over in IMSA. I watched a large chunk of this year’s race and the fight between the GTPs of Porsche with Dane Cameron, Matt Campbell, Felipe Nasr and Josef Newgarden vs the Caddy of Jack Aitken, Pipo Derani and Tom Blomqvist, and 23 hours and 58 minutes of racing where for about 16 of them, these two were at loggerheads. The final fight in the last hour between Nasr and Blomqvist and the Schumacher/Hakkinen Spa move was incredible racing. The only thing missing was the Race Driver: Grid soundtrack being played over the top.
I went for the Indy 500 to stay true to the Podcast, and the fact it was a very different 500. An especially aggressive race with what many thought was a race against the sunset after a three-hour rain delay. It forced the drivers to turn up the wick earlier, and it made for even more thrilling racing than usual and not the filler that comes with the first 150 laps of the average 500. And the final fight there between Josef Newgarden and Pato O’Ward, the modern-day oval rivalry for IndyCar, was incredible. Has there been a better 500-winning pass?
Golden Melon Award for Best Overtake – Pecco Bagnaia at Jerez
It was a tough category this year. Alex Albon threading the needle in the wet in Montreal was a strong runner-up spot for me here. But I had to go with the massively under-appreciated Pecco Bagnaia double divebomb at Jerez into Pedrosa corner, passing Jorge Martin and Marco Bezzecchi.
Dre….Overtake of the year pic.twitter.com/rAG9g9kK2E
— Kevin (@DeKevinWalsh) December 10, 2024
This was insane. To pass two bikes under braking, with the aero wash we have now, around the outside of Pedrosa corner, on cold tyres and a full tank of fuel on the opening lap is out of this world. Brave, bold, ridiculous, brilliant. Nothing more needs to be said, one of MotoGP’s greatest passes. Period.
Most Improved Racer – Santino Ferrucci
This burns me. I appreciate Santucci about as much as I appreciate a root canal treatment, but I have to admit, he was excellent in IndyCar this year. After years of being inconsistent and not delivering on the promise that the series heaped on him unfairly, 2024 was finally the first year where ol’ Ramen Head looked like the finished article.
While he didn’t peak with an Indy 500 podium this time around, he was far more consistent across the board, with double-digit Top 10 finishes to go with more strong oval drivers, including a pair of fourth places in Milwaukee. I think the jury is still out to see whether Michael Cannon (Now allegedly at Prema), was the difference maker in that camp, but call a spade a spade, frosted tips was genuinely good.
The Anthoine Hubert Award for Rookie of the Year – Angel Piqueras (Moto3)
This may come to you as a bit of a surprise, but for me, the rookie that stood out most in Motorsport for me in 2024, was Moto3’s Angel Piqueras. I knew Pedro Acosta was going to be great in MotoGP, but Piqueras was on the podium in his 3rd ever GP start at the Circuit of the Americas. And he beat David Munoz and Ryusei Yamanaka to do it, and he looked like he’d had 50 starts in the class already.
But what stole this award for him was Misano 2 and that brilliant win there despite a Long Lap Penalty. He ploughed through the field and was completely unbothered by fighting the elite Moto3 runners of Alonso, Holgado, Veiljer and Ortola. To win from there was sensational racing, and 8th in the Championship as a rookie was seriously impressive. Could be a genuine title threat in 2025, watch out for him. Did I mention he doesn’t have a Wikipedia page yet?
Best Vehicle – The Ducati GP24 (MotoGP)
Keeping the MotoGP theme going here, for a new award for the best vehicle (Non-spec), I went for the Ducati GP24. I was very close to taking the Porsche 963 for its dominance in Sportscar Racing this year, but it swung and missed hard at Le Mans, and that made me go for the Ducati GP24. A huge step forward on what was already a brilliant machine. 16 wins across MotoGP, (with 3 of the 4 taken away by the sheer talent of Marc Marquez on a GP23), and it effectively turned the premier class of 2024 into a two-rider championship on sight. The fastest MotoGP bike in the history of the sport, bar none.
The Floppy Award for Biggest Disappointment – Williams Racing
I fully admit. I got lost in the sauce on this one. Williams, or more specifically, Alex Albon was so good last year, I was in my bag thinking Williams could creep back into to the Top 5. And then pre-season testing happened in Bahrain in March and I was like… “Oh no.”.
Williams ultimately slipped back to ninth in the standings as RB and Haas got back in front of them in terms of rival competition. Albon regressed a tad and wrecked two tubs, Logan Saregant was shown the door for smashing a new upgrade to bits, and Franco Colapinto impressed briefly before being sent back to the bench as Vowles gushed about Carlos Sainz joining.
I get why people love Vowles and his vision for the team, and this is really more of a five-year plan than a two-year flash in the pan, but this was a big step back for Grove and more will be asked with one of the strongest driver line-ups in the sport in 2025.
The That Dude Nice Award (The Most Entertaining Athlete) – Marc Marquez
Kevin Magnussen was a strong consideration here given his early season antics involved happily flaunting the rule book to make sure Nico Hulkenberg got points early doors in Saudi Arabia and Miami. Takes a pair of steel ones to intentionally run Lewis four wheels off. Only he would actually get the 12-point ban for a race too, and then laugh about it afterwards.
But I had to go with Marc Marquez for this one. It was his first year on a Ducati, and despite the fallacies of inexperience and a relatively uncompetitive package, he was a constant thorn in the side of the two established title contenders. He had two of the three biggest overtakes of the 2024 season when he sent it on Pecco Bagnaia at Le Mans to take second out of nowhere, and again when he pinned Jorge Martin at Miller corner at Philip Island. He won three races in wet and dry conditions and made some rampant comebacks in the Sprint. More than anyone else on two wheels or four, he was the person I most wanted to watch on Sundays.
Team of the Year – Team Penske
The second verse is the same as the first. This was the year that Team Penske was again established as the dominant force in IndyCar. Half of the victories across the season, including locking out the front row of the Indy 500, and then Newgarden winning to become the first repeat winner since Helio Castroneves in 2002.
The thing that let Penske down for me, was their driver’s shortcomings. Power, McLaughlin and Newgarden all had moments of unseriousness that ultimately cost them the Astor Cup when to me, they should have at least taken Palou to a true decider. In the end, Colton Herta beat all three of them. This is even though they accidentally but very accurately broke the rules in the opener. Shaking my damn head.
#BEATEMDOWN Award for Individual Excellence – Marc Marquez (Aragon Grand Prix)
This award is for the most impressive individual performance, and that’s Marc Marquez’s perfect weekend in Aragon. Max Verstappen’s Brazilian GP was the other major nominee on this one, and the reason I didn’t pick it was because he got a LOT of help with a reduced grid penalty and the timing of the red flag. It’s still one of the best-wet weather drives I’ve ever seen, but I prefer the surprise element of Marquez in Aragon.
That weekend from Marc was perfect. The conditions were slightly in his favour, Marc’s always gone well in low grip scenarios, but the level of beating was astonishing. He was visibly quicker than the entire field. The onboards showed he was leaning FIVE degrees deeper into the corners than Pecco Bagnaia was. Pecco watched it and said what Marc was doing was “impossible”. He led every single session he took part in, outside of the Sunday warm-up, which he didn’t even bother running in. A Super Grand Slam, leading every lap of both races. It was total dominance, and it was his first win in 1,046 days. The world waited, and it got its result.
Series of the Year – Formula 1
Honestly, my real answer is probably NASCAR on raw entertainment, but out of principle, I can’t vote for a series where a man with an Average Finish of 17 and was 11th on points across the season, is crowned Champion. You heard it here first, I will NEVER vote for NASCAR here until they ditch the Playoff format. They do not work in Motorsport, and it increases the chances of a Champion that in my eyes, feels undeserving. Justice for the true Champion, Christopher Bell on the old Winston Cup system.
I can’t believe I’m doing this. But out of the four major series I watched in 2024, I enjoyed F1 the most. The on-track action for the series was pretty subpar, even by F1 standards. But I did enjoy how fluid it was from a storytelling aspect. Red Bull looked like they were going to dominate the season again, but McLaren came back in the second quarter, Leclerc took Monaco and then Mercedes looked great going into the break. McLaren and Ferrari made big gains in the third quarter of the season. And then at the end, Max Verstappen got desperate in the final stretch as Norris was closing in, before pulling out one of his greatest drives to seal the deal.
For the first team in years, we went to F1 weekends having NO idea how it was going to play out. That made races genuinely exciting to see what was going to happen. No other series did that in 2024. IndyCar’s running order is a lot more predictable than it likes to admit, even if the action is better (And 24’ was a bit mid by their standards), and MotoGP was a two-and-a-half bike Championship (With Bastianini and Marquez swapping out the half.)
Give me F1.
The Never Log Off Award (For Funniest Moment) – Lance Stroll’s Brazilian GP
It was a late shot, but it had to be done. Lance Stroll is someone I’ve tried to defend, but sometimes, he does himself no favours.
Spinning off into the escape road on a formation lap is not ideal but almost understandable given how treacherous the conditions were on Brazil’s formation lap. You pick it back up, you still get to the grid, even if you’re at the back.
But to do that, and instead of taking the easy escape road back onto the track, you drive into the gravel trap and beach your car, taking yourself out and slapping a “Did Not Start” on your record? It’s so embarrassing and everything I can’t stand about Stroll as a driver. I pissed myself laughing. Speaking of which:
The Secret Best “Collapse” Award for Biggest Downfall: Aston Martin (Formula 1)
The continued slide of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in IndyCar was very tempting here. From nearly being out-qualified by an Indy NXT car in Milwaukee to Graham Rahal’s continued decline and the pay driver hires (Welcome back, Devlin), to being raided by the FBI, there’s very little good going on for RLL.
But Aston Martin’s fall down the order has been… man. Yes, they were unprepared to be as good as they were at the start of 2023. But to fall to the point where making Q2 wasn’t a guarantee is a cry for help. Fernando Alonso held up his end of the deal, but Lance Stroll having 11 consecutive scoreless weekends is painful. The Top 4 spot they were clinging onto last year was a pipe dream, and a more organised Alpine probably beat them for fifth. As a result, Dan Fallows has been stuffed in a locker until you can offload his contract.
You have an elite-level driver, even in his twilight years. You have all the resources you need, including a new windtunnel. The best hybrid factory on the grid is exclusively powering you from 2026. You have Adrian F***ing Newey leading your technical department. What’s the excuse?
OSW Championship for Best Fight (On or Off Track): Marquez vs Martin at Philip Island
These were two of the fastest riders the sport has ever seen, beating seven bells out of each other in a 210mph game of chicken. It was thrilling to watch the pace at which these two were going at it, and then it exploded at the end with Marquez pinning Martin not once, but twice in the closing stages. A genuine, honest-to-god Marquez win on a GP23, in the dry, against the eventual Champion. Phew. I think I might have been strong on the MM93 jungle juice while picking these…
The Golden Cock (For the Worst in Motorsport) – Christian Horner
There were several nominees here. Mark Miles’s running of IndyCar was a car crash this season with the Penske cheating scandal, the embarrassing rug pulling of Mexico City as NASCAR got there first for a race when IndyCar had ample opportunity to do it first, the faux pas with Pato O’Ward as a result, the dodgy hybrid launch that DID alter the path of the Championship (Hi Dixon), and the Thermal Club. The vibes were off in the vibes Championship of Motorsport.
Mohammed Ben Sulayem threw up a late buzzer-beater on this award too. He was able to brush off the early corruption allegations, but the poor handling of my nominees’ scandal, his draconian ignorance of culture to make out that swearing was an issue, an exodus of good people within the FIA and his “Shut Up and Dribble” attitude to the GPDA’s legitimate concerns have alienated his presence as the leader of the sports governing body.
But I chose Christian Horner because… well, you know why.
Rider of the Year – David Alonso
There were only ever three choices for me here. Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin both made such Horlicks of their title campaigns that I couldn’t in good faith nominate them. The three were David Alonso, Toprak Razgatlıoğlu and Jett Lawrence. I only watched a small amount of Supercross this season so I couldn’t justify taking Jett here (He was phenomenal based on the people I trust on this stuff), so that left too.
For a long time, I was going to pick Toprak here. One of the most dominant World Superbike campaigns of all time. 18 wins, including 13 consecutive wins – a Championship record. And this was on a BMW, which I’m still not fully convinced is a better bike than the Ducati Panigale V4. (And Nicolo Bulega was unlucky not to get the nod for Rookie of the Year in my opinion). Missed six races via that horrible injury suffered in Magny-Cours and still won the Championship by 43 points.
The internal conflict in my head was, do I give it to Alonso despite the fact his competition is so much less experienced as riders given Moto3 tends to be teenagers and the relative newcomer?
But you know what? I did it anyway because David Alonso was that good. Fun Fact: Alonso led less than a third of the laps across the season. GP Racing’s first 14-win season (in any class), was done via absolutely mesmerising racecraft. He developed Ultra Instinct as a combat technique, always finding a way to get to the front when it mattered and timed his attacks so that he was almost always untouchable when the field ran out of laps to get him. He was Miguel Oliveira’s Moto3 runner-up campaign on steroids. No one has ever dominated a Moto3 field via death by a thousand cuts like he has. Astonishingly brilliant.
David Alonso. He’s magic, you know.
Driver of the Year – Max Verstappen
Again, this was a two-horse race, and it’s the same two as last year. Alex Palou vs Max Verstappen. No one else came close.
I pushed very hard for Palou last year, but that was off the back of the most dominant season in modern IndyCar history. 2024 Palou was a different kind of brilliant, but he wasn’t 2023 Palou. The latter pushed his ceiling to the highest level seen in the series in years. The former raised his floor to the point where he held off the biggest chasing pack the series has had in years. Herta, Power, Dixon, McLaughlin and O’Ward all looked like they could win the title at times, and Palou outpointed them to death. It was outstanding, but I can’t give it to him here.
Max Verstappen was incredible this season. In many ways, this was a messy season for him, but in many ways, it was his most impressive. The man had to go through all of the bullshit happening within his team early doors, and the development of the RB20 was astray from the start as Red Bull later admitted by not listening to Sergio Perez in 2023 (The operational excellence of this team I may have overrated a little bit), and the chasing pack was huge – McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all had moments where they were taking lumps out of the package.
But overall, I think Red Bull was nearer the third-best car in the sport than the first, especially beyond Miami. When Red Bull was busted, Max executed and cashed in. When Red Bull wasn’t, he never left enough on the table for the chasing pack to truly punish him. Abu Dhabi was only the second race in 24 that Lando Norris took more than 12 points out of Max’s lead. The other was Australia, where Max failed to finish. A nine-win, eight-pole position season despite *gestures wildly*, all that shit – Is incredible. And that Brazil win… goodness me.
Max wasn’t perfect by any means, he was pushed in ways that replicated 2021, and while some of his driving was as ugly as it was then, I can’t deny it wasn’t effective.
For me, he’s not only my Driver of the Year, but he’ll be my overall Athlete of the Year, regardless of who wins the biking honour. If he gets it, he’ll be only the second man to win it twice.
Remember – You’ve got until the end of Sunday, December 15th to vote. Get those ballots in, and listen in for the Motorsport101 Awards at Christmas. See you then!
