The best of the best – Part one

9. Oscar Piastri wins the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

This was the season in which Piastri broke out as a proper star. His first victory in Hungary had been clouded with a team order controversy and in general, that season he had been behind Lando Norris. But Baku was different and Oscar was right in the fight. The early part of the season had been dominated by Max Verstappen before Red Bull rather lost its way, but unusually in Baku, Max seemed off his game and was some way behind teammate Sergio Perez. This meant the lead battle was between Piastri, Perez and the two Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.

Leclerc led early on but Piastri, contradicting the advice from the pitwall to hold back and save his tyres, threw his McLaren down the inside of turn one, on the dusty part of the track at over 210mph and got past. It was an enthralling contest from that moment onwards and at one point I remember jumping up and down in the commentary box because the tension was so high. It was a brilliant Grand Prix and Formula 1 at its best.

8. Lewis Hamilton wins the 2024 British Grand Prix

Throughout the recent ‘ground effect’ era from 2022 until 2025, Lewis Hamilton never seemed like the dominant force we had seen in all his previous years in Formula 1. At the start of 2024 he dropped what is probably the biggest shock move in the history of the F1 driver market by announcing he was joining Ferrari.

After six World Championships with Mercedes, the 2024 season felt like something of a farewell tour for team and driver with emotions running high but the results just weren’t coming. Much like Nigel Mansell, Lewis has always thrived on the energy he gets from the home crowd at Silverstone and has delivered some absolutely masterful victories. But he had not won a race since Qatar in 2021, the race before the controversial finale in Abu Dhabi.

For one afternoon in Northamptonshire, however, the stars aligned. Lewis started on the front row alongside George Russell and when we got a little sprinkling of rain after 15 laps, Hamilton grew in confidence. He dived past Russell to take the lead although the McLarens soon came past both. But when the track started to dry, Lewis made the perfect call for slicks and retook the lead.

I remember being up in the commentary box listening to the calmness on the radio alongside David Croft and Martin Brundle. With his soft tyres starting to degrade and Verstappen bearing down on him, Lewis’ engineer Pete Bonington was giving him the gaps and information and at one point, Hamilton just replied ‘leave me to it, Bono’. The old magic was back and he delivered a highly emotional home victory for the Brackley-based Mercedes team.

7. Charles Leclerc wins at Monza

On the Thursday of the 2024 Italian Grand Prix weekend, I was fortunate to get a ride into the track with Charles Leclerc from his hotel. We were making a little feature about what it was like to be a Ferrari driver in Monza and it was frankly bonkers to see the crowd outside his hotel and swarming all around his Ferrari Purosangue as we pulled out onto the road and headed to the circuit. Charles is a lovely guy, very generous with his time and genuinely appreciative of the opportunity life has given him to be driving for the most famous name in the sport. We talked about his victory in Monza in 2019 and about being up on the top step on the incredible podium there, with the track below covered in a sea of tifosi.

Fast forward three days and he was back up there, having managed a tense strategic victory ahead of Piastri’s McLaren. We were very lucky that our Sky producers had managed to get permission for us to wait just to the side of the podium so when the top three drivers came off, Simon Lazenby, Nico Rosberg and I went up there to reflect on the race. Before we knew it, Charles came back with his trophy and personal phone to get some selfies with the crowd! It was an incredible experience to stand up there next to him and just experience the passion and joy the tifosi showed for a home victory. Nico of course has won the Italian Grand Prix in a Mercedes, but even he could tell how different it was for the crowd, when one of their beloved red cars had won.

6. Silverstone 2020, the Covid year

The year 2020 will be a defining one for most of my generation. So many of our conversations even today include the words ‘pre or post Covid’. It was also the year that showed F1 at its best. When the pandemic hit and the world stopped, its people immediately pivoted to, ‘what can we do to get going?’

By early July, while every other sport was on hold, we were up and running in the Styrian mountains. I did 82 Covid tests between 1 July and 13 December that year. At a time when people weren’t allowed to leave their towns or counties, the F1 circus worked with governments, medical authorities and private aviation companies, ensuring we visited 15 tracks in 12 countries in those six months. It was a tough period of being tested until your nose bled, travelling in bubbles, mandatory quarantines in hotel rooms and microwave meals left outside your hotel room.

But perhaps my strangest memory is being the pit reporter for the 2020 British Grand Prix from the grandstand opposite the pits where our cameraman, Lee Kukor Morgan, and I were the only two spectators at Silverstone! It is wild to think of that when you bear in mind that this year will see 168,000 people in the stands all around the circuit. It really is one of those photos that, 40 years from now, will be hard indeed to explain to my grandchildren.

Now read Karun’s top five broadcasting moments in part two…