• The 2024 F1 season featured plenty of drama and memorable moments on the track.
• We saw everything from an impressive rookie debut to a feisty battle for the drivers' championship.
• This article is part of "Behind the Wheel," a series about the highly competitive and high-tech world of Formula 1.

From an impressive rookie debut to Max Verstappen winning his fourth-straight drivers' championship, this Formula 1 season was chock-full of drama, first-ever wins, and career-defining moments.

With just one more race left in the year, we take a look back at the defining moments of this F1 season.

The rookie driver Oliver Bearman's last-minute call-up and impressive drive

In just the second race of the season, Ferrari had to call up 18-year-old reserve driver Oliver Bearman. Taking the place of Carlos Sainz, who had to undergo an emergency appendectomy, Bearman shocked the F1 world with a seventh-place finish at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Bearman's impressive driving undoubtedly helped earn him a full-time F1 seat, as he would later sign with Haas.

Carlos Sainz's quick recovery and victory

Just 16 days after undergoing emergency surgery in Saudi Arabia, Sainz returned to his Ferrari and took home the checkered flag in Australia. Sainz's quick recovery and victory carried even more significance as it was announced before the season that Lewis Hamilton would take his seat in 2025 — meaning Sainz would be a free agent after this season. The Spanish driver eventually signed with Williams Racing.

Zhou Guanyu drives in his first home race

While Zhou Guanyu made his Formula 1 debut in 2022, the Chinese Grand Prix was suspended for a few years because of the pandemic. The Chinese driver was finally able to drive in his home race, which took place in his birth city of Shanghai.

Lando Norris breaks through and gets his first career win

It took over 100 races, but Lando Norris got his first-ever Formula 1 win at this year's Miami Grand Prix. This victory catapulted Norris toward the top of the standings, and he would go on to challenge Verstappen throughout the season for the drivers' championship.

Charles Leclerc wins his hometown Monaco Grand Prix for the first time

After years of mishaps and bad luck, Charles Leclerc overcame the "Monaco curse" and took home the checkered flag for his Ferrari team. He became the first-ever Monégasque to win the Monaco Grand Prix.

Drama between friends at the Austrian Grand Prix

After battling for the lead throughout much of the race, Verstappen and Norris made contact with just seven laps remaining. As a result, Norris retired his car, Verstappen dropped to fifth, and George Russell slid in for the win. Off the track, Verstappen and Norris are friends, but this race would lead to questions as to whether the top two drivers on the grid could maintain their friendship.

Lewis Hamilton wins at home

In his final race representing Mercedes at the British Grand Prix, Hamilton put together a vintage drive in front of his home fans. He took the checkered flag at Silverstone and snapped a 945-day winless streak.

Oscar Piastri claims his maiden victory amid team drama

Piastri crossed the finish line first at the Hungarian Grand Prix, but not without intrateam drama. Both McLaren drivers ran at the front for much of the race, with Piastri initially leading. But after McLaren's pit-stop strategy inadvertently put Norris ahead, the team instructed him to yield the position back to his teammate. After 15 laps and many tense radio exchanges with his race engineer, Norris finally let Piastri pass, and the drivers finished first and second on the grid.

Max Verstappen's epic comeback win in Brazil and clinching the title in Vegas

Starting from 17th on the grid in Brazil, Verstappen put on a clinical driving display as he overtook car after car in rainy conditions to take home the checkered flag. This would give Verstappen a sizable lead over Norris in points, with Verstappen clinching the drivers' championship one race later in Las Vegas.

The 2024 F1 season will end with Verstappen claiming his fourth drivers' championship, solidifying him among the top drivers in the history of the sport.

• Exposure to light is key in adjusting drivers' body clocks to new time zones.
• The Las Vegas Grand Prix is "the nastiest one of the season," one performance coach said.
• This article is part of "Behind the Wheel," a series about the highly competitive and high-tech world of Formula 1.

In Formula 1, sleep is a precious commodity.

The global series' 24-race calendar spans 21 countries across five continents. Teams travel from China to Miami to Italy over the course of just a few weeks — making jet lag a constant problem throughout the season. It's such a concern that many teams employ doctors and coaches dedicated to helping drivers adjust quickly to different time zones.

"In the case of Formula 1 drivers, sleep is right up there as one of the main things we can control to put them in the best place possible to perform," Tom Clark, a senior performance coach with the Alpine F1 Team, said. "It's a thing we prioritize very highly. Being exposed to jet lag, we can manipulate it so we're ahead of the curve."

Even now, as the 2024 season heads into the home stretch, Clark is preparing for next year, looking up available flights for the team and mapping out calendars to see how early his drivers can make it out to a race based on other team responsibilities.

"Drivers have a great many commitments, so we can't always prioritize sleep and jet lag above all else," he said. "But we start planning right away so we have the best options available to negate jet lag and put the athletes in the best position."

Monitoring light and 'zeitgeber'

When it comes to fighting jet lag, Clark said, there's one main factor to consider: exposure to light.

"Light from the sun and light from electronic devices, and the absence of light — if we can manipulate those things in accordance to where we're trying to travel, we'll be able to shift the body clock closer to that given time zone," he said.

As an example, Clark points to Esteban Ocon, the Alpine driver with whom he works most closely. In preparation for heading to Las Vegas this week — about a nine-hour time shift from Ocon's home in Switzerland — Clark began shifting the driver's bedtime and wake-up time later and later last week.

"We also look at his timing to light exposure, which we try to replicate to the time zone he's traveling to," Clark said. "From a basic first principle, that's what we do fundamentally to thrive in the new environment."

Additionally, Clark closely monitors Ocon's "zeitgeber" — a German word for external circadian time cues that contribute to the body's clock. This includes physical activity and fitness, socializing, and eating.

"All of those have an influence on moving the body clock closer" to the new time zone, Clark said, adding: "But it's light that is the most influential, so that's what we prioritize the greatest."

'Las Vegas is the nastiest one of the season'

Plane travel is another factor. When traveling west, Clark wants his drivers to take daytime flights so that they stay awake. When flying east, he encourages them to sleep on flights — particularly when the series heads to Australia, which entails about a 24-hour door-to-door travel period.

With Formula 1 heading to Las Vegas this weekend to kick off the final triple-header of the season, Clark said the battle against jet lag would be particularly important.

"Las Vegas is the nastiest one of the season," he said, adding that because the race happens so late — the Grand Prix begins about 10 p.m. local time — drivers have to modify their sleep schedules so that they essentially become nocturnal, sleeping during most of the day.

"If you're like Esteban and you get a huge amount of sleep, he effectively will sleep the entire daylight hours of Las Vegas — which actually might be quite a normal thing for most Vegas visitors and tourists," Clark said with a laugh. "It's a bit of a weird way to live, but it's a necessity to cash in on the sleep opportunities that we have. We use other means to help with what we lose from not seeing the sun, like vitamin D supplements. We'll have to contend with that during the week."

Once the Las Vegas Grand Prix ends, the series immediately shifts to Qatar, meaning every team member once again has to rapidly adjust their body clocks.

"Effectively, you're doing a full circulation of the globe in time zones in the space of just a couple of weeks," Clark said. Last year, when Las Vegas was also part of a triple-header, many people discovered they could "continually be in a state of sleep deprivation and poor quality of sleep if you don't prioritize it," he added.

Clark began working with Alpine in 2018 in a performance role and said he viewed battling jet lag as an "elephant in the room" when it came to race prep. "We were doing everything we could from a training, nutrition, and recovery standpoint, but when it came to sleep, there wasn't much in place," he said. "That's where my appetite came from to pursue and understand jet lag more."

Most Formula 1 teams, he said, now task their performance coaches and doctors with monitoring drivers' sleep patterns and adjusting them to new time zones.

Outside Formula 1, Clark is pursuing doctoral work on jet lag — a topic that, he said, is not studied extensively in academic literature.

"Jet lag itself is a hard thing to research and understand just by the nature of it," he said. "You can study it in a lab environment, but you can't replicate getting on a plane, the large amount of time in the air, all the stresses you go through at the airport, and arriving in a widely different culture and environment."

That makes Formula 1 an ideal industry in which to conduct this research, with the sport featuring perhaps the most condensed global travel of any other sport series.

"I've been working within the Formula 1 population and yes, it's not the easiest thing to fit in around my day job," Clark said, laughing. "But it's fascinating, and I'm enjoying it very much."