The story of Max Verstappen’s fourth Formula One World Championship, told through Dani Lozano’s vision during the creation of the F1 2024 documentary. Discover how the creator built the Max Verstappen edit and learn more about the creative process behind a piece of content that will live in the fans’ memories forever.
MAX VERSTAPPEN EDIT CONTEXT
Max Verstappen starts the 2024 Formula One season as dominantly as the previous year, controlling weekends from qualifying to race day. He wins 5 of the first 7 races, looking on track for his fourth World Championship.
But from Miami onwards, the dynamic changes.
Lando Norris wins in Miami, and Red Bull’s gap to rivals begins to shrink. At Imola, Verstappen still wins, but only just, defending hard from Norris in the final laps. In Monaco, Red Bull struggles, and Max can only finish sixth, as Ferrari, McLaren, and Mercedes emerge as strong contenders.
Even in victories like Canada and Spain, Max must rely on perfect race execution rather than sheer dominance. Other drivers start taking Pole Positions, and the fight for wins becomes much harder. From Spain until São Paulo, Verstappen doesn’t win again, while McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes share the spoils.
Still, Max had built an early points advantage, and this is where his champion qualities shine.
In Austria, the first major on-track battle with Lando Norris occurs. In the Sprint and the race, Max defends aggressively. Their clash ends with both suffering tyre punctures; Verstappen recovers to fifth, Norris retires, and the championship gap widens.
Similar battles continue through Hungary, Netherlands, Italy, and the United States. Norris wins some races, but Verstappen consistently finishes close behind, maximizing every point and maintaining control of the championship.
The defining moment comes in São Paulo. After a red flag in qualifying and a grid penalty, Verstappen starts 17th on a fully wet track, with Norris on Pole. What follows is one of the greatest drives of his career.
Max climbs through the field, overtaking relentlessly, controlling the race, and eventually taking the lead. He wins from 17th, while Norris finishes sixth. That result nearly secures the title.
A few races later, Verstappen clinches his fourth World Championship, not by dominating every race, but through consistency, skill, and mental strength.
The 2024 season proves Max Verstappen is a champion not just when everything is perfect, but especially when it isn’t.
DEVELOPER DIARY 10 – DOCUEDIT F1 2024
Discover how Dani built the Max Verstappen 2024 World Champion edit from the editor’s perspective, revealing its structure and how the story of Max Verstappen’s season was divided into different sections. Explore how montage, music, and visuals were combined to create one of the standout edits in the 2024 documentary project.
• PART ONE: DOMINATION
This is last edit of the 2024 documentary and it’s the longest edit I’ve ever made. It’s about nine minutes long, and that’s for sure the most difficult edit I’ve worked on. This is the edit that explains how Max Verstappen achieved his fourth Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship.
This edit is very different from the rest because it’s clearly divided into three different sections, although they all come together as one single piece. The first part of the edit focuses on the opening races of Max Verstappen’s season, from Round 1 in Bahrain to Round 5, the Chinese Grand Prix. Of these first five race he won four: The Bahrain Grand Prix, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the Japanese Grand Prix, and the Chinese Grand Prix. The only exception was Australia, where he suffered a brake issue and had to retire on Lap 2. Otherwise, he probably would have won that race too.
The three sections are defined by the songs I’ve used. I’ve selected three different songs, each one representing a different phase of the edit. For this first part of the edit I’ve used rock music, and it’s used for the opening section, that explain how Max started the season, dominating almost everything just as he did in 2023.
• PART TWO: THE MENACE
The second part covers Round 6 in Miami to Round 18, the Singapore Grand Prix. Things started to change in Miami. The Red Bull car was no longer the fastest, while McLaren was stepping up its performance. Even Ferrari and Mercedes were competitive at certain points during the season.
Verstappen began to struggle and stopped winning races regularly. He managed to win the next race, the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, but had to work hard to keep Lando Norris behind him.
In Monaco, he had a terrible race, finishing sixth while Charles Leclerc took the win. In Canada, George Russell took pole position. Max Verstappen won the race, but he had to fight against Russell’s Mercedes and Norris’s McLaren. The second part of the edit tries to explain all the battles and all the drivers Max had to face in order to survive.
The song in this section is extremely important because of its lyrics. They describe this phase of the Max Verstappen story really well. You can see a good example in the section where Lando Norris takes pole position at the Spanish Grand Prix. I created a special effect with the song’s lyrics appearing on screen as Norris beats Max Verstappen.
It’s a game of survival, which perfectly represents Max Verstappen’s season from Round 6 in Miami onwards.
If he really wanted to win that championship, he had to survive using the points and advantage he had built up during the opening races. The goal was to minimise the damage in every single race and maintain his lead over the championship contenders, especially Lando Norris.
In this second part of the edit, you can see most of the different race winners throughout the season. But obviously, Lando Norris plays a much more important role. Norris was Max Verstappen’s main rival during the 2024 season. They faced each other in several races, and you’ll be able to see their intense battle in Austria, where they collided, passed each other, and both suffered punctures.
They also faced off in the Hungarian Grand Prix, with radio messages showing them blaming each other for their actions on track. The second part also features their battle at the Dutch Grand Prix, before reaching the Singapore Grand Prix, where Lando Norris dominated the entire weekend. Max Verstappen managed to finish second, but he was around 24 seconds behind Norris.
• PART THREE: THE CHAMPION
The final part of the edit covers Round 19, the United States Grand Prix, through to Round 22, the Las Vegas Grand Prix, where Max Verstappen was crowned a four-time World Champion. This third section focuses on the final races of the season, especially the United States and Mexican Grands Prix, where Lando Norris and Max Verstappen had some very controversial battles.
There’s a new song defining this third section, and it’s a very well-known one. It’s by one of the most popular music groups in history: Linkin Park. The song is called Heavy Is the Crown, and its title is extremely important to this edit. I selected this song because, for me, the phrase «Heavy Is the Crown» represents exactly what it means to fight for a Formula 1 World Championship, especially for someone like Max Verstappen.
And in the final part of this third section, I put absolutely everything I have as a video editor into it. If you really enjoyed my previous Max Verstappen edits, I’m sure you’ll love this one. I spent around three weeks making this edit. It was exhausting, but I loved it, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too.
DEVELOPER DIARY 10 – FULL EPISODE
There’s one more edit I haven’t explained. It’s an edit about a Formula 1 team: the 2024 World Champions, McLaren. This edit is extremely special in the way it was made and pays tribute to the papaya team and its drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. Would you like to learn more about it? You can get access to all this information in the full tenth episode of the Developer Diary – Docuedit F1 2024, available to Patreon members.
