There was so little separating Formula 1's top four teams during 2024 that every upgrade each of them brought played a big role in shaping the title picture.

We've picked out five developments that had the biggest impacts on the championship fight, from an update that launched a surprise title bid to a floor misstep that damaged another's challenge:

McLaren's Miami transformation

The single most important upgrade package of the season was McLaren's monster update at the Miami Grand Prix in May.

This transformed McLaren from F1's third-best team at the start of 2024 into a championship contender. If this upgrade wasn't successful - or even present - then McLaren wouldn't have been a factor in either title race or emerged victorious as constructors' champion.

The upgrade included new front and rear wings, revised front suspension, reshaped bodywork and engine cover, as well as new sidepod inlets and a reshaped coke bottle section towards the rear of the car as well as a new underfloor.

McLaren essentially brought a brand-new car to Miami, something it was only able to do because of its faith in the results from windtunnel testing. That trust was built last year, off the back of successful fixes following a horrid start to 2023.

In fact, McLaren was even surprised by how effective its Miami package was with team boss Andrea Stella saying the upgrade delivered "slightly more" than expected on track.

Part of that improvement was in the confidence it gave the drivers, something that can only be fully realised once the car is on track. Just as unforeseen negatives tripped other teams over, McLaren's drivers were buoyed by some slightly unexpected positives and the MCL38 gave them a better feeling behind the wheel.

As our resident ex-F1 technical director Gary Anderson wrote at the time: "If a development package means the car produces 5% more peaky downforce that wasn’t consistent, then the driver would simply lose confidence and stay away from the limit. And the amount they stay under the limit will likely be by more than the package's pure performance gain."

That's something McLaren understood and avoided very well in 2024.

Ferrari's title-costing stumble

Following one race after McLaren's huge Miami upgrade was a sizeable update from Ferrari at Imola.

The SF-24's first major upgrade centred around optimising a new sidepod/floor combination.

There was a Red Bull-like upper lip instead of the traditional lower lip on the radiator inlet (below) and the vertical inlet joined the horizontal one below the lip, whereas they were separate prior to that.

The changes allowed for a greater undercut at the front of the car and a more efficient coke bottle section at the rear. There was reshaping of the diffuser and floor edges to exploit that undercut, as well as changes to both the front and rear wings.

That upgrade wasn't the problem. It was the follow-up introduced three rounds later at Barcelona that, in hindsight, cost Ferrari a title victory.

The Barcelona upgrade was a more aggressive evolution of the Imola one, introduced with the aim of Ferrari being able to run the SF-24 lower to the ground and theoretically generate more downforce.

The problem was running that close to the ground generated bouncing at high-speed, and Ferrari slipped back to being F1's fourth-fastest team.

During that second quarter of the year, serious damage was done to both of Ferrari's title bids. You don't have to look far to find the final 14-point deficit to McLaren in the constructors' during this miserable run. And Charles Leclerc ends up a much closer runner-up to Max Verstappen in the drivers' title race than Lando Norris did without this spell.

Ferrari recovered strongly once it brought a new floor to Monza in September and then front wing updates to Singapore and Austin. It won three races and scored more points than any other team in the second half of the season, but the damage from its misfiring Barcelona upgrade was done.

Mercedes' on-then-off upgrade strife

Mercedes had hopes of finally returning to title-challenging status in 2024 but it couldn't join the McLaren/Ferrari/Red Bull battle, partly because of some misfiring upgrades.

Changes including a pivot away from its unique front wing design (above) in Monaco promised to be the start of a breakthrough, with the team enjoying something of a mid-season purple patch with three wins in four races.

The last of those wins came at Spa where Mercedes decided mid-weekend to not run its new floor (below), reverting instead to an older specification.

The floor ensured Mercedes experienced porpoising issues once more and it became F1's fourth-fastest team on most weekends after the summer break.

A title bid was always going to be a long shot anyway but it meant Mercedes wasn't as much of an interfering factor in the title race as it had threatened to be prior to the break.

There was an element of track characteristics and the conditions playing a role in Mercedes' dip in form, hence why it suddenly dominated in Las Vegas. But genuine improvements were found towards the end of the season.

Among them was a fix for the problematic floor upgrade and new sidepods at Austin (above), a design that was a mix of the philosophies pursued by Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull.

The vertical opening remained, the inlets were greatly narrowed, and the sidepod undercut was opened further. This development was made with its 2025 car in mind.

It by no means transformed Mercedes into a race-winning force, but it helped it to a more respectable end than its post-summer break form promised.

Red Bull's late-season fixes

Red Bull's late-season RB20 fixes didn't completely save its 2024 season. It lost the constructors' championship even though Verstappen's brilliance won it the drivers' championship in a slower car than his main rivals.

But the series of updates it brought in the latter half of the season did make a difference to the RB20, easing some of the tension of the title run-in and giving Red Bull some hope that it can reassert itself as F1's team to beat in 2025.

After a disastrous Monza weekend, Red Bull brought the first of its late-season fixes to Baku one week later with a brand-new underfloor and diffuser. That was followed by sidepod and engine cover changes for Austin and new venturi tunnel inlets (floor fences, below) in Las Vegas, in preparation for 2025.

Those fixes came after a painful period of analysis for Red Bull as its dominant advantage suddenly evaporated and a major upgrade in Hungary failed to get it back on terms with McLaren.

The changes across Baku, Austin and Las Vegas alone didn't resolve everything. There were gains from optimising what it had and understanding where it had gone wrong but without those late-season fixes, Red Bull's end to 2024 would have been a lot more uncomfortable.

The biggest tech controversy

You can argue about how much difference it actually made to the competitive order, but you can't deny that the storm over McLaren's flexing rear wings was among the biggest technical controversies of the year - along with Red Bull's front bib adjustment device and its suspicions that rivals were using water to transfer heat from the tyres to the rims.

In Baku, Oscar Piastri's race-winning McLaren came under big scrutiny when the rear-facing onboard camera appeared to show the top element of the rear wing deflecting at high speed.

It appeared as if the top element of Piastri's rear wing - the flap that opens when the DRS is activated - was able to bend at the outer edges, increasing the slot gap between the two wing elements when the DRS was not in use - essentially creating a 'mini-DRS' effect.

That reduced drag was always going to be most beneficial at circuits like Baku. So even though McLaren made tweaks to its rear wing after conversations with the FIA, it was only likely to use it in Las Vegas thereafter anyway.

There was very little separating Leclerc's Ferrari and Piastri in Baku so even a small boost from the mini-DRS could have made the difference - so too in Norris's recovery from a disastrous qualifying to fourth.

Having said that, Gary Anderson questioned the risk-versus-reward value of McLaren's flexing rear wing, which he calculated to only be giving it an advantage of around 0.4mph or 0.65km/h.

There were advantages to McLaren's wing elasticity on high downforce circuits such as Zandvoort and Singapore as well as low downforce tracks like Monza and Baku.

Mark Hughes highlighted McLaren's other (legal) wing trick in Singapore which meant its front wing deformed perfectly in the slow corners without then being too powerful in the high-speed corners - achieving this by the flap bending and reducing the downforce for a higher-speed corner.