Verstappen

Reigning F1 champion Max Verstappen closed to within 12 points of leader Lando Norris heading into final round in UAE next weekend.

Four-time Formula One (F1) world champion Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing kept the three-way 2025 drivers’ championship battle alive with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri after securing victory in the penultimate race of the season at the Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday.

Verstappen closed to within 12 points of McLaren’s Norris, who finished fourth at Lusail Circuit, heading into the 24th and final round in Abu Dhabi next weekend.

Norris’s teammate Piastri finished second in the race after starting on pole position and is now 16 points behind in the championship battle. But the Australian is still in with a chance to win the drivers’ title.

Carlos Sainz of Williams finished third in Qatar to round out the podium behind Verstappen and Piastri.

The victory was Verstappen’s 70th grand prix career victory.

The top three drivers now each have seven wins for the 2025 season.

McLaren get it wrong on early safety car call

Piastri won the holeshot to the first corner with Norris alongside him on the front row, only to be overtaken by Verstappen, who began the race from third spot on the grid.

During lap seven, Red Bull pitted Verstappen under a safety car, resulting in a free pit stop, unlike McLaren, which kept its two drivers out on the track, resulting in Norris and Piastri losing valuable time later when they made their final stop.

This played into Verstappen’s hands, with the Dutchman able to control the race for the remainder of the 57-lap contest, crossing the finish line ahead of Piastri by just under eight seconds.

“Clearly, we did not get it right tonight,” conceded Piastri.

“I drove as fast as I could, but it wasn’t to be. In hindsight, it is pretty obvious what we should have done, but we’ll discuss that as a team. [It’s] a little bit tough to swallow at the moment,” the Australian added.

Verstappen said: “An incredible race for us. We made the right call to box under that safety car. A strong race for us on a weekend that was tough.”

The McLarens now head to Abu Dhabi with a hard-charging Verstappen looking to repeat history by clinching a championship in the last race at Yas Marina, having done so when he overtook Lewis Hamilton on the final lap after a controversial finish in 2021.

“It’s possible now, but we will see,” said Verstappen, who had written off his chances earlier this season. “I don’t really worry about it too much.”

I find it hard to believe how the driver who had 14 podiums and seven wins in the first 16 races, is now having a real struggle with achieving even fifth place. Is it a case of Oscar Piastri feeling the pressure and leading to a few really costly mistakes, or do the tracks really differ that much throughout the season? – Allegra

Piastri’s slump in form since he won the Dutch Grand Prix to take his seventh victory of the season in 15 races is indeed remarkable.

I actually asked him on media day in Las Vegas whether he knew what had been going on, and this was his answer.

“Austin and Mexico were quite different to the other races that have not gone so successfully,” he said.

“There, there was a clear pace deficit and something pretty fundamental that just wasn’t working.

“The other races have just been a combination of different things going wrong.

“Obviously, Baku (where he crashed three times and jumped the start) was what it was. Singapore from a performance standpoint actually was pretty solid, just the race obviously didn’t pan out exactly how I wanted.

“And even Brazil, the pace was good at points. The sprint crash didn’t have a great impact on the rest of the weekend. There were some things resulting from that that were suboptimal for the rest of the weekend.

“So from a pace and performance point of view, Brazil was actually quite good, it was just that there were a lot of things that happened that meant the results weren’t on the table.

“There was a couple of races where, yes, I needed to do some head scratching and work out what was going on, but the other races that have been tough have just been what some might say is a difficult world of motorsport.”

That’s a pretty good summary of what’s been going on.

But there’s another factor to bear in mind, in that Piastri is not driving in isolation. He is also being compared to his rivals, and in particular his team-mate.

There is absolutely no question that, after a shaky start to the season, Lando Norris has moved up a gear or two since the summer break.

Norris himself says the upward trend started before that – and it seems it began with the introduction of a tweak to the front suspension geometry in Canada aimed at enabling him to better feel the front of the car at the limit.

Up until the Dutch Grand Prix, the head-to-head qualifying stats between the McLaren drivers were weighted in Piastri’s favour – but in terms of pure pace the margin was only 0.099 seconds.

Since Monza, Piastri has out-qualified Norris only once, in Singapore, and the pace gap is 0.226secs in Norris’ favour.

This has come about through hard, focused work from Norris, as he explained in Las Vegas. It’s now up to Piastri to respond.

At the start, Norris was true to his claim that he was “not here not to take risks” as he fought hard to defend his advantage from pole position from Verstappen.

But after an aggressive cut in front of Verstappen to head off the Dutchman’s attack on the inside, Norris misjudged his braking point and ran deep into the corner.

That allowed Verstappen to drive past into the lead while Norris also lost second place to Russell.

Through two virtual safety cars for some early incidents, including at the start when Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson collided with Piastri, Verstappen slowly stamped his authority on the race.

Russell made an early pit stop for the hard tyres, but Norris and Verstappen stayed out.

Norris stopped five laps after the Mercedes and Verstappen 10.

Verstappen was able to rejoin still in the lead, Russell having been unable to close in on the Red Bull despite his fresher tyres.

Norris rejoined behind Russell from his stop but after a few cautious laps to allow his tyres to settle, soon closed his 3.3-second deficit to the Mercedes and swept by into second place on lap 34.

Norris asked his engineer how to run the rest of his race, effectively asking whether he should settle for second or attack.

He was told to “go and get Max” but it soon became clear he had no chance. Verstappen was easily able to repel Norris’ attacks, and in the closing stages the margin extended significantly as the McLaren began to suffer a technical issue which has so far not been defined.

Despite losing nearly three seconds a lap, Norris was able to hold off Russell because of the size of the advantage he had built while chasing Verstappen.

The Red Bull driver’s sixth win of the season – only one behind both McLaren drivers – was taken in emphatic style and and keeps him in title contention, at least mathematically, even if he requires problems for Norris in both remaining races to overtake him.

“It’s still a big gap, we always try and maximise everything we’ve got,” Verstappen said.

“In upcoming weekends we will try and win the race and at the end of Abu Dhabi we will see where we end up, but I’m very proud of everyone.”

Lando Norris closes in on first Formula One Drivers’ championship after finishing second to Max Verstappen in Nevada.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won the Las Vegas Grand Prix on Saturday, but McLaren’s Lando Norris has one hand on the Formula One title after finishing second and stretching his lead over teammate Oscar Piastri to 30 points.

Piastri finished fourth after Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, who was ahead of the Australian at the chequered flag, had five seconds added for jumping the start.

George Russell, last year’s winner of the floodlit race and, like Norris, making his 150th start, completed the podium for Mercedes.

With two grands prix and a sprint remaining, worth a maximum 58 points, Norris has 408 points to Piastri’s 378 with four-time world champion Verstappen still mathematically in contention on 366.

Norris finished 20.741 seconds behind but can now secure his first title in Qatar next weekend, with McLaren having already clinched the constructors’ crown for the second year in a row.

Quite a decent gap

“The car was working pretty well, much more to my liking,” said Verstappen, ferried to the podium with Norris and Russell in a LEGO pink Cadillac convertible driven by actor Terry Crews as fireworks lit up the sky over the strip.

“It was at the end quite a decent gap.”

It was the 69th win of Verstappen’s career and his sixth of the season, as well as his 125th podium and eighth in a row in the 150th Grand Prix of Red Bull’s partnership with Honda.

Norris lost the lead to Verstappen at the start, dropping to third when he ran wide at the first corner and opened the door for the Dutch driver and Russell.

He retook second from Russell on the 34th of 50 laps but then had to manage fuel to the finish.

“I let Max have a win,” he joked. “I let him go, let him have a nice race. No, I just braked too late,” he added, with an expletive on the live television feed that could land the Briton in trouble with the governing FIA.

“It was not my best performance out there, but when the guy wins by 20 seconds, it’s because he has just done a better job and they’re a bit quicker.”

Antonelli finished fifth with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc sixth and Williams’ Carlos Sainz seventh. Isack Hadjar was eighth for Racing Bulls, and Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton completed the top 10.

Piastri dropped from fifth to seventh on the opening lap after contact with Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson, who plunged to last with a badly damaged car.

Verstappen was 20 seconds clear of the field by lap 23 and pitted at the halfway point, rejoining in the lead after Russell and Norris had already switched to the hard tyre.

Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll was taken out by Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto, as the Brazilian rookie dived aggressively into the first corner and ran out of road, with both retiring immediately.

Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was also a spinner at the start, and the virtual safety car (VSC) was triggered on the second lap for marshals to retrieve debris between turns one and four.

The VSC was deployed again on lap 16 for more debris on track after Williams’ Alex Albon and Hamilton collided, with the latter racing from 19th and last on the grid to 13th on the opening lap.

Albon, whose team lost radio contact with the car from the start, was handed a five-second penalty for causing the collision and also reprimanded for a starting procedure infringement.