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Laurence Edmondson
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Nate Saunders
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Nate Saunders
Senior Writer, F1
YAS MARINA, Abu Dhabi — In less than 48 hours, we will have a new Formula 1 world champion. Lando Norris enters the season finale in Abu Dhabi with a narrow lead, with Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri breathing down his neck.
It’s the first time since 2010 that more than two drivers come into the final race of the season with a chance at the title. So how did it come to this? And what has Friday practice told us about the trio’s title hopes?
Laurence Edmondson and Nate Saunders look back at the highs and lows of the campaigns of Norris, Verstappen and Piastri, and analyze Friday’s practice sessions for any insights about who’s best positioned to win the crown come Sunday.
Lando Norris
Championship position: 1st
Points: 408
Wins: 7
Best finish in Abu Dhabi: 1st (2024)
Story of their season: Personal growth has been the name of the game this year. Preseason favorite Norris came into the season red hot, winning the opener in Melbourne, but mistakes quickly crept in and he found himself out-performed by more inexperienced teammate Piastri and out-raced by Verstappen at grands prix like Miami, raising the same old questions about his fortitude and ability to handle pressure. But to his credit, he has revived things in recent months. Norris’ title charge looked dead and buried after a car failure at August’s Dutch GP, but his form since then vaulted him back into the lead of the championship. He goes into the finale as the overwhelming favorite.
Best drive: There are a few candidates, including his opening-day win in a chaotic, rain-affected Australian Grand Prix, when Verstappen was chasing him down late on. That one was good, but most impressive was his dominant win in Mexico City in October, a victory which encapsulated the spirit of his late-season revival. He finished 30 seconds clear of the next fastest car in what might be the best individual performance of his career so far — a reminder that Norris, on his day, can be close to untouchable.
Lowest moment: A few of the mistakes Norris made earlier in the year, but you can’t look past his clumsy race-ending collision with Piastri in Montreal. The move appeared lacking in conviction and was manna from heaven for all those in the camp that thinks Norris’ race craft has never been good enough to be considered an elite driver.
What a title would do for his reputation: For Norris, a championship would be vindication that you don’t need to be a ruthless, cold-blooded Verstappen type to win a title. Norris has embraced mental wellness since making his Formula 1 debut in 2019 and has shown a vulnerability not usually seen in this sport by speaking candidly about pre-race nerves and his struggles with mental health as a young competitor. He’s never cared for the critics, and a championship would silence them in spectacular fashion. Whether it would have convinced everyone remains to be seen but, when you can call yourself world drivers’ champion, who cares?
Max Verstappen
Championship position: 2nd
Points: 396
Wins: 7
Best finish in Abu Dhabi: 1st (2021, 2022, 2023)
Story of his season: Verstappen really shouldn’t be here, but he has made it through his incredible gifts behind the wheel, which have helped accelerate a midseason revival for his Red Bull team. Formula 1 has witnessed something truly remarkable since the August break, with Verstappen overturning a 104-point deficit to go into the final race with a legitimate shot of the championship. Wins in Italy, Azerbaijan, Singapore, Austin and Las Vegas have vaulted him back into contention and lodged him firmly and rent-free into the minds of everyone wearing McLaren’s papaya-colored uniforms.
Best moment: While plenty of focus has gone onto the races in the tail end of the season, a victory earlier in the year showed Verstappen at his absolute best. Starting third at Imola’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, his move around the outside of George Russell and Piastri at Turn 1 was absolutely breathtaking. Even long-time Verstappen critic Russell was awestruck, later saying: “Best overtake I’ve seen in a hell of a long time.” It was hard to disagree. In a season of monumental Verstappen moments on track, it was hard to boil this award down to one singular event, but Imola has to take the cake.
Honorable non-F1 mention, as if to highlight the point about his sublime season: Verstappen’s drive to victory at the fearsome Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit in his first ever sports car endurance race in the weekend between wins in Italy and Azerbaijan. Unprecedented stuff for the modern era.
Lowest moment: While we’ve seen plenty of the best of Verstappen in 2025, we also saw one big example of the worst. The Dutchman had a moment of rage at the end of the Spanish Grand Prix, slamming his car into the side of Russell’s Mercedes while incensed about the stewarding of the event. Verstappen has since admitted it is a moment that should not have happened, but it showed that even with his experience and four championships, he can still occasionally overstep the line.
What a title would do for his reputation: Verstappen is already an F1 great but many in the paddock think a fifth this year, in these circumstances, might push him over the edge in the debate around the sport’s GOAT. That is subjective, but regardless of whether he wins the title this weekend, Verstappen’s 2025 will not be replicated again any time soon. More than any other season in his sensational career, this one has defied logic and established as concrete fact that Verstappen is the lead talent on the grid right now — and it might not even be close.
Oscar Piastri
Championship position: 3rd
Points: 392
Wins: 7
Best finish in Abu Dhabi: 6th (2023)
Story of their season: Piastri’s season has been a curious one. For a few months in the first half of the year, he looked like a Verstappen clone, driving brilliantly and ruthlessly. His season has imploded since his win at the Dutch Grand Prix, where he opened up a 34-point lead. A curious wrinkle on his 2025 has been the internal dynamic with him and the McLaren team: Piastri begrudgingly accepted a team order to let Norris by a week after his Zandvoort win in Monza and he has never looked the same since. His collapse from that point will go down as one of the worst the sport has ever seen should he leave Sunday’s race without the championship.
Best drive: There are a few candidates here, but one stands out above all as a world-championship-calibre moment. Piastri’s victory at the Miami Grand Prix included a thrilling, nerveless pass on Verstappen after a multi-lap fight with the Red Bull driver. It was a stark contrast to how Norris had meekly surrendered the lead to Verstappen earlier in the contest. Piastri also slammed the door shut on Verstappen to lead in Saudi Arabia, but his Miami tussle showed poise and a willingness to take the fight to the Dutchman when so many others crumble.
Lowest moment: This is a matter of perspective. Many might say Monza, where Piastri obeyed a questionable and hotly debated request to let Norris past after McLaren changed their pit-stop sequencing and then botched the latter’s stop. Piastri himself admitted he was still frustrated by those events two weeks later, and it’s hard to look any further than what that culminated in. The Azerbaijan Grand Prix has to be his lowest moment; even with the events of Monza, Piastri had an iron grip on the championship. Baku changed all that, with a clumsy crash in qualifying followed by an even clumsier one in the race itself. Piastri has looked a shell of himself since.
What a championship would do for his reputation: While a Verstappen title would be stunning, a Piastri championship would be just as compelling from a fan point of view. Obviously, it would be a remarkable recovery after his late-season collapse, one that has been genuinely difficult to watch at times. It would justify the huge praise he was receiving earlier in the year as a third-year F1 champion and might revive the comparisons to Verstappen, even if those seemed premature at the time. Many would also point out how he overcame both his own mistakes and lingering frustrations with how McLaren has overseen the season to claim the title. A Piastri championship would be a fascinating dynamic for all involved going into 2026.
Abu Dhabi insights from Friday
Norris looked like the driver to beat this weekend based on Friday’s running in Abu Dhabi, setting the fastest time ahead of Verstappen in both the first and second practices. The times from first practice can largely be disregarded as the session takes place in the heat of the early afternoon and is not representative of conditions for qualifying and the race, but that makes the data from the twilight session in the afternoon all the more valuable.
Norris was 0.363 seconds faster than Verstappen on comparable soft-tire laps in second practice, with the McLaren driver holding a 0.155-seconds advantage in the relatively high-speed first sector and a 0.296-seconds advantage in the slower-speed final sector. Verstappen was 0.088 seconds faster than Norris in the middle sector, which comprises two long straights linked by the Turn 6 and 7 chicane, but differing fuel levels and engine modes can skew Friday practice times across the board.
Despite the strong start, Norris wasn’t completely happy when he jumped out of the car and said there was still room for improvement.
“I mean, obviously, from the times and everything, things are good at the minute, but still want a bit more from the car,” Norris said after the session. “I’m not completely happy, not completely confident, we’re a bit in the middle of trying some different things and trying to understand some things with the car.”
Piastri did not take part in first practice as the session had always been earmarked as one of the two FP1s that the regulations demand he hand his car to a rookie driver — in this case, McLaren’s IndyCar star Pato O’Ward. In second practice, he could only manage the 11th fastest time, 0.680 seconds off his teammate.
“I think I got there pretty well on the medium [tire], just the soft didn’t get the most out of the grip on that first timed lap,” he said. “So I’m finding my feet, I think. But yeah, clearly some things to try and improve for tomorrow, but I think after just one session, not too bad.”
Piastri’s first attempt on soft tires was the faster of his two hot laps in FP2 and had no clear mistakes. Onboard footage showed a slight struggle to get the car turned into corners and he radioed his team saying he needed more front wing — a simple setup change that could help him find a happier balance in time for final practice and qualifying on Saturday.
The first and final sectors of Piastri’s second attempt were actually faster than his first lap, but he gave away a significant amount of time in the middle sector with a lock up ahead of Turn 6. Had he hooked up his three best sectors, he would have been 0.551 seconds off Norris — still a significant margin over one lap and one he must close for qualifying to remain in realistic contention.
Average lap times from the long runs in the second half of the session suggested the McLaren drivers hold the upper hand over Verstappen’s Red Bull on race pace. But the comparison was slightly skewed by Verstappen completing 15 laps uninterrupted while Norris only did an eight-lap run and Piastri a seven-lap stint.
“It was pretty OK,” Verstappen said. “I mean, I was fairly happy with the car. We just need to be probably a little bit faster. I think, yeah, still not quick enough. But I think overall, for us, I think we’ve been in a decent window around here.”
One of Red Bull’s strengths this year has been improving the car between Friday practice and Saturday qualifying. According to Verstappen, it will need to do the same this weekend to put him in the mix with the McLarens.
“Seems like it’s a decent gap that we need to close,” he said. “But from our side, we’ll just try to put the best car forward. And, yeah, let’s see how much we can find overnight … Single lap and long run needs to be better.”
Based on Friday practice, the situation is very much advantage: Norris heading into qualifying. The only question is whether he and McLaren can handle the pressure over the rest of the weekend.
