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Max Verstappen is fired-up to go to Abu Dhabi and compete for his fifth F1 world championship after the Dutchman won in Qatar, narrowed the gap to 12 points within the championship leader, Lando Norris and overtook Oscar Piastri to set up a three-way season-deciding finale at the Yas Marina circuit.
Verstappen delivered a superb drive for Red Bull in Lusail on Sunday but it was a victory handed to him by McLaren, who made a calamitous strategy call for Norris and Piastri.
In choosing not to pit their drivers under an early safety car when the rest of the field did so, they lost a free stop and gave the lead to Verstappen who seized his chance and powered to the flag. With Piastri second and Norris only fourth it has brought the Dutch driver right into the title fight for the last round. He is second behind Norris but ahead of Piastri, a position he considered unthinkable halfway through the season.
“I’m excited, I’m happy to go there and have a go at it,” he said. “I go in there with just positive energy. I try everything I can but at the same time, if I don’t win it, I still know that I had an amazing season. So, it doesn’t really matter. It takes a lot of the pressure off. I’m just out there having a good time like I had on Sunday.
“I know that when I sit in the car, I always try to maximise everything I can. And that’s what I’ll try to do in Abu Dhabi. A race like Qatar shows that when you think it’s going to be boring and straightforward, it’s not. So I’m hoping Abu Dhabi is going to be similar.”
Verstappen goes into the decider with nothing to lose given he had no expectation of being a contender for most of this season. After the Dutch GP – round 15 of the season – on 31 August he was 104 points behind then leader Piastri and was explicit that he believed the title was beyond him.
However Red Bull brought a series of upgrades to the next round in Monza, including changes to the floor and front wing, in an attempt to address the balance problems that had stymied their car at most tracks during the season. They proved enormously successful, with Verstappen finally feeling comfortable with his ride and since which he has returned five wins and three podiums. He paid tribute to the team effort behind his success.
“We’ve won races where maybe we shouldn’t have, like Sunday, by making the right call as a team,” he said “Of course, it’s still up to me to execute it in the best way possible but that’s also a proper team effort.
“The way I work with my race engineer, with GP, [Gianpiero Lambiase] and also the guys in the background – the whole team very close to me – I think we’re really well integrated and we know exactly what we need to ask of each other. That probably helps also when you’re in a battle like this, when you’re not the quickest, but you still pretty much maximise everything you’ve got.”
Norris remains the favourite going into the race with a 12 point lead but McLaren have managed to let themselves be put under immense pressure by Verstappen and Red Bull. At the previous round in Las Vegas both their cars were disqualified for exceeding the wear on the skid block on the floor of the car, handing Verstappen a 25-point gain and moving him from 49-points back to 24, a deficit he reduced to 12 after McLaren’s blunder in Qatar.
Norris will still take his first title if he finishes in front of both his rivals or claims third place or better. Verstappen would need to win and hope Norris finishes outside the podium places while Piastri, 16 points down, would need to win and have Norris finish sixth or lower.
Last time Verstappen went into a decisive season-finale in Abu Dhabi was in 2021, when he was tied on points with Lewis Hamilton. He went on to claim his first title that year after the race concluded in huge controversy when the then race director Michael Masi improvised interpretation of the rules in order to ensure the race did not finish behind a safety car. The FIA later described the decision as “human error”; the result stood.
