Lando Norris secured McLaren’s first Formula 1 constructors’ championship for 26 years with victory in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The win also ensured that Norris finished second in the drivers’ championship, 18 points ahead of Leclerc and 63 behind Verstappen.
Norris led from start to finish and his fourth win of the season was enough to seal the championship by 14 points, despite Ferrari finishing second and third with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc.
Leclerc’s brilliant drive after starting 19th on the grid kept the tension high – had anything happened to Norris’ car, Ferrari would have clinched the title.
Lewis Hamilton took fourth place in his final race for Mercedes, passing team-mate George Russell around the outside of Turn Nine with six corners of the race to go.
McLaren last won the drivers’ championship in 2008 with Hamilton, but their team’s title drought went all the way back to 1998.
The anxiety for McLaren started at the first corner when Norris’ team-mate Oscar Piastri, who had qualified second to the Briton, was tapped into a spin by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. The world champion was given a 10-second penalty for causing the incident.
That put Piastri to the back of the field and left McLaren’s hopes hanging on Norris.
Verstappen took sixth, ahead of Gasly, Hulkenberg and Alonso, while Piastri recovered from his first-lap collision with Verstappen and a 10-second penalty for hitting the back of Franco Colapinto’s Williams to take the final point for McLaren.
