Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri will contest a final-race championship showdown in Abu Dhabi after Red Bull’s Verstappen won a gripping Qatar Grand Prix.
Verstappen benefited from a strategy call from McLaren that flew in the face of decisions made by every other team during an early race safety car.
The fateful moment for McLaren was when Gasly and Hulkenberg came together as the German tried to pass the Frenchman around the outside of Turn One on lap seven.
Hulkenberg’s car was left damaged beside the track. That brought out the safety car. The critical part of the timing was that it left exactly 50 laps remaining in the race.
With Pirelli imposing a 25-lap safety limit on the tyres, that meant anyone who pitted at that time was locked into a rigid strategy with a second stop on lap 32.
McLaren explained the decision to their drivers by saying that to do so would rob them of strategic options later in the race.
Everyone else, figuring on the difficulty of overtaking around the Lusail track, and on the fact that this was a one-stop race in which they were being forced by Pirelli to do two, decided to stop and lock in their track position. Norris questioned the decision after the fact but by then it was too late.
It was a costly decision that sacrificed track position to Verstappen in the final stages and in hindsight threw away the race win for Piastri.
Verstappen won to take his seventh win of the season, equalling Norris and Piastri, while the Australian was second and the Briton fourth behind the Williams of Carlos Sainz. Norris won himself an extra two points by passing Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes on the penultimate lap.
Norris has been left with a 12-point lead over Verstappen, who moved ahead of Piastri by four points heading to Abu Dhabi on 5-7 December.
To win the title, Norris must finish at least third at Yas Marina if Verstappen wins the race next Sunday.
