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4 hours ago
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Max Verstappen won the Qatar Grand Prix to ensure he remains squarely in the world championship fight which, with title leader Lando Norris in fourth and his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri in second, will now be a three-way fight to the finish at the season finale next week in Abu Dhabi, with just 16 points separating all three drivers.
Verstappen won from third after a superb drive but was given an enormous leg-up when McLaren made a glaring strategy error in failing to pit both their drivers under an early safety car when the rest of the field did so to take a free stop. It ensured Verstappen took the lead and as the stops played out he could not be caught. While Norris took damage when he went wide and was unable to stay with the two leaders and Carlos Sainz who was third and dropped even more points.
Norris had hoped to close out his first title in Qatar but McLaren’s strategy decision means Verstappen and Piastri are very much still in the mix for the final round in Abu Dhabi. Norris now leads Verstappen by just 12 points and Piastri by 16, with 25 on the table. Any finish in front of both of them in Abu Dhabi would still be enough for Norris but the finale will be far more closely fought than he would have liked having gone into the race with a 24-point advantage over both of them.
Verstappen had a mountain to climb to stay in the fight and from third on the grid the win was a huge result and ensured he is absolutely a contender for the finale. Indeed that he has been in the mix and is so close at the last round of the season is remarkable. He had been 104 points behind after the Dutch GP but when Red Bull brought upgrades to their car that addressed the balance issues that had plagued it for most of the season, Verstappen immediately exploited it and as the two McLaren drivers took points from one another, the world champion came hurtling up the rails.
Piastri had made it clear he would keep fighting as long as he was still in the title hunt and duly delivered a series of battling drives over the weekend to score the points he needed to keep his hopes alive. He took pole and victory in the sprint race and then pole and second in the race itself and could barely have done more. He was however clearly disappointed and frustrated with McLaren’s failure to call the pit strategy, saying at the end he was simply “speechless”.
Piastri had held his lead from pole into turn one but as expected Verstappen, on the clean side of the grid and in Piastri’s slipstream, jumped Norris through the first corner, to take second.
The leaders promptly settled into running with the two-second gap between them as they looked to run in clean air through the high-speed corners that dominate in Qatar until Nico Hülkenberg spun out on lap seven after contact with Pierre Gasly prompting the safety car and the race turned.
Verstappen took the chance to pit, as did the rest of the field but McLaren chose to keep both cars out, not wishing to disadvantage one driver by having to double stack them, which was to prove disastrous. Norris questioned the decision but the team argued that they had retained flexibility for later stops but they had effectively lost the lead to Verstappen.
Pirelli had limited the use of tyres for the race to a 25-lap stint, making the 57-lap contest a mandatory two-stop as a precaution against punctures on an enormously demanding circuit with high lateral loads on the rubber and the two McLarens still had two stops to take.
Racing resumed on lap 11 as Piastri held the lead from Norris with the pair needing to try to open a huge gap to Verstappen. They duly set out at pace and did stretch their legs but could ultimately only put eight seconds on the Dutchman by the time Piastri took his mandatory first stops on lap 24 with Norris following him a lap later as Verstappen took the lead.
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Piastri and Norris emerged in fourth and fifth respectively, not in traffic but chasing down the Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli and the Williams of Carlos Sainz.
The rest of the field took their second mandatory stops on lap 32. It left Piastri and Norris once more leading but with a stop to take and Verstappen in third, eight seconds off the lead.
Norris suffered more woes when he went wide at turn 14 with a snap of oversteer at around 150mph that he just managed to hold although he took damage on the kerbs and his pace suggested he was indeed struggling.
Piastri was pushing as hard as possible and McLaren pitted him on lap 42, earlier than required, to give him a shot at going after the Dutchman but he had to make up a full 17 seconds.
Norris made his final stop on lap 44 to emerge in fifth, needing to pass Sainz and Antonelli to claim third. He managed to get past Antonelli but had to accept fourth.
Piastri too went hard but it was too big an ask to catch Verstappen who closed it out with an eight-second lead to set up a thrilling finale.
