Verstappen Qatar win takes title fight to final race

Tuesday, 2 December 2025 01:29 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Verstappen took his seventh win of the season

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.

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.

Dutchman 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.

The Englishman has been left with a 12-point lead over Verstappen, who moved ahead of Piastri by four points heading to Abu Dhabi from 5 to 7 December.

Hulkenberg’s crash early in the race influenced the outcome

To win the title, Norris must finish at least third at Yas Marina if Verstappen wins the race next Sunday.

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, which meant anyone who pitted at that time was locked into a rigid strategy with a second stop on lap 32.