The final quarter of the 2025 Formula 1 season comes thick and fast but will reward those braced for its ferocious pace.

The sport is about to embark on the first of six rounds in eight weekends to close the year. From the Austin this weekend F1 will travel to Mexico City, São Paulo and Las Vegas before concluding the campaign in Lusail and Abu Dhabi.

These races will be a test of stamina, psychology and nerve.

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They will decide the drivers championship.

How that title gets decided, though, seems less clear than ever. Oscar Piastri narrowly leads Lando Norris, but Max Verstappen is closing quickly. If the Dutchman can’t win the title, he’ll certainly have a significant influence in deciding who does.

And though the constructors title has been freshly decided in McLaren’s favour, the battle for second is heating up, with implications not just for 2026 momentum but for the driver market too.

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CAN MCLAREN STABILISE?

Singapore was the third weekend in a row that McLaren didn’t have the fastest car over a single lap, and it was the second weekend in succession that it wasn’t the highest scoring team at the chequered flag. It was also the fourth round in a row that Verstappen outscored at least one McLaren driver and the third in a row that he outscored both.

The team has already won the constructors championship, but these are the figures underpinning what looks like a genuine slackening of McLaren’s vice-like hold on the sport.

It could be the final twist in the team’s pursuit of its first drivers championship since 2008.

It had long been assumed to be an exclusive battle between Piastri and Norris, and mathematically this is still the most likely outcome.

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE – OCTOBER 05: Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri celebrate with their team after winning the Constructors Championship.Source: Getty Images

But rather than trading one-two finishes, as had seemed certain during the European season, just getting both cars onto the podium could be a challenge.

That does two things.

The first is that it changes the title arithmetic. Norris would need four races leading one-two finishes to take back the title lead. If he and Piastri are instead battling for second place, his mission becomes significantly harder, with three points separating second from third.

The other part, however, is the stress it will put on McLaren’s desire to keep the playing field as even as possible.

It was relatively easy for McLaren to control most of the variables when its drivers were clear at the front of the pack. When battling in a group, however, things get more messy.

McLaren will find itself in more situations like in Singapore or Italy or Hungary where other cars impact strategy and then impact the way the team metes out orders on the grounds of fairness. Already such a nebulous concept, finding the lines — as the team attempted to when Norris hit Piastri at the previous race — will become only more difficult.

But the team could get some much-needed respite this weekend. On paper this should be a McLaren track, replete with medium-speed corners that its car loves. The weather forecast and the tendency for this race to be run to multiple pit stops will also play to its strengths managing the tyres.

If McLaren is ever going to get back to normal — if in fact it’s still achievable — this will be the weekend, and if a one-two finish beckons, whomever driver leads it will land an important blow in the title fight.

IS THIS VERSTAPPEN’S BIG CHANCE TO GET BACK INTO THE TITLE?

But of course things might not return to normal this weekend. McLaren boss Andrea Stella no longer considers Austin to be a natural McLaren circuit. The tightness of the turns — particularly turn 1, then around the back straight and finally in the last sector — should play to what appear to be Red Bull Racing’s new strengths, he thinks, while the bumpiness of the track will hold McLaren back.

Unlike Singapore — where Verstappen came painfully close to a pole position that likely would have seen him win the race for the first time — Red Bull Racing and its star Dutchman have form at the Circuit of the Americas.

Verstappen and his team were on a three-year winning streak before Charles Leclerc broke the run for Ferrari last year. He still finished on the podium after winning the sprint from pole on the previous day.

It should be remembered too that Verstappen’s strong result in Austin came as Red Bull Racing was battling poor form, having suffered a nadir result just three rounds earlier in Italy.

It puts the team’s trajectory this year into a new context. If it’s had a three-race head start on solving its car problems — it won in Italy this year — then last year’s results will surely be repeatable this weekend.

Max Verstappen is still in the title hunt.Source: Getty Images

Singapore and Austin were always going to be the key tests for Red Bull Racing after it won races at the low-downforce circuits of Monza and Baku.

Singapore is a high-downforce circuit at the opposite end of the spectrum, and though he didn’t win, the fact he beat both McLaren drivers was enough to validate the progress.

Austin, though, is in the middle. The set-up choices are more complicated, and a car with a narrow set-up window — as the RB21 has had all year — will struggle to get into the sweet spot.

“We have had a strong run of races recently and want to keep up the momentum, and hopefully this weekend we can do a bit better,” he said.

“This circuit is about finding the right compromise in set-up between straight-line speed and downforce for the fast sweeping corners, and the bumps can always make things tricky too.”

If Verstappen can win this weekend, he won’t just take another big bite out of Piastri’s lead, but he’ll confirm that he has the equipment to take the title fight to the final rounds.

WHO WILL DEAL THE NEXT BLOW FOR SECOND IN THE CONSTRUCTORS CHAMPIONSHIP?

With McLaren having sealed the constructors championship in Singapore, the other frontrunning teams have only second place to bicker over, but the fight is heating up.

Ferrari had previously looked confident in the position, having held it almost uninterrupted since the Spanish Grand Prix.

It mightn’t seem obvious, but the logic for the Italian team to be favourite was clear. Though Lewis Hamilton has been far from his best, he was at least a regular scorer along with Charles Leclerc.

Meanwhile Mercedes has been blooding rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who failed to score at all but two European races, and Red Bull Racing is a one-car team, with Yuki Tsunoda so far contributing just 17 of the team’s 290 points.

But the Italian team’s slow-and-steady approach is now being shown up, particularly as it becomes clear that its highly anticipated midyear upgrades have failed to revolutionise the car in the same way a similar package last year vaulted the team to the top of the pace rankings.

That role is instead being played by Mercedes, because while no-one expects the team to control this weekend’s race like it did in Singapore, a new front wing brought to that race appears to have unlocked extra pace.

TOPSHOT – Mercedes’ British driver George Russell celebrates his victory after the Formula One Singapore Grand Prix night race.Source: AFP

That could be because it appears to be flexing more. Mercedes seemed to be one of the biggest losers from the clampdown on flexing front wings in Spain earlier this year; perhaps this latest upgrade has opened the car’s set-up window and put it back in its sweet spot.

That’s combined with Antonelli returning to the sort of good form he was showing before the European season. There’s a somewhat bizarre but clear trend that has him performing much more strongly when he’s not on his home continent: in Europe his average score per weekend was just 0.3 points, while outside of Europe it’s 9.4 points, an incredible increase of 3133 per cent.

Consequently Mercedes took second place after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the first race outside Europe since June.

Ferrari’s lacklustre 12 points in Singapore has now dropped it to 27 points behind Mercedes.

But third isn’t the worst that Ferrari could do.

Red Bull Racing is remarkably just eight points further back — and 35 points behind Mercedes.

It’s worth remembering that Red Bull Racing finished only 77 points off the title lead last year despite having a similar one-car problem. There’s a reason the team has built itself around Verstappen. The Dutchman can’t be underestimated as a force on either championship table.

Would you really put it past Verstappen beating Leclerc and Hamilton to third in the standings?

And if Verstappen is to mount a drivers championship challenge, is it out of the realm of possibility that he single-handedly defeats Russell and Antonelli?

This isn’t for any of the big prizes, but it says a great deal about the reigning champion’s place in the Formula 1 power dynamic even when he’s not the main player.

IS THIS TSUNODA’S LAST CHANCE TO BID FOR HIS SEAT — OR HIS CAREER?

The clock is always ticking on the career of Verstappen’s teammate, and for Tsunoda it’s one minute to midnight.

Despite the satisfaction with his decent — albeit not outstanding — performance in Azerbaijan, where he scored a season-best eight points for sixth, in Singapore he dropped back off the pace, finishing a disappointing and scoreless 12th.

“Not good” is how team boss Mekies described the weekend, though he said there were some glimmers of performance among the disappointment.

“It was not a good Saturday for Yuki.

“Personally I was satisfied with the work had done on Friday,” he said. “It was not looking spectacular on page 1 [of the times], but looking at every single lap, I think he was at the right level on Friday.

“Then Saturday was poor. We need to work with him to understand what derailed it.”

With qualifying dictating so much of Sunday given the difficulty passing, Tsunoda was always going to be up against it — but then he butchered his start and left himself no realistic chance of scoring.

Red Bull driver Yuki Tsunoda is fighting for his career.Source: AP

“The first lap was certainly shocking, but from that point onwards I think he did a very decent race. He came back from [P17] to P12 with a very decent pace.

“So we had a very poor Saturday, it cost us this weekend and a few points, and we’ll work with him to improve together.”

But Tsunoda’s problem is that he mightn’t now have the time to justify his place.

While Mekies says the team is in no rush to make a call, he’s also said he doesn’t intend to wait until the end of the season to decide on who will partner Verstappen in 2026.

Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko has said the deadline will be around the Mexico City Grand Prix, which is next weekend.

Isack Hadjar is widely tipped to take his seat — so much so that in Austin he spoke as if it were a done deal, though he insisted that he knew nothing about the team’s intentions.

Asked if he would be open to driving for Red Bull Racing at the final three rounds of the season to get his eye in for 2026, he answered: “Yeah, definitely.

“I don’t know, but if I’m 100 per cent sure and I get the opportunity to take some advance, then yes.”

He also said it would be a good chance to get to know his new engineers.

“It definitely helps,” he said. “I didn’t think about this, to be honest. That’s interesting. It’s a good idea.”

The challenge for Tsunoda, then, becomes keeping his Formula 1 career alive, not simply his job at Red Bull Racing.

The permutations there are clear.

Red Bull Racing is seriously considering promoting Formula 2 junior Arvid Lindblad to Racing Bulls next season, leaving just one seat for either Tsunoda or Liam Lawson at the Italian team.

Lawson leads Tsunoda on the title table 30-20, including Tsunoda’s three points from the first two rounds when he was still at Racing Bulls.

Of course that says nothing about how difficult the RB21 has been to drive for anyone other than Verstappen — Lawson scored no points in Tsunoda’s seat at the start of the year.

But Red Bull has never been known as a sentimental business. Hard results are all that matters.

Tsunoda is running out of time to get those runs on the board.