For the first time in 15 years three drivers will fight over the world championship in the final round of the season.
Will Lando Norris, Max Verstappen or Oscar Piastri emerge on top? Is there one more twist yet to come in this gripping championship contest?
While the championship fight will inevitably be the focus of attention, there is more going on besides that in Yas Marina. This will be a watershed race, the last under F1’s V6 hybrid turbo regulations, as well as the final appearance for Yuki Tsunoda.
Here are the talking points for the final grand prix of 2025.
Norris the favourite
Despite the self-inflicted damage McLaren have done to both drivers’ championship chances over the last two races, Norris heads into the final round clearly in the strongest position. He doesn’t need to beat either of his championship rivals as long as he finishes on the podium.
He hasn’t performed consistently this year, but following an often shaky start he largely got a grip on his car’s handling from mid-season. A double-punch of grand prix wins in Mexico and Brazil gave him a useful buffer over his two rivals but recent setbacks have badly eroded it.
Which Norris will turn up again? The one who stuck his car on pole and ran away with this race last year, much as he did in Interlagos and Austin? Or the one who’s stumbled in qualifying and been unable to recover on race day too often this season? If it’s the latter, the championship could slip through his fingers.
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Verstappen the surprise contender
Analysis: How Norris, Verstappen and Piastri can win the championship in the final raceVerstappen has had a season of three parts. He kept within touching distance of the championship over the opening races, winning a couple of grands prix, but lost a lot of ground in the middle part of the season when Red Bull struggled to compete.
But his progress since the summer factory shutdown, following which Red Bull made a breakthrough with their RB21, has been astonishing. He’s won when he’s had the quickest car (Monza, Baku, Las Vegas) and when he hasn’t (Qatar) and seldom let any points slip through his fingers.
As a result, Verstappen has assembled a season which promises to be one of the great sporting comebacks. He isn’t quite close enough for a win to make him champion regardless of where Norris finishes, but the mere fact he’s got this close is already remarkable. If race day offers him a route to the title, don’t doubt he’ll find it.
Piastri the outsider
Piastri led the championship for longer than anyone else, but that counts for nothing now as his former 34-point lead is now a 16-point deficit. Sure, his peak lead after the Dutch Grand Prix came about partly due to his team mate’s retirement with a technical failure that day, but Piastri had made a remarkable start to his third F1 campaign, winning four of the first six grands prix.
Norris got back on terms with him by mid-season but Piastri’s lead didn’t start to look shaky until his horror-show weekend in Baku. Norris failed to capitalise that day but Piastri seemed to take a while to find his feet again. Once he did, his luck deserted him: he was harshly penalised in Brazil, disqualified (like Norris) in Las Vegas and was dominating in Qatar until McLaren gave the lead away.
Like Verstappen, he needs a little luck on his side to come away from this weekend’s race as Australia’s first world champion for 45 years. But F1’s rare final round title fights involving more than two drivers have a funny way of favouring the third-placed contender: Sebastian Vettel in 2010, Kimi Raikkonen in 2007, Alain Prost in 1986…
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Williams’ late breakthrough
Williams’s performance in Losail, a track which they justifiably did not expect to suit their car, was nothing short of extraordinary. Carlos Sainz Jnr, who out-ran Norris to score his second podium finish for the team, credited it to a radical change in set-up.
Will that performance translate to a very different track this weekend? The long straights of Yas Marina were already likely to suit the team better than Losail, making them one to watch this weekend.
Antonelli to pip his predecessor?
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Antonelli is enjoying a great run of formAs Ferrari stagger towards the end of a season which team principal Frederic Vasseur now admits they wrote off in April, Lewis Hamilton has struggled to wring much out of their car. As a consequence he’s taken just 10 points over the last four rounds.
Meanwhile Andrea Kimi Antonelli has been reinvigorated since Mercedes abandoned their suspension set-up change and reeled off a string of solid results. Not that long ago we were talking about him being level on points with Williams driver Alexander Albon, but as the season nears its end there’s a realistic chance the 19-year-old rookie will out-score the seven-times champion whose seat he took.
Ferrari can at least hope to be slightly more competitive in Yas Marina, having blamed their struggles in Losail on the unusually high tyre pressures Pirelli imposed after discovering cuts in the rubber. But the prospects of Hamilton claiming a podium finish in his first season at Ferrari look extremely poor.
Farewell to a formula – and a racer
The V6 hybrid turbo era began 251 rounds agoF1’s V6 hybrid turbo era never inspired any great affection, particularly in the first years, which were dreadfully one-sided contests.
However the current engine formula eventually produced competitive championships and memorable moments. Today’s racing may tend to be processional, but there is close competition across the field. This weekend is the final race before F1 takes a leap into the unknown with a drastic overhaul of its power units, and many are inevitably concerned the field will be too spread out and the racing will suffer.
But save your tears for the more tangible losses. Yesterday Red Bull confirmed this weekend’s race will be Yuki Tsunoda’s last for the foreseeable future. Besides losing a fine driver and an immensely likeable paddock personality, his loss will leave F1 without a Japanese driver next year.
This will also be the final race for the Drag Reduction System, about which only one thing can be said: Good riddance.
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