How much is 12 points worth in a championship decider?

That’s the question Lando Norris must be contemplating as he embarks on what could be the most consequential weekend of his Formula 1 career.

With 12 points in his pocket, he can finish anywhere on the podium and be guaranteed the title. His 12-point head start means he can win the championship from any position, even without finishing, so long as his rivals don’t make the top three.

Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.

But everything is different in a championship showdown. Having a buffer is nice, but no number of points is enough when there are no second chances.

Norris, Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri are down to the last opportunity to win the championship in a rare-three-way duel at the final race.

They’ll all try to make it count, but the points will add up for only one of them on Sunday night.

PIT TALK PODCAST: McLaren manages to turn an easy Oscar Piastri victory into a Max Verstappen cruise, hurting the Australian’s title campaign and cutting Lando Norris’s lead to 12 points over the Dutchman. With three drivers now in contention, what are the permutations for this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix?

WILL THE LACK OF PRACTICE HURT PIASTRI?

At a weekend on which every factor will contribute to the outcome, Piastri will start on the back foot by handing over his car to McLaren IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward for FP1, costing him an hour of practice time.

Neither Norris nor Verstappen will be required to hand over their cars to kick off the title decider.

It is rather suboptimal for the Australian, but McLaren has no choice but to field O’Ward this weekend.

Every team must substitute each of its full-time drivers at least twice per year for a rookie or otherwise inexperienced driver. It’s a rule formulated to make up for the restrictions on in-season testing with current cars that in a previous era was the proving ground for junior drivers.

You’d be surprised how much teams struggle to allocate their four sessions in a 24-round campaign.

No-one really wants to contemplate it early in the year, when drivers are still adjusting to their new cars, and while rookies get a run during the European season, most teams need their full-timers to evaluate the upgrades usually flowing thick and fast around then.

But only 10 rounds remain after the mid-season break. The Dutch Grand Prix is too risky a circuit, Azerbaijan and Singapore are street tracks, and Austin, Brazil and Qatar are sprint weekends, making them all unsuitable.

Suddenly the options are limited. It’s why Mexico City is a popular destination, but Abu Dhabi invariably sees the most rookie action.

This weekend will feature nine FP1 substitutes, including two at Aston Martin. Only Sauber and Mercedes have already met the rule.

But it’s not just about scheduling. Because it’s a twilight event, FP1 and FP3 are run during daylight hours, whereas qualifying and the grand prix are at sunset. It means the track conditions in FP1 are unrepresentative, which in turns mean teams don’t feel like they’re missing much by taking their full-timers out of the car.

That works in Piastri’s favour, ensuring his losses are minimal.

He also knows this track well, having first raced in Yas Marina in 2016, and he was a winner at the circuit in both Formula Renault Eurocup and Formula 2, both title seasons.

But there’s no getting away from the fact it’s far from ideal for the Australian. McLaren knew it had a good chance of having both drivers in title contention at the final round, and it feels a lot like a failure of planning that Piastri will be missing out on practice time on the biggest weekend of his career.

ABU DHABI FINALE

F1 miracles that should have Lando worried — and prove Piastri can wipe haunted Aussie past

Secret order Piastri may need to follow as hidden landmines laid bare — Every F1 title scenario

McLaren’s Piastri rap sheet laid bare — and the murky waters it was never going to avoid

The call that could cost McLaren the title — and how Red Bull plans to exploit it

Max’s fourth teammate in two seasons as Red Bull swing axe, new driver joins F1

“Got nothing to do with it” | 01:36

CAN NORRIS KEEP HIS COOL?

Norris’s 12-point lead marks him out as the obvious championship favourite at the final round of the year.

But that sort of status can only pile on the pressure.

Nothing tests a driver’s steel and resolve like a last-race decider. It’s not just the eyes of the media and F1 fans around the world suddenly trained on your every movement; every other driver is instinctively attracted to the showdown. The F1 paddock is already a fishbowl, but in Abu Dhabi there’s a hell of a lot less water for Norris to swim in.

The problem for the Englishman is that he’s never been here before. This wouldn’t just be his first championship; this is his first championship campaign.

“At the minute I feel good,” he said. “I really don’t think of it at all until you guys [the media] ask it all the time, so I try to avoid you guys as much as possible. But that’s also part of the job, so it’s nothing new, it’s nothing that shocks me.

“I will be the same on track as I have these last few weeks. As much as there has been pressure the last few weeks, I still feel comfortable and still feel good in the car, so all good.”

But compare him, for example, to Verstappen.

“The trophy is the same, I have four of those at home,” he said. “I’ve already achieved everything I wanted.

“I am very relaxed. I have nothing to lose and am just enjoying being here.

“I’m just enjoying smiling, having these wins again. It’s fantastic. For me, everything here is just a bonus sitting here fighting for the title. Also that makes it very straightforward for me.”

Even Piastri underlined how little he felt was on his shoulders this weekend.

“I’m relaxed,” he said. “I’ve been on the opposite side of the championship battle in the junior categories and I know what that felt like, and it was pretty tough

“Coming into it from the least to lose out of us three is quite different for me.”

Of course every driver is going attempt to deal some psychological damage at this point of the season, but of the three contenders, Norris feels the most susceptible to suffering from it.

Despite his strong second half of the year, in Qatar we saw his Q3 mistakes from earlier in the season creep back in. Even in Las Vegas, at the previous round, he butchered the start by appearing to be worked up by the way Verstappen was conducting the formation lap behind him.

It makes this race particularly meaningful for Norris. Winning the title will be an immense achievement, but if he has to overcome Verstappen in the process, it could reset the trajectory of his Formula 1 reputation entirely.

Red Bull axe Tsunoda in favour of Hadjar | 00:33

WILL McLAREN USE TEAM ORDERS?

McLaren’s policy all season has been to avoid picking a winner, allowing Piastri and Norris to fight for supremacy between themselves.

It’s admirable, but it’s also what got the team to Abu Dhabi with a genuine risk of Verstappen beating both of them to the championship.

But surely the team hasn’t come this far to not throw everything at sealing the deal on its first drivers-constructors title double since 1998.

“Honestly, I would love it,” Norris admitted. “But I don’t think I would ask [for] it.

“It’s up to Oscar if he would allow it. I don’t think it’s necessarily down to me.

“It’s the same if it’s the other way around. Would I be willing to or not? Personally, I think I would, just because I feel like I’m always like that, and that’s just how I am.

“But it’s not really up to me. I’m not going to ask it. I don’t want to ask it because I don’t think it’s necessarily a fair question.

“At the same time, if that’s how it ends and Max wins, then, well, that’s it — congrats to him and I look forward to next year.”

Piastri wouldn’t say whether or not he would be happy to accept a team order that would amount to, say, him giving up a spot on the podium to win Norris the title.

He did appear to hint, however, that he was expecting to be told that he’d be put in that position before the race.

“It’s not something we’ve discussed,” he said. “I don’t really have an answer until I know what’s expected of me.”

McLaren boss Andrea Stella left the door open to team orders in certain conditions in comments after the Qatar Grand Prix, though he emphasised that both Piastri and Norris would be given an equal chance to prove they could get themselves in a title-winning position this weekend.

But now is when the rubber hits the road on McLaren’s grand plans and on the culture management has built.

Perhaps the situation won’t arise, but McLaren would be silly not to try to plan for it.

‘She got it right’ Schmitz celebrated | 01:10

WILL VERSTAPPEN START ON THE FRONT FOOT?

Verstappen joked that being in title contention seemed so unrealistic even just a few weeks ago that none of his family arranged to attend the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

“My mum is at home happy with the dogs,” he said. “You can see a lot on TV anyway.”

It was a lighthearted comment, but it cut to the core of how Verstappen got here.

For so much of this year he simply didn’t have the machinery to compete for the title.

It wasn’t until the Italian Grand Prix, round 16 of 24, that Red Bull Racing brought an upgrade to the car that opened its set-up window and kickstarted his season.

Verstappen has won five of the last eight grands prix and is yet to finish off the podium.

But that’s not to say everything has since been easy.

In Mexico City he qualified only fifth, and though his race pace was better, he was no match for Norris.

Sao Paulo was even harder, with Verstappen knocked out of Q1 and needing drastic set-up changes, triggering a pit-lane start, to finally unlock what turned out to be obliterating race pace that had him finish a barely believable third.

It was a similar story in Qatar, where it took post-sprint set-up changes to deliver the sort of race pace he needed to seize upon McLaren’s strategic blunder.

“We need to put the car in the right window,” Red Bull Racing boss Laurent Mekies said, per Autosport. “As you can see, it’s not exactly straightforward every race weekend, and then if we do that, Max can fight for the win.

“If he does that, then what’s happening hopefully behind him is not something we can control.

“You go there, try to get our car in the sweet spot, try to give to Max a balance that he’s excelling with and hopefully that puts him in the fight for the top position — we won’t control what’s behind.”

The pace is there in the RB21 to win the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. It just depends on whether Red Bull Racing can nail the car’s sweet spot and how quickly it can do so.

Brown and Piastri’s awkward moment | 00:17

CAN YUKI TSUNODA RISE TO THE OCCASION?

The last time the title race went down to the wire was between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in 2021, one of the most memorable and controversial showdowns in Formula 1 history.

But for all the focus on the two protagonists — and the radio messages from their team representatives to race control — there was one pivotal character often forgotten in the desert haze.

Sergio Pérez was integral to the outcome.

It was Pérez’s first season with Red Bull Racing, and the team’s decision to break with tradition and hire from outside its pool of junior drivers that year paid off handsomely in Abu Dhabi.

Hamilton was comfortably leading Verstappen in the first stint when the Dutchman pitted at the end of lap 13, with Hamilton following him in on the following tour to retain a margin of more than 10 seconds.

Perez, however, was left out and given the instruction to hold up Hamilton so that Verstappen could catch him.

Between Hamilton catching him on lap 19 and passing him on lap 21, Verstappen slashed his deficit to just 1.2 seconds.

“Checo is a legend,” Verstappen said as he passed his teammate.

Verstappen didn’t have the speed to race Hamilton, but it turned out that didn’t matter. What Pérez did was shrink the Mercedes driver’s advantage so that the Dutchman remained in his pit window to the end of the race.

It meant that when that fateful safety car was deployed late, Hamilton couldn’t enter pit lane without losing the lead to Verstappen, who then would have stayed out to take first place — this of course being before anyone thought race control had time to restart the race.

Given Verstappen’s title fate isn’t all in his own hands this weekend, he could really use wingman in pursuit of the title.

Yuki Tsunoda has been way too far off the pace this year to be relied upon, and Red Bull Racing sacking him in on Tuesday is a most interesting motivational strategy.

But the Japanese fallen star knows this weekend might be his last in Formula 1 — and if it isn’t, what he does in Abu Dhabi could be the start of his comeback somewhere else on the grid.

“He sees this as his big opportunity and is even more motivated,” Red Bull motorsport adviser Marko told Kleine Zeitung. “Yuki wants to prove himself to everyone.

“He’ll certainly put on a spectacular show; he told me that over dinner.”

That’s before wondering whether Isack Hadjar, the Racing Bulls driver who will partner Verstappen next year, might be inclined to help his future teammate should circumstances allow.

Every little bit of help could count.