Verstappen took his seventh win of the season [Getty Images]Andrew Benson - F1 CorrespondentSun, November 30, 2025 at 6:10 PM UTC·6 min readLando Norris, Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri will contest a final-race championship showdown in Abu Dhabi after the Red Bull driver 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.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt was a costly decision that sacrificed track position to Verstappen in the final stages and in hindsight threw away the race win for Piastri.
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.
Norris has been left with a 12-point lead over Verstappen, who moved ahead of Piastri by four points heading to Abu Dhabi on 5-7 December.
To win the title, Norris must finish third at Yas Marina if Verstappen wins the race next Sunday.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe key moments of a dramatic race in Qatar were:
McLaren's decision not to stop when a safety car was called on lap seven for a crash between Alpine's Pierre Gasly and Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg.
A decision led by Piastri to bring forward his final stop in a desperate attempt to challenge Verstappen came to nothing.
A surprise second podium for Sainz gifted by McLaren's strategy call.
How did McLaren lose out in Qatar?
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, that meant anyone who pitted at that time was locked into a rigid strategy with a second stop on lap 32.
McLaren explained the decision to their drivers by saying that to do so would rob them of strategic options later in the race.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementEveryone else, figuring on the difficulty of overtaking around the Lusail track, and on the fact that this was a one-stop race in which they were being forced by Pirelli to do two, decided to stop and lock in their track position.
Norris questioned the decision after the fact but by then it was too late.
When McLaren made the call, they would not have known what their rivals would do.
But when everyone else decided to pit, McLaren's decision almost inevitably meant they were going to be sacrificing the lead to Verstappen if the race ran without incident until the end.
That's because they would fall behind Verstappen after their own first stops, reclaim the lead when he made his final one, but unless they could pull out a huge lead, fall behind again when they stopped for the final time.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThat's exactly how the race played out.
Had McLaren waited until 10 laps to the end and fitted the soft tyres, they would have had a big pace advantage, but with probably no change to the end result.
Hulkenberg's crash early in the race influenced the outcome [Getty Images]Piastri not happy; Verstappen on a charge
In desperation, Piastri convinced the team that the only chance they had was to stop earlier and give themselves more time to chase down the Red Bull.
Piastri came in on lap 42, with 15 laps to the end, and fitted hard tyres, but although he was able to reduce Verstappen's lead to eight seconds by the end, the four-time champion was under no pressure.
"No words," Piastri said over the radio at the end of the race.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe added in his post-race interview: "Clearly we didn't get it right tonight. I drove the best race I could, as fast as I could, but there was nothing left out there. Tried my best but didn't get it done.
"In hindsight, it's pretty obvious what we should have done but we'll discuss it as a team. A little bit tough to swallow at the moment."
Verstappen said: "This was an incredible race for us. We made the right call as a team to box. It was smart. And super-happy to win here and stay in the fight to the head, incredible.
"It was a little bit offset because of it all but for us it was a very strong race on a weekend when it was a little bit tough but we still got it done."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe described McLaren's strategy as "an interesting move", adding: "But still you have to keep the tyres alive."
Norris, who would have won the title had he won the race, said: "I had no expectations going into the weekend. I try to do my best. It wasn't good enough today, but that's life.
"We made the wrong decision, that was clear as soon as it happened. It was more of a gamble doing what we did than what they did."
Piastri should have taken a comfortable victory, but Norris struggled more, even though second was on offer had McLaren made the right strategy call.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe had a massive moment at the high speed Turn 14 on lap 35, just rescuing a crash, at a time when the McLaren drivers were trying to build as big a gap as possible before their final stop.
Instead, fearing he had damaged his floor, Norris had Verstappen right behind him until his final stop.
Norris came out in fifth place, behind Sainz and Antonelli, and for a long time struggled to pass the Italian.
Until, with just over a lap to go, Antonelli ran wide, and Norris was able to move ahead.
He closed in on Sainz, and crossed the line 0.6secs behind the Spaniard, for whom a second podium to follow the one in Baku was an extraordinary feat.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSainz's unlikely podium
Sainz drove a strong race, running fourth in the early laps thanks to George Russell making a mistake on the early lap and losing two places, and showing strong pace to benefit from McLaren's error.
Russell took sixth behind Antonelli, inheriting a place when Fernando Alonso spun his Aston Martin.
At the time, the spin looked to have damaged a previously strong weekend for Alonso, who had controlled the midfield pack after the first stops and looked set for sixth before a spin cost him two places to Racing Bulls' Isack Hadjar and Russell.
But a puncture on Hadjar's car gave Alonso one of those places back and seventh is still a strong result for the veteran Spaniard in his car.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFerrari's Charles Leclerc, Racing Bulls' Liam Lawson and Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda took the final points.