Max Verstappen did everything he could to win the 2025 world title in the F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, taking pole and cruising to an easy win in his Red Bull, but he still couldn’t take home title No. 5. He won the battle, but it was McLaren’s Lando Norris who won the war, finishing in third place to score his first Formula One championship.
“I haven’t cried in a while – I didn’t think I would cry but I did,” said Norris, after taking the 2025 drivers’ title by two points over Verstappen. “It’s a long journey. First of all, I want to say a big thanks to my guys and everyone at McLaren, my parents – my mom and dad were the ones who supported me from the beginning.
“It just feels amazing and now I know what Max feels like a little bit,” he continued. “I want to congratulate Max and Oscar – my two biggest competitors the whole season – it’s been a pleasure to race against both of them. It’s been an honour and I learned a lot from both of them.”
Norris’ coveted third place came under threat, not from the other drivers but from the stewards after he left the track to pass Verstappen’s teammate Yuki Tsunoda.
In the end, the stewards penalized the Red Bull driver for changing direction and Norris escaped without a sanction for avoiding the car ahead by going outside the lines.
“I had no idea,” said Norris, when asked if he knew the stewards investigated the incident. “I didn’t care because I knew what I did was fine and I had nothing to worry about.”
Norris becomes the first British driver to win the F1 title since Lewis Hamilton in 2020. He arrived for the season finale in Abu Dhabi with a 12-point lead over Verstappen and 16 ahead of teammate Oscar Piastri and needed a podium to take the championship.
A top-three delivered the win to Norris no matter what the others could do, while Verstappen had to win with Norris fourth or lower. Piastri needed a win with Norris outside the top-five to take the title.
Verstappen started the race from pole, with Norris second and his McLaren teammate Piastri third. The Red Bull driver scored a convincing win to take his third consecutive victory to end 2025, but it still didn’t deliver the crown.
In the end, Verstappen’s late-season surge made the title fight a three-car scenario but could not erase his 104-point deficit after August’s Dutch Grand Prix, despite him winning six of the last nine grands prix of 2025.
“I feel pretty good because I was already prepared for this kind of outcome because we needed a bit of luck to win,” said a philosophical Verstappen after the race. “From our side, we optimized the weekend perfectly, put it on pole and we won the race in I think dominant fashion, so there’s nothing that you can say about that.
“At the end, we lose the championship by two points – looks, of course, painful, but when you look at where we were in Zandvoort, more than 100 [points] behind, then I think it’s not too bad.”
Piastri ended up second on the road in Abu Dhabi and third in the title fight, finishing 13 markers behind his teammate after a late-season slump saw him lose the points lead and drop behind Verstappen in the final standings.
“I knew that, going into today, I needed the stars to align to win the championship and ultimately I tried my best and put myself in the best position I could to try and win the race and give myself the best opportunity, but it wasn’t to be,” said Piastri. “We can be very proud of the season we had, but I think, on a personal level, it’s not quite the ending that I wished for but, when you look at the season as a whole, I’m very proud of the work that I’ve been able to put in, that my team has been able to put in to make so much progress from last year.”
As for Canadian Lance Stroll, he ended the season 16th overall in points, with 33, after finishing 10th in Abu Dhabi after eight consecutive races without a top-10. His teammate Fernando Alonso ended the season 10th, with 56 points. The team finished seventh in the constructors standings.