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SATURDAY | DEC 6, 2025

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FROM LEFT: McLaren’s Lando Norris, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in contention for the Formula One’s World Drivers Championship title in Abu Dhabi Grand

Prix tomorrow. – REUTERSPIC

Judgement day Three F1 title finales that show why Norris is far from safe in Abu Dhabi

Ű BY KIERAN JACKSON

this weekend. The takeaway is obvious: end-of season momentum counts for a great deal. But perhaps the most relatable title battle to the present day took place back in 1986, with McLaren great Alain Prost, the Verstappen-like figure of the season, up against two Williams drivers – Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet – in the quickest car. By the season finale taking place on the streets of Adelaide, Mansell and Piquet had secured the top two spots on the grid. Prost was back in fourth. Yet Le Professeur , as Prost was known, experienced his fair share of lady luck to win the championship. The most memorable moment was Mansell’s tyre blowout on the 320kph Brabham straight, 19 laps from the end, when a podium was all he needed for his first title. Williams pitted Piquet, nervous of a repeat, and though the Brazilian closed in on race leader Prost towards the end, the Frenchman held his nerve to claim the ultimate gong. Different eras, of course, but no less relevant this weekend. The primary takeaway: what may seem a foregone conclusion often fails to materialise. Whichever way it falls, history tells us that the final furlong has rarely been straightforward. Curveballs will be thrown; how Norris bats them away will decide his fate tomorrow night. – The Independent

start and was then powerless after Ferrari’s questionable decision to pit left him frustratingly behind a string of midfield cars. Ferrari botching a strategy call – some things really do never change. The Prancing Horse have not won a drivers’ world championship since. Three years earlier, however, the Scuderia launched their own improbable fightback with Kimi Raikkonen and, in a full circle moment previously scribed in these pages, current McLaren team principal Andrea Stella in scarlet red as racing director. History looked firmly in the making when McLaren’s Hamilton won the Japanese Grand Prix in Fuji with two races left. Seventeen points clear of the Finn, under the old point-scoring system, the boy from Stevenage was set to become the sport’s first rookie champion. But then Hamilton floundered, sliding off track in the pit-lane in China to hand Raikkonen an opening, before a gearbox issue pushed him to the back of the pack at the season finale in Brazil. Hamilton’s teammate Alonso, in one of F1’s most vociferous partnerships, could not stake a claim at the front either. Two victories to finish the season were enough for Raikkonen to win the title. It is a situation akin to Verstappen this year, who could seal the title with a third win in a row

But history tells us that unfathomable events occur on judgement day. It is why Norris would be well-advised to glance ominously over his shoulder, while every permutation should be memorised to a tee on a McLaren pit-wall under immense scrutiny, following the incorrect call in Qatar. The irony of McLaren’s current predicament involving team orders – and the moral dilemma remains of whether Piastri would help Norris should it be required tomorrow – is that one man team Red Bull were on the flip side of the coin back in 2010. On the eve of their first world championship, Red Bull’s late team owner Dietrich Mateschitz implored that “interference with the drivers would never be a possibility”, with Mark Webber (Piastri’s current manager, no less) entering the Abu Dhabi weekend seven points ahead of teammate Vettel. Yet the championship leader was a certain Fernando Alonso, then 29 years young, racing for Ferrari. He led Webber by eight points and Vettel by 15 points, with Lewis Hamilton a long shot, 24 points adrift. Alonso needed second or first to guarantee the title. Qualifying proved key – as it often is around the Yas Marina Circuit with Vettel claiming a lights-to-flag victory from pole. Alonso started in third but lost a spot at the

S WEEPING across the Gulf to Abu Dhabi, host of Formula One’s season finale for 12 consecutive years, Lando Norris really should be home and dry by now. Without those Las Vegas disqualifications a fortnight ago, Max Verstappen would be out of the running. Without last week’s mistakes in Qatar, McLaren could rest easy in the knowledge that the drivers’ champion would, at the very least, be donning papaya colours. Yet here we are; on we go. This weekend’s three-way fight in the desert is the first F1 championship-decider involving more than two drivers for 15 years. Back then, a four-way hammer-and-tong concluded with a surprise champion at the chequered flag: Sebastian Vettel’s first of four triumphs, and other shock winners before him on the final day, are telling case studies for tomorrow’s final curtain call. It goes some way in explaining why Verstappen and Oscar Piastri should not give up the ghost just yet. Twelve and 16-point deficits respectively are significant obstacles to overcome, for sure, and Norris holds most of the cards. A podium is all the 26-year-old from Somerset needs and, in the fastest car on the grid, it should be something of a banker.

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