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Motorsport

Winners and losers from a title-deciding F1 Abu Dhabi GP

Lando Norris F1 Max Verstappen Yuki Tsunoda Abu Dhabi Oscar Piastri McLaren Charles Leclerc Mercedes Esteban Ocon

For the first time since 2021, Abu Dhabi played host to an F1 title decider, and just like last time a new name is written into the history books. Here's who joins F1's 35th world champion Lando Norris in the winners' category and who ends 2025 on a sour note.

Winner: Lando Norris

To the winner, the spoils. With two anticlimactic weekends in Las Vegas and Qatar, McLaren placed a huge amount of unnecessary pressure on the Abu Dhabi weekend. It made the Yas Marina event a nervy affair, but Norris responded with a pretty flawless final round.

Teams, media and fans rifled through dozens of different scenarios, but in the end Norris needed third and he ensured he got third. Following a clean getaway, Norris didn't make life too difficult for team-mate Oscar Piastri in Turn 9, a scenario that was discussed at McLaren as it gave the Australian a chance to go after leader Max Verstappen on the more graining-resistant hard tyres.

Norris came under some pressure for Ferrari's Charles Leclerc as he carefully brought his medium tyres in, but never really looked like losing third and made decisive overtakes after his pitstop, including a hair-raising one against Yuki Tsunoda, who was penalised for weaving.

Verstappen may be the driver of the year with what he did in the Red Bull, but that doesn't make Norris' maiden title any less deserved. For someone who was once accused of bottling under pressure and being too open about his failings, Norris has shown he has come a long way. Nice guys can finish first.

(Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images)

Loser: Max Verstappen (but not really)

Verstappen is the loser on the day because he comes two points short to take an astonishing fifth world title. But what he has done in 2025 is quite remarkable, taking eight wins in the Red Bull RB21 compared to seven apiece for Norris and Piastri while the Dutch driver also lead the pole charts.

A good chunk of Verstappen's recovery from 104 points down on Piastri can be ascribed to McLaren opening the door as a collective, but the four-time world champion also played an instrumental role in turning the team's car set-ups - and therefore season - around. He did so with the same metronomic consistency and uncompromising attitude we've grown accustomed to, and closes out the 2025 season with another storming win in Abu Dhabi.

Winner: McLaren

As it goes with those at the very top, McLaren received a huge amount of criticism in 2025. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. It certainly didn't take the easy road by keeping both Norris and Piastri and labelling both as potential future world champions, swearing to give both equal chances. That it has been able to do so until the very end without the pair falling out with each other or with the team is quite remarkable, if not unprecedented.

The last team to try that, Mercedes, saw Nico Rosberg retire on the spot after an acrimonious intra-team battle and needed a long heart-to-heart between Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton to repair the damage. Was it perfect? No, it wasn't. Its Monza position swap still was heavy-handed to this day, and the Piastri camp probably still feels the same way. But McLaren will be able to count on what may well be the strongest driver pairing on the grid to start from a clean slate and do it all over again.

(Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images)

Loser: Alpine

What a whimper to go out on for Alpine in its last grand prix as a factory team, as Viry shutters its in-house F1 power unit production. Pierre Gasly has been a star in qualifying this year with 10 Q3 appearances in 2025, but the spirited Frenchman couldn't avoid sharing the last row of the grid with team-mate Franco Colapinto in Abu Dhabi. It became a race to nowhere, unless you call "being lapped" a valid destination.

Alpine is hoping its decision to shift all focus on 2026 will pay off next year, when it will benefit from Mercedes power units - if rumours of the constructors' head start are to be believed. But 2025? A character-building exercise, and that's putting it kindly, even if the tightest-ever F1 grid has shown there are no genuinely bad teams any longer. When asked about how he will remember the recalcitrant Alpine A525, Gasly replied: "I told them to keep it out of my sight next year."

Winner: Charles Leclerc

Alongside George Russell, Leclerc has been one of the standout drivers of the season without the equipment to reward it. The SF-25 has been particularly difficult to drive, which in a tight field has seen a spiralling Hamilton dumped out in Q1 on three consecutive occasions - four including sprint qualifying.

Leclerc was also manhandling the car on Saturday with an experimental set-up, which left him worried about the race. But he will have been pleasantly surprised to be putting early pressure on the McLaren of Norris, and while he was never going to be able to sustain that, he was a comfortable best of the rest in fourth.

Loser: Mercedes

And that's because the man who qualified there, Russell, suffered a bad start and then never found either the clear air or the pace to do much about it. Russell finished a lone fifth, 46 seconds behind Verstappen with what he called "dreadful" pace from them W16, which is the latest from a lineage of Mercedes ground-effect cars that won't merit the most prominent place in the Mercedes museum.

Likewise, team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli was nowhere in 15th and wasn't all that far away from being lapped. If Mercedes is excited about next, then it's not just about how well advanced its 2026 power unit may or may not be, but also because the last four seasons haven't been particularly enjoyable.

Winner: Esteban Ocon

A honourable mention goes to evergreen Fernando Alonso, who was immense again with his sixth place at the finish. But after a difficult and confusing period, in which all the plaudits rightfully went to rookie team-mate Oliver Bearman, it was nice to see Haas' Ocon bounce back and sign off on a high.

After a dreadful Friday with more mystifying handling issues, which led to Ocon declaring "I don't seem to be knowing how to drive at all", the Frenchman qualified eighth and finished seventh, which proved enough for Haas to secure eighth. There is some frustration that this breakthrough didn't happen earlier, as Aston Martin's seventh place was there for the taking.

(Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images)

Loser: Yuki Tsunoda

Thus ends Tsunoda's five-season stint in F1, the marge majority with Racing Bulls followed by a 22-race run with Red Bull. Whether or not the 25-year-old Japanese driver will be back is unknown - he has time and Honda on his side - but unfortunately he has been the latest casualty of Red Bull's second seat syndrome.

Tsunoda did what he could to play the team game in Abu Dhabi, handing Verstappen a tow on his first Q3 run and trying to hold up Norris in the race, but ultimately didn't make a difference with either. His significant weaving on the straight against Norris was definitely a little bit too much and it was good to see the stewards actually pull someone up on it for once. In the end Tsunoda finished a distant 14th while his team-mate won the race and almost the championship. Tsunoda certainly wasn't miles off Verstappen at all times, but the momentum and consistency was never there.