Verstappen wins, title fight blown open by McLaren strategy blunder
Reigning Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen kept his 2025 title defence alive into the season finale by winning a Qatar Grand Prix transformed by the maximum stint rule.Pirelli prescribed a 25-lap stint maximum going into the weekend for the 57-lap race, and an early-race incident involving Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly came just at the right time to present the field with the option to pit unde...
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Reigning Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen kept his 2025 title defence alive into the season finale by winning a Qatar Grand Prix transformed by the maximum stint rule.Pirelli prescribed a 25-lap stint maximum going into the weekend for the 57-lap race, and an early-race incident involving Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly came just at the right time to present the field with the option to pit unde...
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Verstappen wins, title fight blown open by McLaren strategy blunder
Reigning F1 champion Max Verstappen kept his 2025 title defence alive into the season finale by winning a Qatar GP transformed by the maximum stint...
Lando Norris faces arguably the most important start of his Formula 1 career in Sunday’s Qatar Grand Prix, before a run to Turn 1 packed with jeopardy for the three championship protagonists.Norris is sandwiched by his two title rivals, poleman Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen in third, for the start of a race that may well be decided by who leads out of the first corner.With both Piastri and Vers...
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Aston Martin owner Lawrence Stroll has appeared to firmly shut the door on any tie-up with Christian Horner in the future, but intrigue continues on how the squad will be run next year.It is understood that Stroll and Horner have been involved in advanced talks for months about the possibility of a senior position for the former Red Bull boss as part of a partnership that would involve equity in t...
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Half of the 20 drivers lining up on the Formula 1 grid in 2025 have set pole position for an F1 grand prix.Lewis Hamilton tops the list for the most pole positions of any individual driver in F1 history, and has almost as many to his name as the other nine drivers on this list combined.Here, we detail how many pole positions each 2025 F1 driver has and where they rank on F1's all-time list.In 2021...
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A McLaren front row lockout, Oscar Piastri ahead of Lando Norris, wasn’t exactly a surprise around the medium-fast interconnected curves of Qatar’s Lusail track. But it wasn’t pre-destined either. George Russell, after finishing second to Piastri in the sprint race this morning, said he was expecting the Red Bull to be fastest because its fast corner performance has been the best through the seaso...
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While some drivers successfully used parc ferme re-opening post-sprint race to change their fate at the Qatar Grand Prix, the misery of others continued in the desert. Here are our picks for the biggest winners and losers from grand prix qualifying. Loser - Lando Norris (2nd)A fraction later on the brakes into Turn 2 and Lando Norris had to bail out, defeated.There was no excuse of being caught in...
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Oscar Piastri beat Lando Norris to pole position for Formula 1’s 2025 Qatar Grand Prix, after Norris made a crucial mistake on his final flying lap in Q3.Norris held a narrow 0.035s edge on Piastri heading into the final runs of qualifying at the Losail F1 circuit, but had to abort his final Q3 lap after understeering wide at Turn 2.There wasn’t enough time left for championship leader Norris to c...
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Oscar Piastri beat his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris to pole position for Formula 1's Qatar Grand Prix. Below you'll find the full results from grand prix qualifying...Oscar Piastri (McLaren) 1m19.387sLando Norris (McLaren) +0.108sMax Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.264sGeorge Russell (Mercedes) +0.275sKimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.459sIsack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) +0.727sCarlos Sainz (Williams) +0.900s Fe...
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Oscar Piastri will start Formula 1's Qatar Grand Prix from pole position ahead of his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris. Gabriel Bortoleto qualified his Sauber in 14th place, but he has to serve a five-place grid penalty for a causing a collision in Las Vegas, which leaves him 19th on the grid. Below you'll find the full starting grid for the Qatar GP... Oscar Piastri (McLaren) Lando Norris (McLaren)...
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Ferrari’s first combined non-score in a Formula 1 sprint race since the 2021 Italian Grand Prix laid bare what Lewis Hamilton described as a “fight like you couldn’t believe” for its drivers in trying to tame their tricky car.Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc had been struggling for pace already in Qatar's sprint qualifying, with Hamilton’s 18th grid slot triggering a call to completely revam...
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A pretty dull F1 sprint at the 2025 Qatar Grand Prix, but still some standout performances to highlight - and some not-so-standout ones...Loser - Ferrari (13th, 17th)Ferrari's sprint radiated strong 'season's over but we still have to field the cars' energy - and the now 22-point gap to Red Bull in the fight for third in the constructors' championship looks virtually unassailable in its current fo...
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Oscar Piastri took a lights-to-flag victory in the 2025 Qatar Grand Prix F1 Sprint, leading home George Russell's Mercedes and McLaren team-mate Lando Norris.ResultsOscar Piastri (McLaren)George Russell (Mercedes)Lando Norris (McLaren)Max Verstappen (Red Bull)Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull)Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes)Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)Carlos Sainz (Williams)Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls)Alex Albon (...
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Oscar Piastri won a processional final sprint race of the 2025 Formula 1 season in Qatar to make a small dent in McLaren team-mate Lando Norris's championship lead.Norris will take a 22-point buffer over Piastri into the final two races of the campaign, with Red Bull driver Max Verstappen a further three back - and a total of 50 still available.Piastri, who hadn't beaten Norris in a race (grand pr...
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Max Verstappen only retains a distant hope of winning a fifth world championship in 2025 but he did at least lead a non-McLaren one-two in the unofficial sprint championship.Combining the results of the sprints in China, Miami, Belgium, Austin, Brazil and Qatar into their own standings - as F1 has mooted doing with the sprints at some point - once again marks Verstappen as F1’s superior Saturday r...
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Only 16 cars will line up on the grid for Formula 1's Qatar Grand Prix sprint.With the chance of scoring remote from the back of the grid in the 19-lap mini-race, three teams have elected to breach parc ferme - on one or both of their cars - in order to make changes.Aston Martin's decision to pull Lance Stroll from the grid promotes Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson from 17th to 16th.The other three...
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Five case studies were the primary focus of a key discussion between Formula 1 drivers and the FIA at the Qatar Grand Prix over how to evolve and enforce divisive racing guidelines in 2026. The annual review meeting to discuss driving standards and penalty guidelines took place at the Lusail track on Thursday evening with 16 drivers joining FIA stewards and other officials.Absent were Lewis Hamilt...
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McLaren's double disqualification from the Las Vegas Grand Prix has reopened a debate in Formula 1 about teams facing harsh consequences for minor rules breaches.From the perspective of McLaren, it feels that getting a car thrown out for having a skid plate that was worn, in Lando Norris's case, by just 0.12mm too much on one side and 0.07mm on the other, was disproportionate.After all, we are tal...
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Adrian Newey has offered a slightly curious explanation for Aston Martin making him team principal next year – suggesting it has happened largely because he was attending the first Formula 1 races of 2026 anyway and it does not add much to his workload.As part of a management shake-up at Aston Martin, its previous team boss and CEO Andy Cowell is moving into a new strategic advisory role to help s...
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Well, we’ve been here before on a Friday this season: McLaren flying while Max Verstappen struggles with an ill-behaved Red Bull he can do nothing with. This feels rather like Friday at Sao Paulo. So we also know not to write off Verstappen’s prospects for the weekend just because of that.What we can say with a fair degree of confidence is that if nothing is found to be physically wrong with the c...
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Pirelli is to ramp up monitoring of tyres at Formula 1’s Qatar Grand Prix after discovering deep gravel cuts in rubber after Friday running. Following the first day of action at Lusail, F1’s tyre supplier said it had spotted several cuts in sets that it had inspected.The situation is enough to put it on alert for both the sprint and Sunday's grand prix in case it triggers the risk of punctures.Pir...
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