For the first time in a long time, Red Bull and McLaren carried out the plan they had planned before racing this Sunday, and when that happens, the most normal thing is that the most logical thing happens. It was logical that Lando Norris was crowned world champion in Abu Dhabi, where simply He had to finish on the podium to deactivate the options of Max Verstappen, who found himself on the verge of his fifth title due to not being able to achieve a comeback that, in any case, will go down in the history of Formula 1. Even the eighth victory of the course that the Dutchman signed on the Yas Marina circuit allowed the driver from Hasselt to repeat the triple somersault with a pirouette of 2021, when he stole the wallet of Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton, yes, with the valuable complicity of Career Management. This time there was no decree from the commissioners and Norris did his part, but not without a touch of dizziness that surely made more than one in the papaya racing workshop swallow saliva, gulps! With a smooth start to the race, the championship was decided at the very end of the race and things fell in favor of Norris and McLaren, who this time did not start experimenting with Coca-Cola.
Having two cars with two different strategies was too great an advantage, even for a competitive animal like Verstappen. Placed at the front of the peloton, the current champion raised his foot to generate a procession behind him, with the intention of shaking things up and creating chaos, to the extent possible and normative. After stopping before his rivals (17th lap), Norris was forced to slip into the herd so as not to compromise his chances, which he did without shuddering, no doubt because of the superiority his car gave him. In five laps, the Somerset driver went from ninth place to third place, culminating in a final overtake on Yuki Tsunoda, Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate. The Japanese, who will be fired after this event – he will become a test pilot and will be replaced in 2026 by Isack Hadjar -, received instructions by radio to try to stop Norris as much as possible. “We hope Norris reaches the DRS (moving rear wing) zone during the next lap. Give it everything you’ve got,” they told Tsunoda over the radio. Despite the warning, the Japanese driver only held a one-length lead over the leader of the general classification, who by that time (23rd lap) had already done the most complicated part.
In Abu Dhabi, McLaren recovered from the mistakes of recent dates, in which it dramatically compromised a problem it should have resolved several weeks ago. In Las Vegas, a miscalculation in the erosion of the resin plate under the car led to a very painful disqualification; but probably less than last week’s slap in Qatar. There, McLaren engineers had one of those attacks that sometimes happen to football coaches, an outburst that usually ends in ridicule, and which at Losail added spice to a fight that no one thought could last this long.
With these last two triggers in mind, the British team limited itself to showing common sense, a circumstance which involved guaranteeing that Norris reached the podium, a more than conservative and acceptable objective, if we take into account the speed differential of the MCL39, compared to the rest of the prototypes, apart from Verstappen. Norris limited himself all the time to protecting himself from attacks launched at him from behind and from the workshops. First from George Russell (17th round), then from Charles Leclerc (41st round). Once he had made his second visit to the garages, Norris could breathe when he saw himself third, just behind Oscar Piastri, the third in line in this three-way fight. The Australian, who had the least chance according to the ranking – he was 16 points behind Norris and four behind Verstappen – was sacrificed by his bosses to the point of becoming a wild card, which was not even necessary to withdraw: in the event that Norris had lost third place to Leclerc, McLaren could have asked the Melbourne driver to let himself overtake, so that his teammate could enter the top three again. An end which fortunately did not happen, because it would undoubtedly have tainted a World Championship from which McLaren must benefit. Fernando Alonso retained his sixth place at the start, while Carlos Sainz finished 13th.
With this result, McLaren once again highlights the story of honor and glory that accompanied him until the last decade, following a series of decisions – leaving Mercedes and signing for Honda as a motorist in 2015, when the Japanese company was not ready to return. However, the process of rebuilding the team, driven by Zak Brown’s working group, is undoubtedly having an inspiring effect. McLaren has become the most efficient structure of all, to the point of surpassing Red Bull and a phenomenon of the size of Verstappen, to win again 17 years after the last time (2008), with Hamilton. And this was also the case in the last year of a regulation that Red Bull seemed to have dominated, with four consecutive victories. In 2026, new regulations come into play which should cause a tsunami from which it is unclear who will benefit the most. The fans, of course.
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