Lando Norris had some nervous moments in F1 Abu Dhabi GP, as he was unaware of investigation, while Andrea Stella expands on Lap 1 pass.
Straight up, McLaren’s Norris lost a place to teammate Oscar Piastri in F1 Abu Dhabi GP at Yas Marina circuit. Being on different tyre strategy kind of helped the case as team boss Stella revealed that the overtake was discussed pre-race to make it easy for either of the drivers.
They wanted Piastri to attack Verstappen in the early part to help both the Australian and Norris in the long run. But the Dutchman’s pace was strong enough to counter both the drivers in the grand prix, although it was not enough to do as much to help his fifth F1 title chances.
There was some nervous moments for Norris en-route to third. The big one came against Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda when he tried passing him. He was not told about the investigation, but he was nervous about the defence, recalling how Sergio Perez put up a fight against Lewis Hamilton in F1 2021.
He was in two minds if he should push on or take it conservatively, but he eventually went for it and escaped any bigger damage. The stewards let him off as well, despite passing off-track. He was saved since Tsunoda weaved twice on the racing line which resulted in the off-track move.
On the strategy as well, Stella felt the split choice of McLaren didn’t help Verstappen and Red Bull to try something different on their side. He couldn’t back the field up as well, since it was risky on the layout and unlikely to put Norris in any danger unless there was a safety car or penalty situation.
Lap 1 pass –
Norris: “It’s a bit of both. I mean, you can’t not think of it. But anyway, it’s a long race to the very end. You know, we’ve seen many times anything in Formula 1 can happen, and I just kept pushing until the last two or three laps, [then] I could ease it off a bit, but I was still wanting to fight to the end and that’s what we did. That’s what we had to do this season, you know, with Max chasing us the whole way, with Oscar catching up again at the end. They certainly didn’t make my life easy this year. But yeah, I don’t know. I’m happy.”
Stella: “We did discuss. First of all, we discussed even more than usual that we obviously wanted to have absolutely clean racing in the first lap. But we also discussed that with Oscar on hard tyre, kind of letting, not making life difficult for Oscar, to take the second place and then try and attack Verstappen was a strategic option that Lando was supportive. So it was a good and fair overtaking by Oscar. But in itself, this is a scenario that we discussed, so it wasn’t the hardest of the battles, because there was a general interest from this point of view.”
Nerves in the grand prix –
Norris: “Hell no! It’s way more! This might be my only time—I really hope it’s not, and I am confident it’s not going be my only time of sitting here alone. It’s quite lonely here. No one else sat by my side. But I want to enjoy this moment because not many people ever will get to experience what I’ve managed to experience today. The effect, the feeling it’s had on other people, that makes me so happy. So I’m going to celebrate. Well. My friends, I really hope they’ve all had many drinks already because I want to go and party with them, because this is more about them than it is about me. My mechanics, my engineers, I mean, crap, we got a test on Tuesday morning, but yeah. I know certainly moments through the race today where I was like, “Okay, Tsunoda’s up next.”
“And we knew from before that Tsunoda might try and do it—try and hold me up and make my life difficult like Perez did to Lewis just a few seasons ago. So a lot of that was in our script and estimations already. But I managed to get through pretty quickly. And it was a bit close. It got pretty close. And it’s crazy thinking about it, because they do think about it straight away. You’re like, “Damn, if that was five centimetres closer—it’s over.” And that’s when you get to the end of the race—three laps to go, four laps to go—I stopped taking any kerbs because I’m like, if that just makes one piece of the car undo itself, it’s over. That kind of thing. So, I’m like, “Should I go for fastest lap on the last lap? Maybe.” It’s not worth it.
“A lot of those things go through your head. I had to make some fairly decisive overtakes and commit to a few things. But again, the championship was not won today. It was won by my consistency this year, by my great races over the last four months or so. It could have been an easier race. It also could have been a harder race. But sometimes, yeah—it was just another race on the calendar for me. It was a fun race, but I tried to really treat it as, “Okay, it’s just another race today,” like I said, and tried to stay calm through it, which I feel like I did, and tried to just maximise my result.”
Penalty scare –
Norris: “I had no idea. I had no idea. I didn’t care. I mean, I knew what I did was fine so I had nothing to worry about. Yeah. I was just trying to enjoy the moment. You know, there’s not many people in the world, not many people in Formula 1 ever get to experience what I’ve experienced this season and this year. So, I’m happy for everyone. I’m happy for everyone more than me, but yeah, I’m just crazy happy.”
Strategy, no push from Red Bull –
Stella: “I think Max had said a couple of times before the race that I’m going to do my race, I’m going to win it and I will need just some luck. And I think that’s what he did. At the same time, with the two McLarens starting with split tyres, it would have made, I think, any attempt to control the race a bit more difficult. So, I’m not necessarily that surprised that it didn’t happen, and I think it’s also a good thing that it didn’t happen. It was a good race, it was an interesting race, one stop, two stops. The Red Bull proved to be the fastest car once again. I think they have clearly done a very good job of overcoming some difficulties from a performance point of view in the middle of the season. They gave us an enormous challenge to beat them on track. Often we didn’t manage to do so, but it’s important that we managed to do it in the championship we landed.
“So, not surprised in any way, not even surprised that they are finishing the season being probably the best car. Once we saw the result of qualifying, we started to think about what the start tyre would have meant in terms of strategic options. I think everyone entered the race today not clear whether it was a 1 or a 2, but I think everyone was clear that the hard would have been a good tyre. And if there’s somebody on a hard chasing somebody on a medium, the one on the medium needs to push and at some stage might have to pit. We were if anything a bit surprised that Max could go so long and so fast on the medium tyres. It’s always a kind of a collective decision, because drivers bring their point of view, the strategy team bring their point of view, the race engineers, myself as a team principal.
“Zak actually said he was happy that we respected the tyres, so final sign off. So it’s a collective decision which is made through several conversations, it’s not even a single meeting. You sometimes have a hypothesis on Saturday, you go, you sleep on it, in the morning somebody comes and we consider this. The decision was made a couple of hours before the race. There’s no chance that you can do that [with backing up], because the car approaching is so much faster, you have a double DRS straight. To play games, you have to do something that is not the way we go racing. You will not see this at McLaren.”
Here’s Lando Norris losing out to Oscar Piastri: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-abu-dhabi-grand-prix-piastri-roars-around-norris-on-lap-1-to-grab-p2.1850855342932859976
Here’s moment with Yuki Tsunoda: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-abu-dhabi-grand-prix-norris-runs-off-track-to-pass-tsunoda-for-p3.1850858075357532879
Here’s moment of F1 title win: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-abu-dhabi-grand-prix-norris-crosses-the-line-to-become-the-new-world-champion.1850867486584836419
Here’s how F1 Abu Dhabi GP panned out
Here’s Max Verstappen, Laurent Mekies on strategy
