Formula 1 has a title showdown on its hands, but it won’t involve Red Bull Racing.
McLaren leads Ferrari in the constructors standings by 21 points. Despite expectations to the contrary, Ferrari is leaving Qatar having taken another nibble out of its points deficit, setting up an all-or-nothing last race in Abu Dhabi.
Red Bull Racing, despite Max Verstappen winning the race, has been eliminated.
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The reigning constructors champion has just one more race before it loses its sought-after status, having fallen 59 points adrift with only 44 points remaining.
Alarmingly it’s 38 points behind Ferrari, making even second place a long shot.
But the fight is on between old foes McLaren and Ferrari, and the journey to the final race was full of twists and turns in Lusail.
CONTROVERSY GRIPS RACE CONTROL OVER DEBRIS BUNGLING
Less than three months ago FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem set up a new department inside the governing body to train the next generation of race officials.
“The issue is that we don’t have [enough] race directors,” he told Autosport. “Can you just simply go and order them? No.
“I said it in one of my tweets — I said, ‘You cannot order them on Amazon or Google’. No, you have to make them, you have to train them.”
It was indisputably true, but it wasn’t a strong enough sentiment to prevent the dismissal over Niels Wittich, the F1 race director, on the eve of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Rui Marques, the Formula 2 and Formula 3 race director, has been required to replace him for the final three rounds of the season.
Vegas, one of the most complicated races on the calendar, thankfully went off without a hitch, but Qatar proved more challenging thanks to Alex Albon’s selfdestructing Williams car, which shed its right-side mirror on the front straight.
A mirror isn’t a massive object, but it’s big enough to cause considerable damage given cars were reaching beyond 320 kilometres per hour at the end of the straight.
It bizarrely went uncleared for more than five laps with only yellow flags alerting drivers to the potential hazard.
Valtteri Bottas was the first to strike it, blowing it up in a shower of carbon fibre shards.
Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz subsequently picked up punctures, which in turn forced race control to finally deploy a safety car.
“It’s easy in hindsight to say it should’ve been cleared,” George Russell, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers Association, told Sky Sports. “But the problem is you can’t put a virtual safety car because the cars are all spread evenly around the track, and then it’s probably too extreme to put a safety car for a tiny bit of debris, so it’s not an easy call.”
He’s right to say it was a tricky call, but a call still had to be made. Not making a call had just as significant effect on the race.
It would be unfair to pin Marques for the lack of decision-making. Not only is he so new to the role, but because of Wittich’s sudden departure, Marques was still directing both Formula 2 and F1 Academy over the weekend, a packed and stressful schedule.
It would also totally neglect that a long-running theme in race control dating back to the days of Michael Masi is that the director is insufficiently supported to fully execute their role.
F1 was lucky the incident wasn’t more serious and perhaps that it didn’t influence the race more significantly, but there’s no escaping that the entire affair showed up unaddressed flaws in the way the sport is governed.
The moment Verstappen snitches on Lando | 01:01
McLAREN BLASTS FIA OVER NORRIS PENALTY AS TITLE RACE TIGHTENS
Race control wasn’t the only branch of the FIA that mired itself in controversy this weekend. The stewards had a field day, so much so that they opened their first investigation before the race had even started — into Oscar Piastri driving erratically on the reconnaissance lap, for which he received a warning.
Overall they handed down eight penalties for the evening, but none was larger or more consequential than Lando Norris’s 10-second stop-go penalty.
It’s the harshest penalty the stewards can levy before disqualification.
His offence was undeniably serious by the letter of the law: ignoring double waved yellow flags.
Double waved yellows indicate to a driver that there’s a hazard on track and that they should be prepared to change direction or stop. Ignoring them is a serious breach of safety protocol.
Verstappen, at the time defending against Norris, noted that the Briton ate considerably into his lead at the start of lap 30, when the double yellows were first deployed. He told his team, which reported it to the stewards.
The stewards agreed there’d been a breach and slapped Norris with the race-destroying penalty with less than 20 laps to go, ensuring he finished no higher than 10th.
The penalty was chosen based on a guidance document that considers ignoring double waved yellows an extremely serious offence — understandable given they’re always used to control on-track safety. The stewards have little leeway without extenuating circumstances.
But it was nonetheless controversial for a few reasons.
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The first was the appropriateness of the flags as a coverall to begin with when the debris should have been cleared. There’s also an alternative flag, the yellow and red striped flag, that specifically designates fluid or debris on the track that could’ve been used.
Then there’s the fact that Norris was levied such a significant penalty when drivers can often get away with a relatively small lift as acknowledgment that they’d seen the flags — though it should be noted that the Briton arrived at the first turn travelling 64 kilometres per hour faster than Verstappen did, no small difference.
And while it’s unclear what the status of the waving flags and light panels was down the front straight, the timing screens and official FIA messaging system suggested the flags were shown and withdrawn in cycles, adding confusion to the matter.
It added up to an injustice for McLaren team principal Andrea Stella.
“In the application of the penalty I think we have lost any sense of proportion and any sense of specificity,” he told Sky Sports.
“Can we look specifically at the infringement, at the level of danger associated to the situation — and the fact the yellow flag was removed — and then judge using these kinds of elements proportionally and specifically rather than taking a look at any kind of rule book probably full of dust on top of it and then applying it without any sense of a critical approach.
“From this point of view I think there’s an opportunity to do better from the FIA.”
Even Mercedes boss Toto Wolff sympathised with McLaren.
“The penalties were brutal, particularly to McLaren,” he told Sky Sports. It could cost them the championship.”
And it’s here that the effect is most keenly felt.
Rather than open a greater lead over Ferrari, as it had been primed to do, McLaren leaves Qatar with its advantage reduced to 21 points with one round remaining — still comfortable but far from insurmountable.
Norris has also had his lead over Charles Leclerc for second in the championship cut to eight points.
For what it’s worth, Norris took responsibility for the penalty, preferring not to make excuses for missing the flags.
“I couldn’t have done a worse job than I did today,” he told Sky Sports. “I’ve made the job of the team much harder than it needs to be.
“The team are doing a great job, but I’ve let them down.”
‘He just brake-tested me again…’ | 00:43
HAMILTON SHOCKER SETS UP SAD ENDING TO MERCEDES TENURE
Lewis Hamilton began this weekend with a startling admission on Friday.
“I’m definitely not fast anymore,” he said after being blitzed by teammate George Russell in sprint qualifying.
He then rowed that back somewhat on Saturday by saying: “I know I’ve still got it. It’s just the car won’t go faster.
“I definitely know I’ve got it still; it’s not a question in my mind.”
It was hard to tally the two beyond perhaps a vague accusation that he’s not getting an equal opportunity from Mercedes to do his best — an improbable allegation against a team with which Hamilton has forged the greatest partnership in Formula 1 history.
“I don’t have an answer for you,” he said. “At this point, I really don’t care. I just want to get through these last couple of races and do my job, turn up, and I’m looking forward to the winter break.”
If his intention was to phone it in, he certainly achieved it in the race.
It started terribly, with a jump start earning him a five-second penalty.
He was uncompetitive in the first stint of the race, which was subsequently ruined by picking up a puncture anyway, almost certainly due to the debris down the front straight.
He was later pinged for speeding through the pit lane during the ensuing safety car period, appearing to forget to engage the pit lane speed limiter as the safety car led the pack through the lane — to be fair to him, an uncommon occurrence.
With his race ruined and the chance of points remote, Hamilton radioed his team requesting to retire from the race, only to be told to finish the job and take the chequered flag.
With Lusail having been Mercedes’s last best chance of the season to collect a big result, Hamilton’s career in silver is almost certain to end with a sad whimper.
“I don’t think we’re going to end up in a high,” he said, per Autosport. “It will end, and I think what’s important is how we turn up, we give it our best shot.
“I don’t anticipate a particularly much better weekend [in Abu Dhabi] than we’ve had in the past weekends, but naturally I’ll try.
“Go in with low hopes and maybe come out with a better result – it doesn’t really make a big difference either way.
“It’s been a rollercoaster ride of emotions, and I’m just grateful I’m still standing and I’m still okay.
“I’ve had great races in my life and I’ve had bad races in my life — not too many bad ones.”
But this was certainly one of those.
‘Lost all respect’ – Max blasts Russell | 00:41
VERSTAPPEN BLASTS RUSSELL OVER STEWARDS SNITCHING
The seeds of Verstappen’s ninth win of the season were sown on Saturday night, when he was penalised off pole position because of a strange run-in with Russell.
The fast-moving Russell had rapidly closed on the slow-moving Verstappen through the super fast triple apex. Verstappen was on the racing line, and Russell’s evasive action sent him off track.
It was a highly unusual situation given both were preparing their tyres, meaning neither had a fast lap spoiled by the near miss.
Recognising the strange circumstances, the stewards demoted Verstappen one place on the grid for driving “unnecessarily slowly” rather than impeding.
But it incensed the Dutchman all the same.
“I couldn’t believe that I got it,” he said after the race, clearly still worked up about it. “I think that’s the first time that in a slow lap someone has been penalised.
“I really spoke about valid reasons of what happened, and it was clear cut that around me there were different scenarios going on as well, with people having colder tyres and stuff, so they had to push anyway, and I didn’t want to then cause a scene into a last corner and then no one had a lap, so very surprising.
“I just felt like I was talking to a brick wall, so there was not much that was possible for whatever reason.”
But he reserved particular invective for Russell, who he said lobbied hard against him in a post-qualifying hearing in a bid to inherit pole position.
“I was quite surprised when sitting there in the stewards room, what was all going on,” he said. “Honestly, it was very disappointing because I think we all respect each other a lot.
“Of course I’ve been in that meeting room many times in my life, in my career, with people that I’ve raced, and I’ve never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard.
“I lost all respect [for him].”
In the end it backfired on Russell. Despite Verstappen starting on the dirty side of the grid, his launch was flawless to pinch the lead at the first turn. From there he marched on to victory, while Russell’s race unravelled.
“He carried that motivation into the race, and that was clearly evident,” team boss Christian Horner told Sky Sports.
“He got an amazing start, and the whole first-second-third-gear phase of the start — he was going to be the only car that was going to come out of turn 1 in the lead, and I think you could sense that George could sense that as well.”
Verstappen’s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, summed it up better.
“Karma is a wonderful thing,” he said. “You definitely did not drive unnecessarily slowly today.”
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