Ferrari has taken the constructors championship down to the wire and is doing its best to trip itself up over it.
Needing to overhaul a 21-point gap, Ferrari will start third and 19th behind a McLaren front-row, with Lando Norris ahead of Oscar Piastri.
The mountain has never looked so steep, and Ferrari now needs a miracle to climb it.
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If the Italian team is to be disappointed, at least it won’t be the only team to end the season on a low note. Despite improved form, Lewis Hamilton’s last weekend Mercedes is off to a terrible start, with the Briton set to start from the lower reaches of the grid after a qualifying disaster.
Further back, Jack Doohan will start his first grand prix 17th, but his Alpine team is still on track to finish a lucrative sixth in the constructors championship.
QUALIFYING DISASTER COMPOUNDS FERRARI MISERY
Just when you thought Ferrari’s weekend couldn’t get any worse, the Italian team finds a new bottom to the barrel.
On Friday Charles Leclerc suffered food poisoning, lost half an hour of practice to a battery change and then copped a 10-place grid for said change.
On Saturday he was knocked out of qualifying in 14th after having what was the fastest lap of the day up to that point deleted for a fractional infringement of track limits at the first turn.
Ferrari needs an almost perfect result on Sunday to have any hope of overturning its 21-point title deficit. Instead Leclerc will line up 19th on the grid, sandwiched between two Williams drivers and a long way from the points, never mind the podium.
With Carlos Sainz starting third behind a McLaren front-row lockout, Ferrari will need either deep misfortune to befall Norris and Piastri or what would have to be the most remarkable race of the season to win the championship from here.
Or, of course, a miracle.
“I believe in miracles,” Leclerc said, per ESPN.
“It makes our life very difficult, that’s for sure, but with the 10-place grid penalty, it was always going to be difficult.
“But I see an opportunity to do something very special, and I’ll do my best to do it.
“My goal remains the same: it’s to win the constructors championship. I still believe in it as much as I did yesterday, even though on paper obviously it’s going to be hard.
“I’ll believe in it until the very last lap. Anything can happen.”
There was some speculation on Saturday night that Ferrari might give Leclerc a fresh power unit for the race, allowing him to run at maximum power for Sunday.
However, it would come in exchange for starting from pit lane, and given the Monegasque already knew he’d be starting down the order with his pre-existing penalty, there are unlikely to be any additional set-up changes that could make it a more valuable proposition.
Team principal Frédéric Vasseur appeared to pour cold water on the idea after the race,
“I don’t actually think there’s a huge advantage in changing the engine,” he said, per Motorsport. “At least not a huge advantage in putting in a new one.”
With overtaking notoriously difficult in Yas Marina anyway, even with a power advantage, Leclerc is likely to rely on a novel strategy to try to rise up the order and then hope circumstances play to Ferrari’s favour.
Leclerc hit with penalty in Practice | 01:43
McLAREN HINTS AT TEAM ORDERS TO SECURE TITLE AHEAD OF ALL-OR-NOTHING SAINZ
With Ferrari on the ropes, McLaren has one hand on the constructors championship trophy.
The team stands on the cusp of history, having not won F1’s biggest collective prize since 1998.
With Norris leading Piastri in a front-row lockout, the team has a double chance to snuff out what little hope Ferrari still has. Having just one car on the podium would make it almost impossible for the Italian team to overturn the 21-point gap regardless of how where Sainz and Leclerc finish.
It’s the third time McLaren has locked out the front row of the grid this season.
But that might give management pause for thought.
The previous two occasions were the Hungarian and Italian grands prix.
Norris started ahead of Piastri at both races, but at both events Piastri barged ahead within a matter of corners.
In Hungary that precipitated the team orders debacle of the final stint that threatened to overshadow Piastri’s first grand prix victory.
In Italy Piastri embarrassed his teammate with a daring move at the second chicane, and their ensuing battle left them exposed to a Leclerc one-stop strategy that won him the race.
Despite McLaren’s comfortable points buffer this weekend, the last thing it’ll want it to be fretting about its two cars battling each other and risking damage — or worse.
“We’ll come with some rules overnight,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown told Sky Sports. “But drivers obviously know exactly what’s going on, so I don’t think we’ll need to tell them anything.
“I think they know what the reminder is.”
Team boss Andrea Stella said he expected both drivers to be receptive to requests to play the team game on Sunday.
“Any time we had this conversation I was always very positively surprised by how easy it was to get the point across,” he said, per Planet F1. “This will be the same conversation tomorrow.”
And that’ll be especially important with Carlos Sainz starting directly behind them.
Not only will Sainz be targeting maximum points for Ferrari, but it’s also his last weekend racing for the Italian team before taking up a place at backmarker Williams. This could be his last chance to win or finish on the podium for years.
“Nothing to lose,” he summed up. “I want to make sure I leave the weekend with no regrets and with never feeling that I could have not given myself that chance.
“I feel like I’ve put myself in a good position for tomorrow.”
Doohan feels no pressure ahead of debut | 01:03
HAMILTON PAIN ON FINAL MERCEDES WEEKEND
Despite the pain and disappointment of Lewis Hamilton’s last months with Mercedes, his final grand prix in silver appeared to be offering him a decent weekend. While the car hasn’t suited the track or conditions, Hamilton has been getting the most out of it all weekend, and a top-five grid spot and an outside chance at the podium seemed like a realistic target.
And then qualifying started.
After some opening laps on the hard tyre, Mercedes sent both Hamilton and George Russell out extremely late in the 18-minute segment to set the time that would see them progress into Q2.
It ensured they were on track when the circuit was at its fastest, but it left them vulnerable to mistakes and bad luck.
Hamilton only just got the start line in time to set a lap in the first place, which meant his tyres weren’t optimally prepared.
He nonetheless was set to comfortably make the cut until turn 14, where Kevin Magnussen, in an attempt to get out of his way, knocked over the apex bollard, which rolled across the track and under Hamilton’s car.
He lost more than 0.2 seconds in the final sector compared to his personal best — which had been set on the hard tyre — and was eliminated in 18th.
“You couldn’t make it up, you really couldn’t, but it is what it is,” said. “We gave it everything. I gave it everything.
“The car was in a good place. Every practice session went well. I was ahead of my teammate all weekend.
“But when we got to qualifying I think as a team we didn’t perform in terms of the timing.
“I was the last car on track and ran out of time ultimately, and then I got the bollard at the end, which went under the car and I lost all downforce.
“It couldn’t have gone worse, really.”
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was distraught that the final qualifying session of the most successful team-driver partnership in F1 history had ended so badly.
“I just need to apologise to Lewis,” he told Sky Sports. “He was the quicker guy with the set-up we chose on the car to experiment for next year. We totally let him down.
“Idiotic mistake of not going earlier. Inexcusable.
“I’ve rarely been so down about what has happened. Maybe it summarises the last races we’ve had with him, but this is the worst part of it, because it was just idiotic.
“You don’t risk so much in a Q1 where we easily had the pace to make it out there. Our most valuable racing driver ever, the most valuable greatest driver of this sport, gets out in Q1 because we make a mistake.
“It doesn’t ruin the legacy we had with him but I can only say sorry to him.”
Hamilton will start 16th on the grid after penalties, but given how notoriously difficult overtaking is around Yas Marina, he said it would be “amazing” just to finish in the points.
It’s not the ending his Mercedes career deserves, but perhaps it’s the final race his and the team’s 2024 campaign warrants.
JACK DOOHAN’S QUALIFYING PAIN AS ALPINE EYES SIXTH IN THE STANDINGS
Jack Doohan showed the massive improvement in FP3 that he’d promised on the previous day. Taking a big step forward on the soft tyre overnight, he was just 0.026 seconds slower than teammate Pierre Gasly.
Despite it being his rookie weekend, a stronger than expected qualifying result suddenly looked like it was on the cards.
But Q1 offered little for the Australian debutant, who was eliminated last, his margin to Gasly 0.557 seconds.
He’ll start 17th after penalties.
But his final time was misleading.
In a frenetic end to Q1, Doohan ended up caught in traffic on his out-lap. Hampered by slower cars, he the had to put his foot down just to make it to the start line in time to start his final lap getting there with just seconds to spare.
It was a similar to Hamilton’s situation, the Australian just ahead of the Briton on the track.
By comparison, Gasly was just finishing his lap in relative calm as Doohan started his, this being the origin of the massive margin.
Comparing their first flying laps showed them separated by just 0.111 seconds.
Doohan’s lowly grid spot will do little for Alpine’s aim to lock down sixth in the constructors championship ahead of Haas, but the blow is at least neutralised by Kevin Magnussen starting only three places further up the grid after damaging his car striking a bollard in Q1.
The French-owned team will also benefit from Nico Hülkenberg copping a three-place grid penalty for overtaking cars while exiting pit lane, an act allowed at other tracks but explicitly banned by the race director through Abu Dhabi’s unique tunnel.
The penalty drops Hülkenberg to seventh and promoted Gasly to fifth.
Alpine leads Haas by five points. If the drivers finish where they start, Enstone will seal the deal and reap the estimated $15 million bump in prize money for finishing ahead.
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