Verstappen wins Qatar GP to set up three-way title fight in F1 finale

Max Verstappen won the Qatar Grand Prix ahead of Oscar Piastri to take the 2025 Formula 1 championship fight all the way to wire in Abu Dhabi.

Piastri and team-mate Lando Norris paid the price for not pitting during a safety car period early on, and Verstappen made good use of the misstep to take a comfortable victory and keep his title hopes alive ahead of the final race of the season.

Verstappen was running in second when the safety car came out and duly made the first of his two mandatory pitstops.

Only Piastri and Norris didn’t pit, a decision that essentially eliminated them from the victory fight.

Verstappen crossed the finish line eight seconds ahead of Piastri, with Carlos Sainz completing the podium for Williams after a superb performance.

Norris finished outside of the top three in fourth after a disappointing day, which saw his championship lead shrink to just 12 points from Verstappen and 16 to Piastri.

Kimi Antonelli finished fifth after being overtaken by Norris on the final lap.

Isack Hadjar looked set to finish sixth before suffering a puncture with two laps to go. George Russell inherited the position ahead of the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso.

Charles Leclerc avoided a point-less weekend for Ferrari with eighth position ahead of Liam Lawson in the second Racing Bulls and Red Bull‘s Yuki Tsunoda.

Leclerc’s team-mate Lewis Hamilton finished down in 13th to complete another weekend to forget.

Story of the race

Piastri made another perfect start from pole to easily keep the lead, but Norris lost out to Verstappen, who overtook him around the outside of Turn 1 to move up to second.

Piastri was quick to open a gap to Verstappen to keep him out of DRS range as Norris appeared to take things easy, dropping to over four seconds off his team-mate by lap 5.

But all the gaps were erased on lap 7 with the deployment of the safety car when Nico Hülkenberg crashed out after making contact with Pierre Gasly while trying to overtake at Turn 1.

Hülkenberg retired on the spot, while Piastri had to pit with a puncture.

During the SC period, Piastri and Norris stayed out, but Verstappen – and every other driver but Esteban Ocon – used the opportunity to pit for the first time, everybody fitting another set of mediums.

Norris questioned the decision not to pit, but was told in response than his rivals had lost all flexibility with their strategy by stopping so early given the mandatory two stops.

Piastri nailed the restart to keep a solid lead from Norris and opened a gap of over a second by the time the DRS was enabled on the following lap.

Piastri, in need of pushing given the decision not to pit early, opened a 3.5-second gap to Norris by lap 20, with Verstappen a similar gap behind the Briton.

Piastri pitted at the end of lap 24, with Norris stopping a lap later. As expected, both cars emerged into traffic in, the Australian in fifth and the Briton in sixth, crucially right in front of Alonso.

Leader Verstappen made his mandatory second stop on lap 32, after 25 laps on the mediums, the Dutchman fitting hard tyres. That left Piastri and Norris in first and second.

“This is the bit of the race where we need to be quicker than Max,” Norris was told on the radio. A couple of minutes later, the British driver asked McLaren to check the car for damage after going off the track.

By lap 40, Piastri was over seven seconds ahead of Norris, with Verstappen just two seconds behind the second McLaren and running faster.

After much discussion about the strategy to follow, Piastri pitted on lap 43 of 57 and fitted hard tyres, leaving Norris in the lead but with Verstappen right under his rear wing.

Piastri rejoined in third, 17 seconds behind the leaders.

Norris made his second stop on lap 44, but returned back down in fifth position behind not only Verstappen and Piastri, but also Sainz and Antonelli.

Norris managed to close in on Antonelli, but struggled to overtake until the Italian went wide on the penultimate lap and allowed Norris through.

2025 Qatar GP results