Why McLaren team orders won't be tested in F1 finale - What to watch out for in Abu Dhabi GP

Without a straightforward route to becoming champion, in this case, it would be a straightforward call to ask Piastri to move over from second, lose two positions and promote Norris to third, ensuring that McLaren would have a world champion-winning driver.

Someone would still probably be outraged by the call, but it’s just common sense, regardless of McLaren’s philosophy. Imagine the reaction if the team decided to lose the title just because it refused to ask Piastri to give up that position.

Team boss Andrea Stella insisted after Qatar that the team will continue to “race with integrity” in Abu Dhabi.

“We want to be fair to our drivers. We will confirm our racing approach, but certainly what I can say is that if any of the drivers is in condition to pursue the quest to win the title, then we will respect this,” he said.

The championship situation, however, means the team’s year-long stance on equality is unlikely to be stress-tested on Sunday, at least not in a way that would cause real damage to Piastri’s challenge in favour of Norris.

All of that means that McLaren’s year-long crusade to be as fair as possible to its drivers will have succeeded. Unless Verstappen wins the title, that is.

And yes, Verstappen can win it

To be writing that Verstappen can still be champion going into the final F1 race of the season is surreal given how far he was from the McLarens not so long ago.

Since the Italian GP, however, Verstappen has outscored Piastri 191 to 83 and Norris 191 to 133.

The world champion rightly said ahead of the Qatar GP that he is still in contention for the title because McLaren has allowed it, and he will need more help in the final race if he is to complete the greatest comeback in the history of F1.

Twelve points down on Norris, and with McLaren carrying the faster package into the finale, Verstappen doesn’t control his own destiny.

And yet, to dismiss his chances would be to ignore the single most reliable factor of the current season: Verstappen’s capacity to turn slim probabilities into favourable results.

Should Verstappen win on Sunday, Norris will need to finish at least third to secure the crown, and in a finale where strategy swings, tyre degradation and track evolution routinely catch teams out, that is far from guaranteed, especially seeing the problems Norris had in Qatar.

One safety car at the wrong moment, one misjudged tyre call, or one scruffy restart can flip this contest instantly, and Verstappen has usually been the one who handled chaos better than anyone.

McLaren, and particularly Norris, are still very much favourites for Abu Dhabi, but if the opportunity appears, Verstappen is still the driver most likely to seize it. Who is willing to bet against him at this point?

Who else can help Verstappen’s cause?

To be champion and complete his historic comeback, Verstappen is going to need all the help he can get, and not just from McLaren.

Stella may dislike team orders, but he’s not going to sacrifice the title simply to uphold a principle — if Norris can win it and Piastri is already out of contention, the call will be made.

So Verstappen needs either for Norris to have a disastrous race or to have two non-McLaren cars between him, in first place, and the Briton.

In the past, Verstappen could have relied on his team-mate to at least have a shot at disturbing his rivals, but given Yuki Tsunoda‘s performances this year, that sounds like a highly unlikely scenario. As it has been all year, Verstappen is alone in his fight.

On current form, and unless it can produce a magic turnaround, Ferrari can also be ruled out as a factor in the race, at least for the positions which would affect the championship fight.

Which leaves Mercedes as Verstappen’s main hope of inserting itself between him and the McLarens.

Kimi Antonelli was already a factor in Qatar, but only due to McLaren’s strategic blunder, despite the Italian enjoying a strong end to his rookie season.

George Russell has a decent record in Abu Dhabi, and might be Verstappen’s best ally should Mercedes show its good side around Yas Marina.

Of course, all of these scenarios assume that Verstappen will be in a position to win to begin with, which is not a given if McLaren’s form in Abu Dhabi last year is anything to go by.

Goodbye to the current generation of cars

Abu Dhabi will not only decide the championship, but it will also close the book on a generation of Formula 1 cars that promised a revolution and instead delivered a long, uneasy compromise.

The 2022 ruleset was designed to create closer racing through a different aerodynamic philosophy, replacing outwash-heavy designs with ground-effect floors intended to reduce turbulence and encourage wheel-to-wheel fighting.

Three years on, the verdict from the drivers is almost unanimous: these cars will not be missed.

What began with optimism slowly soured as teams discovered how quickly development would drag the regulations back toward the very behaviour the rulemakers were trying to eradicate.

The porpoising crisis of 2022 set the tone, and while most teams eventually tamed the bouncing, the fundamental traits of these cars never truly improved.

Their stiff set-ups, narrow operating windows and the sensitivity of the floor meant they punished even minor wind or temperature shifts, regularly leaving drivers feeling like passengers.

The series did succeed in compressing the field compared to the late hybrid-era extremes, but the trade-off was a generation of cars that proved demanding without being rewarding, fast without being enjoyable, and aerodynamically clever without producing genuinely sustainable close racing.

Whatever happens on Sunday, Yas Marina marks the end of an era that few inside the cockpit will mourn.

The minor battles left to settle

Besides the fight to decide this year’s world champion, there will be other, less significant battlegrounds in Abu Dhabi.

Mercedes looks set to secure the runner-up spot behind McLaren unless something dramatic happens, and the same can be said about Red Bull finishing third ahead of Ferrari.

Racing Bull’s odds of securing sixth place are also very good unless Aston Martin manages to outscore it by 13 points.

Aston faces a threat from Haas — seven points behind — and Sauber, which is 12 points adrift, although some surprising results would be required for that order to change.

In the drivers’ standings, the one remaining question is whether Kimi Antonelli can overtake the man he replaced at Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton, after having slashed the seven-time world champion’s advantage to just two points going into the finale.