Twenty one races have ended across nineteen countries and five continents over nine months in the 2025 Formula 1 season so far.
Today Friday the final stretch of the championship begins. Las Vegas, Lusail and Abu Dhabi will decide who will be the Formula 1 world champion for 2025.
Lando Norris leads the championship by 24 points over Oscar Piastri in second and 49 points over the world champion of the last four years Max Verstappen who is in third place.
A lot, true, but three races and a sprint remain and in total 83 points to collect everything is still open.
The start of the season seemed to belong to Piastri with a gap of 34 points from Norris after 15 races in the Netherlands but from there the championship took a turn in the plot.
Accidents retirements and bad races closed for the Australian so far six consecutive races without a win the worst part is that in all of them Norris finished above him reduced the gap and passed him and now leads him in the championship.
The one who also took advantage of Piastri’s recent races is Verstappen.
It seemed that the Dutchman’s focus was not on the asphalt at the beginning of the season.
Without Adrian Newey the car designer in his four championships the Christian Horner saga that included camps inside Red Bull including Verstappen’s father Jos until Horner was eventually dismissed during the season from the team.
From those dismissals it seemed that the world champion began to focus on the track received quiet from the team and collected in the last five races three wins and twice second place and thus reduced the gaps.
What next
The main strip of Las Vegas with low downforce long straights and slow corners can and is even expected to give an advantage to Verstappen who already won the first race there in 2023.
Red Bull Mercedes and Ferrari are the favorites on this track compared to McLaren that struggles and whose best result was sixth place.
Beyond that the ego battle between Norris and Piastri along with the lack of intervention by the team after winning the constructors championship can only help Verstappen reduce points and maybe dramatically win a fifth championship.
In Lusail Qatar which also has many straights similar to the track in Bahrain Verstappen dominates with wins in the last two years and in total won twice out of three races on the track.
And what is important is that in addition to the 25 points at stake in each Grand Prix Qatar also adds a sprint so it will be possible to collect 8 points that can influence and decide the championship.
And finally Abu Dhabi.
A track that is not easy to overtake on although in recent years a significant change was made that adds another place to overtake.
The 2021 Grand Prix echoes in everyone’s mind especially the final decision that determined the championship by the then race director Michael Masi.
A track known in the last decade and a half for deciding championships.
It may be that Verstappen’s story will end already now on Sunday morning.
All Norris needs to eliminate Verstappen from competing for the championship is to finish 10 points more than him so that officially there will be a new champion.
Norris needs to win and for Verstappen to finish third and below or to finish second and for Verstappen to finish at most sixth.
The constructors championship
The constructors championship is closed McLaren the champion this has been known for a while and even before it was official there was no doubt.
Behind them there is a tough battle between three constructors Mercedes Red Bull and Ferrari. 36 points gap between Mercedes second and Ferrari fourth.
Mercedes is the most balanced among the three even with an eighteen year old rookie driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli the German constructor manages to bring points consistently along with podiums and even two wins by George Russell the British driver the senior one in the team.
Red Bull on the other hand is a one driver team literally.
Out of 366 points of the team 341 points were brought by Max Verstappen.
93.16 percent of the points.
The additional 25 points were brought by Yuki Tsunoda while Liam Lawson who started the season in the team until he moved to Racing Bull after two races did not bring a point at all.
At Ferrari it is a bit more balanced with 60 40 in favor of Charles Leclerc.
However trust issues between drivers and race engineers strategies or even just a bad car on specific weekends make them not competitive enough for the major titles.
For the teams the drivers championship is almost not important but the constructors championship where the big money is.
Each position can be a difference of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses.
And the second place is completely open maybe 36 points sounds like a lot but with a maximum total of 144 points left to collect everything is still open.