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The penultimate round of the 2025 Formula 1 season gave us another twist in the title race - and set up a three-way showdown for this weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Here's everything we learned from an eventful - albeit largely processional - Qatar GP.
Everyone else saw the safety car coming
Numerous team bosses, including Toto Wolff and Fred Vasseur, expressed their surprise about McLaren's decision not to pit during that race-changing safety car.
That's because every other team had planned for such a scenario.
Teams ran Monaco-like simulations that simulate what would happen if a safety car, virtual safety car, or other race-altering event occurred during a specific lap of the race.
Pirelli mandated 25-lap-maximum stints in Qatar's 57-lap contest. So, before the race, there was a feeling that a lap-seven safety car would have turned the race into the most boring one imaginable by forcing everybody to pit at the exact point from which two 25-lap stints were possible to get to the finish.
"And that's exactly what happened! So you couldn't have written it if you tried," said George Russell.
"It was just remarkable then that having discussed it, [the possibility of a] safety car on lap seven, there was a safety car on lap seven," said Aston Martin's engineer Mike Krack. "But I think every team does that. Every team discusses different scenarios."
And Vasseur added: "Honestly I didn't understand because for me it was...obvious to pit lap seven if there was a safety car." - Samarth Kanal
Piastri vindicated over slump reasons
How you view Oscar Piastri's revival in the Qatar GP depends on which side of the Papaya fence you're on.
If you think Piastri was being compromised in some way to help Lando Norris, you may suspect that has now stopped since Norris built a healthy points buffer.
If you believe what McLaren and Piastri have been saying for a few weeks, though, it was actually just a vindication of the facts.
The Lusail circuit has a very different combination of layout, level of grip and car demands that are more in line with Piastri's natural style, so it was no surprise that he was almost effortlessly quick again - and this time it was Norris making small mistakes trying to match him.
Plus, as Piastri liked to point out, circumstances in Brazil and Las Vegas made those two particular weekends look a lot worse than they were for him.
The recent run has been damaging for Piastri but he and McLaren were always confident a 'sudden' return to form was possible.
Qatar proved that: it's just galling he didn't get the result and the win he deserved, which will surely sting as much or more than a handful of lost points (unless of course they make the final difference). - Scott Mitchell-Malm
Safety car instantly doomed Norris
Norris was clearly the more circumspect of the two stitched-up McLaren drivers post-race in Qatar, because he lost out least in terms of result.
Piastri lost a win, and a bigger gain to the championship lead, and has been jumped by Verstappen in the championship. Through no fault of his own.
Norris lost third as overtaking was impossible. He was on course to ship 10 points to Piastri and three to Verstappen in this grand prix - yes the gap to Piastri is a bit kinder than it could have been but now Verstappen's right there.
For Piastri, what stings is a rightful victory being taken away and a small points swing. For Norris...maybe it's easier to take because McLaren's decision wasn't the main problem?
Given McLaren was never likely to split strategies and risk completely derailing one driver's race, Norris was doomed as soon as the safety car was called on that lap. Despite McLaren's certainty, it was obvious that the majority would take the cheap pitstop and then run two mandated 25-lap stints to the end.
So, either McLaren pit both cars and Norris would likely lose a lot of time and places waiting to rejoin the queue of cars filing in and out, given McLaren's position at the start of the pitlane. Or, McLaren would keep both cars out, and Norris loses ground the way he did anyway.
As Norris said: "I would've been had over either way." - SMM
Lusail could now be F1's worst track for racing
While the Qatar GP was exciting from a strategy (blunder) point of view, what last weekend proved was that Lusail is not good for racing.
In fact, as Lewis Hamilton lamented afterwards, it probably joins Monaco as the worst circuit on the calendar for overtaking - which is a shame because the drivers love pushing their cars to the limit there.
It's long been known that the quick corners out the back are not ideal for following each other, especially amid the dirty-air decay that has been witnessed this season.
But there are other elements that serve to make passing so difficult at Lusail. The DRS zone on the main straight was too short to be effective this year, with several drivers unhappy that the FIA had not extended it for 2025.
Furthermore, as Hamilton lamented, the pitlane seems to have been needlessly extended, so that makes the tyre change time too long - further hampering the spectacle.
And things were then worsened by the 25-lap tyre limit that locked everyone (apart from McLaren) into the same strategy.
Things may improve for 2026 with the different ways the new generation of cars will overtake, but the best solution surely to lift the racing at Lusail would be to tighten up the first corner into a hairpin so we have a proper braking zone. - Jon Noble
Alpine is officially last
This season was Alpine's worst in this identity.
Having left Qatar on 22 points, 46 behind Sauber, Alpine is officially last in the 2025 standings.
It's the Enstone team's worst season since 2016 when Jolyon Palmer and Kevin Magnussen managed eight points over 21 races. But even in 2016, Sauber and Manor still finished behind Renault in the championship.
In fact, neither Alpine nor Renault had ever finished last in the constructors' standings - until 2025.
An unceremonious farewell to the team's works status. - SK
Ferrari horror show a double-whammy of issues
Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Hamilton seemed relieved on Sunday night that the Qatar GP weekend was over.
With both drivers saying there had not been one competitive lap over the weekend, it was arguably the team's worst outing from a performance point of view in 2025.
Part of its struggles are a consequence of the decision it says it made in April to switch off development of its 2025 car.
With other teams having continued to push on with upgrades, there is no hiding from the fact that Ferrari has slipped back into the ultra-competitive midfield.
As Hamilton said: "It's highlighted how undeveloped we are at this point of the year...I was nearly getting overtaken by the Stake [Sauber] car, and I couldn't keep up with the Williams."
But there appears to have been another factor at play. Team principal Vasseur suggests the extremely high tyre pressures mandated by Pirelli for Qatar totally wrecked the SF-25's performance.
It is well understood that the Ferrari car is sensitive to ride height, and its narrow operating window means that when it falls out of that, the consequences can be massive.
The team certainly hopes that this is the explanation for its performance, and that Abu Dhabi will at least allow it to return to fighting near the front.
If not, as Leclerc said: "It will be quite depressing to go on holidays with two weekends just like this. That will be very bad." - JN
Williams's big decision pays off
As a midfield team, it's never an easy decision to make to end development of your current car and switch focus to the following year knowing that you could be leaving millions of pounds on the table in constructors' championship prize money.
Luckily for Williams, its decision to do just that and end windtunnel development back in April has paid dividends.
It's been capped off by two Carlos Sainz podiums, in Baku in September and now in Qatar.
Most of Sainz's work on Sunday was done by jumping Kimi Antonelli during the safety car pitstops on lap seven, and Norris running the errant McLaren strategy gave him another position.
It's an enormous result for Williams as Sainz believed this weekend could be the toughest of the year because it features corners with lots of braking and acceleration combinations, which is usually a weakness of the FW47.
A massive amount of trial and error and sim work since the most recent race on a track with similar characteristics, in Hungary in August, in preparation for Qatar unlocked the car, allowing Sainz to take eighth in the sprint and third in the race itself.
The safety car ruined Alex Albon's strategy as one of only two cars to start on the hard tyre, which he needed to do a long first stint on, so he was limited to 11th.
Still, even with a point-less Albon weekend, Williams officially sealed fifth in the constructors' championship - and is a team with a lot to be excited about in 2026. - Jack Benyon
Racing Bulls' deja vu
A late front wing failure cost a gutted Isack Hadjar a deserved sixth place - something that might have been a case of deja vu for some in Red Bull's second team.
Hadjar said he could see the front wing endplate "going crazy down the straight" 10 laps from the end, but the team was confident it would be OK.
Four years ago at the same track, in the team's AlphaTauri era, Pierre Gasly got a puncture from his front wing breaking in qualifying. That was suspected to be a result of the loads through the kerbs that get used at high speed - which is exactly what the team said likely broke the front wheel deflector on Hadjar's car.
The Hadjar setback gave Aston Martin a nice boost as it let Fernando Alonso finish seventh despite spinning - but it also promoted Liam Lawson to ninth, so Racing Bulls at least salvaged a couple of points from this race.
It's now a little closer to sealing sixth in the championship, with Aston Martin now the next big threat after leapfrogging a wasteful Haas (more on that below). - SMM
Haas let down by execution again
Haas could and perhaps should be sixth in the constructors' championship had it not failed to execute races successfully on multiple occasions in 2025. Qatar was another instalment in this difficult story.
This wasn't one of those weekends where Haas was blisteringly quick, but releasing Ollie Bearman from his grand prix pitstop before his left rear was attached ruined his race while he had been running 10th.
With Hadjar's late puncture and damage, plus an Alonso spin, Bearman may have even been able to finish as high as eighth, but at the very least a point was there for the taking, even without hypotheticals.
Esteban Ocon was pinged for a jump start even though he said he'd done 100-plus starts and always had the same procedure. Then, serving the resulting five-second penalty, one of his crew touched the car with a wheel gun before the five seconds was up - meaning he had to serve the penalty again. He finished 15th.
Haas had scored points at the previous five events, but this weekend took the wind out of its sails with more team errors. Not only did it lose points to Racing Bulls and Aston Martin (which jumped back ahead of Haas) in the constructors' battle for sixth, but Haas is only five points ahead of Sauber heading into the last race. - JB
