QATAR SHOWDOWN: NORRIS CHASES FIRST WORLD TITLE AS RIVALS PREPARE FOR A DESERT FIGHT
The 2025 Formula 1 championship returns to a very warm and fast Lusail, in Qatar. This weekend, Lando Norris arrives at Lusail with the chance to be crowned world champion for the first time in his career. His season has been a great demonstration of consistency and a maturing calm under pressure.
He stands on the brink of his first world title, needing only to outscore his closest rivals, Verstappen and Piastri, by 2 points to turn this night race into the ultimate coronation.
The weekend starts on Friday with one practice session and then Sprint Qualifying, which decides the grid for Saturday’s short race. On Saturday morning the Sprint Race takes place, and Piastri and Verstappen will probably push hard to take points away from Norris.
In the afternoon there’s normal qualifying for Sunday’s main race. This session could decide the whole championship, which looked like it would be dominated by McLaren, but Verstappen has kept the fight alive.
There’s also a tight battle for second place in the Constructors’ standings. Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari are all close and trying to finish behind the very strong, though not perfect, McLaren team led by Zak Brown and Andrea Stella.
What does Pirelli bring to Qatar
Lusail gets the hardest Pirelli tyres for the second-to-last race of the 2025 Formula 1 season. Because this track is very tough on tyres, FIA and Pirelli introduced a special rule that limits how many laps each set can run, which will be of 25. That means every driver must make at least two pit stops, seen that the race is 57 laps long.
The race comes just one week after Las Vegas, but the conditions are completely different. Vegas was cold, Qatar will be hot and humid, more like Singapore. The fast corners in Lusail put a lot of stress on the tyres, especially the sequence from Turns 12 to 14. The smooth asphalt also tends to cause graining, which increases tyre wear.
Only the C1, C2 and C3 compounds will be used, the same hard set chosen in previous Qatar races and in a few other events this season, like Japan, Bahrain and Spain.
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