Norris ‘wanted Oscar to win the race – that would have made me even happier’

New world champion Lando Norris said he would have been even happier with yesterday’s result if his team mate had won the race.

Norris clinched the title by finishing third behind Oscar Piastri as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen beat the McLaren drivers to victory in the final race of the season.

McLaren split the strategies between their two drivers as they tried to beat Verstappen. Piastri started on the hard tyres and Norris on mediums.

Piastri overtook his team mate halfway around the first lap, which Norris said worked well for him tactically. “There wasn’t, like, an exact plan, but I was very happy letting Oscar go,” Norris told Sky.

“He started on the hard to try and push Max into doing something. Oscar was just as much part of trying to achieve what we’ve achieved today and I have to thank him for that.”

As Verstappen won the race, Norris needed to finish third to ensure he would claim the world championship. Had Piastri won, fifth place would have been sufficient for Norris.

“I wanted Oscar to win today,” said Norris, “it would have made me even happier seeing Oscar on the top step today, because he would have got his job done of trying to finish second and I would have also got my job through that.

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“So it’s a shame that couldn’t be the case. And honestly, I was really hoping that was going to be the case today.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said they chose different strategies for their drivers because they were unsure how the tyres would perform and wanted to keep Verstappen under pressure.

“We wanted to make sure that Max had something to fight and be careful with,” Stella told the official Formula 1 channel. “Obviously with Oscar on hard we knew that his first stint would be strong and it was a strong stint for Oscar.”

While Piastri kept within range of Verstappen, McLaren had to respond to the threat of drivers behind Norris trying to jump ahead of him. That prompted them to make a second pit stop for him.

“We needed to adapt to a two-stop with Lando. The chat on the pit wall was [that] with Lando we just have to cover Leclerc and we kind of go to a defensive, responsive strategy.

“While with Oscar we tried to go as long as possible, see if we could catch a Safety Car and then see at the end with the medium tyres if we could go and catch Verstappen. But Verstappen once again was too fast and he deserved the victory.”

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2025 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

• Norris vs Verstappen vs Piastri: Full radio transcript from their championship showdown
• Norris’s engineer told him Tsunoda’s move was “classic Red Bull s***housing”
• Norris ‘wanted Oscar to win the race – that would have made me even happier’
• Did Tsunoda try to get Norris penalised – and was the stewards’ call unprecedented?
• Norris expects Piastri ‘will beat me and be world champion in the future’

Browse all 2025 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix articles