What we learned from Friday practice at the 2025 F1 Abu Dhabi GP

Twenty-three races firmly appended to the history books, with just one more to go: it all comes down to the wire in Abu Dhabi. It's a familiar situation, but one cannot settle on superstition and statistics. It's a race like any other, or so the drivers will say - but one where motorsport's greatest prize sits in wait. Formula 1's world championship trophy yearns to be picked up by one of our three protagonists.

Will this be Max Verstappen's greatest title triumph yet, one to further gild his already-huge collection of accolades? Can Lando Norris resist the pressure, and become the first driver since Emerson Fittipaldi in 1974 to win a three-way title scrap from the lead of the championship? Or will Oscar Piastri tread in the footsteps of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel and snatch the crown from third in the standings?

Given our crystal ball is still in the repair shop (don't ask, there was an incident), we'll have to wait until Sunday to find out. What we can do, however, is work out where things stand on paper. The progression of Abu Dhabi's grand prix weekend is a curious one, since there's only really one representative session: FP2. The FP1 and FP3 daylight sessions offer some degree of insight, but conditions change demonstrably as the sun slips behind the Yas Marina horizon and the circuit cools down.

Hence, the teams ran to a slightly different run-plan through FP2. Although it played host to the usual sequence of sighter laps to qualifying sims to long runs, the hot-lap stage had been truncated in favour of more long runs. That's good news for us, because we can get more of a picture of how each team stacks up across the stints.

The headlines were as follows. Norris was quickest in both sessions: by a slender margin over Verstappen in FP1, then with a meatier advantage in FP2 as he stitched a handy soft-tyre run together.

Verstappen found more understeer in FP2, apparently a function of his set-up changes for the second session rather than due to the changing track conditions. McLaren did find a bit more performance over a single soft-tyre lap, but it can't rest on its laurels; Norris wants more from the car to ensure he can make it to Dubai with the title in tow by the time Verstappen crosses the line on Sunday.

Norris headlined both practice sessions - but he has an almighty fight on his hands on Sunday

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Whither Piastri? Since he was in the sticky situation where he still needed to give up his seat in practice one more time this year, he was parked on Zak Brown's pitwall perch as IndyCar's Pato O'Ward took to the track. It put Piastri behind the eight-ball a smidge, as he spent the early stages of FP2 trying to mould the car to his liking. The lack of immediate comfort meant that he wasn't able to get the soft-tyre lap in that he'd hoped for and only placed 11th in the FP2 standings, although the Australian was able to get into his groove a bit during the longer runs.

Long runs: McLaren ahead of Red Bull - but by only tiny margins

Helpfully, pretty much every team had at least one driver on a set of medium tyres, apart from Haas and its predilection for the soft across the session. Norris, per our long run times, has around a 0.4-second advantage per lap over Verstappen - but in reality, it's a lot smaller as the Red Bull's late-stint laps bring his average up.

When comparing their stints across the first eight laps, the gap is far smaller. McLaren still holds an advantage, but you could barely work a piece of dental floss between them as the average of Verstappen's opening eight laps was just 0.07s behind Norris. Since Norris did a shorter stint it's hard to see the drop-off in tyres, but that tends to be where McLaren has been able to flex some degree of an advantage over the course of the season.

Piastri's stint was a touch slower than that of Norris, registering an average of a 1m29.621s versus Norris' 1m29.269s. He's got a bit to find overnight, but he's optimistic that he'll get there. "I think I got there pretty well on the medium, just the soft didn't get the most out of the grip on that first timed lap," he noted post-session. "Finding my feet I think, but clearly some things to try and improve for tomorrow. But after just one session, not too bad."

Behind the McLarens and Red Bull (singular, sorry Yuki), there's a few surprise contenders. Gabriel Bortoleto put together a very strong stint on the mediums and sat within the 1m29.9s ahead of the other midfield runners, plus the Ferrari and Mercedes stints.

Sauber showed good one-lap pace with fifth and sixth in FP2, and Bortoleto's stint suggests early promise. This isn't just a one-off either, as Nico Hulkenberg put together a 1m29.215s stint average on the hard tyre.

Sauber looks quick, as it seeks to bookmark its off-season transition to Audi on a high-note

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This appears to be Sauber giving him a run-plan on less fuel to simulate a mid-race switch to the C3 tyre - otherwise, if that's a legitimate stint on equivalent fuel to the cars ahead, then the German is some way quicker than anyone else. Based on his usual delta to Bortoleto, however, the former is more likely.

Charles Leclerc showed reasonable pace for Ferrari, although the Monegasque was dismayed by his general pace across Friday and thus the average times likely do not demonstrate the full picture. The opposite may apply to Mercedes, as both drivers felt that there was the potential to battle with Red Bull in Saturday's qualifying - although Russell did concede that "race pace wasn't great."

Haas is the outlier here, as both drivers only ran on soft tyres. But, similar to its FP2 running in Mexico, it was at the sharp end across its FP2 soft-tyre long runs as Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon both registered strong pace on the C5. "It felt good. We had a good car underneath us already in FP1," Bearman stated in the wake of FP2, having noted his surprise during the second session at the pace his chariot had bestowed him with.

Ocon, however, continued to face struggles with his feel of the VF-25 under braking, which stops him from attacking corners in the way that he prefers. Ayao Komatsu clarified over the Qatar weekend that both drivers run the same braking system, although Haas has been working with the Frenchman to improve his confidence.

Williams' long-run average doesn't look particularly impressive, but there's a caveat here too; Carlos Sainz did a soft-tyre stint and a short run on the mediums and was well within the 1m29s on both - but for the sake of parity, we've chosen to stick with Alex Albon's longer, continuous run on the mediums.

In any case, Williams already knows its fate at the end of this year - it locked out fifth in the championship thanks to Sainz's podium in Qatar, and thus anything it does this weekend is merely a bonus.

Bearman called his Haas "insane" as he was pleased with his FP2 balance

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For everyone else, there's a lot to play for; Sauber will be hoping its pace translates into a big pay-day to beat Haas and Aston Martin to seventh in the constructors' championship, as the latter team didn't seem particularly quick. That said, Aston Martin runs very short stints on Fridays, so this obfuscates the team's comparable pace to the other teams.

Yet, we know where the big-ticket battle is - and the overnight work will begin in earnest at McLaren and Red Bull to end the season with a final flourish. There's only the small matter of a world title to decide, after all...

Can Verstappen complete his unlikely comeback and seal a fifth title?

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