Why F1's 2023 Abu Dhabi GP finale wasn't a better race

Formula 1 has now had 10 successive season finales in Abu Dhabi. But so few of these races have been thrillers. And when they have been exciting, this came via tense affairs such as Nico Rosberg hanging on as Lewis Hamilton backed him into threatening traffic in 2016, or 2021’s jaw-dropping off-track drama.

So, a week on from Max Verstappen’s wild Las Vegas win, his latest Abu Dhabi triumph in 2023’s conclusion – and the devastatingly dominant circumstances in which he secured the year’s final victory – raises quite the question. With Sin City’s race sitting pretty in the rear-view mirror, is it time to seriously entertain what some were already saying: how about Vegas as the climax instead?

F1 has its financial affairs to consider here given how Abu Dhabi pays for the privilege of hosting the last round. Plus there was much that could have been improved about its return to Las Vegas, and recency bias is an undeniable factor.

But the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was once again a dull affair on which to end a campaign, won at a canter by a new F1 legend and his crack Red Bull squad. And yet, the race around Yas Marina really should have been better. Here’s why.

Leclerc once again had too much to lose early on

Again, we need to cast our minds back eight days to the start of the Vegas race. After all, the two drivers sharing the front row there – Verstappen and Charles Leclerc – did so again in Abu Dhabi.

This time, Verstappen lined up on pole with his Ferrari rival behind, and when the lights went out in the twilight last Sunday, it was roles reversed from the full night setting of the penultimate round. Leclerc launched best from second – shooting fully alongside Verstappen as they powered through both phases of the start. Leclerc’s run to Turn 1 was so good, his nose came slinking towards being in front by the time they hit the brakes.

He never quite got a fraction ahead, but had still reached a position where he’d done enough to earn space on the inside of the 90-degree left hander. We know what would’ve happened had it been Verstappen inside Leclerc – a feisty move to steal the lead. But here the Dutchman turned thrilling defender, sweeping through Turn 1 with an ultra-decisive chop on the racing line to maintain the lead.

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Verstappen forced Leclerc to the very limit of the track as the Ferrari driver launched his opening lap attack, which he eventually rebuffed

But Leclerc wasn’t done, as he got another excellent run on Verstappen down the long back straight to the Turns 6/7 chicane. Leclerc stole to the inside and “made him think that I was going to the right, then I went to the left”. Verstappen again squeezed his rival to the track’s limit – a la the Austin sprint start – and then, just when it looked as if Leclerc might brave it out on the brakes, the Red Bull again steamed around on the outside to keep in front.

Round three was happening immediately, as Leclerc “tried also in Turn 9” – the long, left-hand hairpin at the end of the curved second main acceleration zone. But this time he was obliged to take to the outside and had to back out, remembering “it was important for me to take care of those tyres, even in the first lap”.

“So, at one point,” Leclerc added, “I just decided to settle for the second place.”

"Obviously I had in my mind the constructors' championship. So, I couldn't take too many risks" Charles Leclerc

But there was another vital element Leclerc had been grappling with through these exciting early exchanges – as entertaining as the lead fight ended up being all afternoon – which Verstappen did not. This was, as with Vegas, the battle with Mercedes for second in the teams’ standings.

“Obviously I had in my mind the constructors' championship,” Leclerc explained. “So, I couldn't take too many risks.”

The lead gap in stint one was artificially close

Through the remaining seven corners of lap one of 58, Verstappen shot clear to a 0.9-second lead. Now, Leclerc had more to worry about in the close attentions of Oscar Piastri, who had followed the leading pair from third on the grid as his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris jumped compatriot George Russell through the opening corners.

On lap three, just as DRS was activated, Norris used the overtaking aid to blast by his team-mate on the run to Turn 6. Then he set off after Leclerc. By the end of lap 11, however, it was clear the lead battle was a two-horse race, with Norris 2.2s adrift.

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Once ahead of Piastri, Norris couldn't keep pace with the leading pair, while Verstappen was taking things easy

Russell had also closed in on Piastri. He put the remarkably unflappable rookie under pressure and then passed him with a well-judged outside-line pass into Turn 9 on lap 11. From there, Russell chased Norris to their opening pitstops on lap 14 – one tour after Piastri had become the first of the frontrunners to pit and exchange the medium tyres most runners started on for hards.

This trio had just been unable to match the mid-1m30s the two leaders had been putting in to that point. During this sequence, Verstappen’s lead had hovered around 1.5s, as sometimes he’d ship a few tenths to Leclerc in sectors one or two, before taking them back come the lap’s final third.

“The first stint, I didn't really know what to expect because I didn't do a long run [in practice, thanks to the crash-filled FP2 session],” Verstappen would later explain. “So, I probably took it a bit too easy in the beginning. I also think the medium was just not as good as expected.”

Finally, on lap 15, Verstappen was able to extend his gap above 2s. And one tour later he headed to the pits. With the undercut being powerful here even around a clear desire not to overstress either compound on a stint’s first lap, any hope of Leclerc passing by on the same strategy was gone.

“I think Max was saving quite a bit on the medium because there were two or three laps before he pitted where he started to push,” Leclerc said of this point in the post-race press conference. “And then straight away I understood: ‘OK, they've got maybe much more margin than what I initially thought’.”

After Leclerc had followed Verstappen in on lap 17 to take his own set of new hards, the gap between them for the net lead was 2.9s. Now they had to make their way through the contra-strategy runners Carlos Sainz and Lance Stroll, while ahead Yuki Tsunoda led the next five-lap phase setting up his ambitious (and ultimately successful) one-stopper.

By the time Verstappen and Leclerc ran 1-2 again on the road for real, the gap between them was up to 4.7s. Once again, the Ferrari driver was operating with the Scuderia’s constructors’ battle against Mercedes in mind. As Sainz and Hamilton were on recovery drives from their poor qualifying results, how Leclerc got on against Russell and how they interplayed with the other frontrunners was going to be key to this event’s main subplot behind Verstappen’s latest steamrollering display.

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Verstappen made his first stop a lap before Leclerc which effectively ensured the Ferrari wouldn't get ahead on the same strategy

Russell was Leclerc’s main threat and not Norris for two reasons. The first was that the Mercedes driver had moved up to third thanks to McLaren’s first service for Norris running to 5.1s due to a slow left-rear change. Once they were back on track, Norris ran 1.7s back from Russell as they bedded in with the hard tyre.

“On the hard, it was mostly about managing the gap to George behind,” Leclerc explained. “I was aware that we couldn't go and fight with Max, so I didn't want to take too much out of the tyres in the first few laps to then push. And I was also still thinking about a one-stop at that time, so [if] I had to go to the end of the race.”

Norris was the main factor in how Ferrari’s strategy was decided. Just as it looked as if a straightforward one-stopper would play out with Verstappen edging away to an 8.3s lead over Leclerc at this point, McLaren pulled its lead car in and kicked off a second pitstop phase.

"We deviated to a two because we saw the deg on the medium tyre was a little bit more than we were liking. I think we could have done it with Max on a one-stop because he had the pace and the ability to manage the tyre" Christian Horner

Because of the undercut’s power, Mercedes had to bring Russell in on the following tour and Ferrari did likewise with Leclerc one lap later – all three drivers taking a second set of new hards. These had to be delicately managed, according to Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola, to avoid “overheating” as well as “the graining [seen mainly on the medium fronts] – something you could initiate quite early in the stint if you pushed too much”.

But no passing attempts came to be in this trio. In fact, there was another driver who’d soon be doing that.

The race’s real action wasn’t for the lead

Having not started higher than fifth since he lined up second for Spa’s Belgian GP just before this year’s summer break, Sergio Perez had to put in yet another 2023 recovery drive of his own last Sunday. As he had of late in Texas and at Interlagos, he lined up ninth.

On the first lap he fell behind Hamilton’s run around the outside of Turn 1 and its track limit on exit (which fell within the lap one leniency approach for race control officials). Then Perez repassed the Mercedes into Turn 6 on lap three, before getting Pierre Gasly’s Alpine shortly before the first stops.

But once Norris and co had piled into the pits a second time – by which point Perez was fifth having since jumped Fernando Alonso and the struggling-for-pace Piastri – Red Bull opted to leave the Mexican driver out, running just over 16s behind his team-mate in second on the road.

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar

Perez provided the race's main entertainment in his recovery from a lowly ninth after losing his best time to track limits in Q3

“Going into the race, we were planning on a one-stop,” said Red Bull team boss, Christian Horner. “And then we deviated to a two because we saw the deg on the medium tyre was a little bit more than we were liking. I think we could have done it with Max on a one-stop because he had the pace and the ability to manage the tyre.”

On lap 36, Verstappen had even told Red Bull it should consider giving his team-mate second stop timing preference. At first glance this appeared to be because it would give Red Bull the best chance at recording a 10th double podium of 2023. But, in fact, the world champion had something very specific in mind.

“It was to try and lead for 1000 laps in the season,” said Verstappen. “I knew that that was on the cards. I said to GP [race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase], he was also of course aware of that, just to make sure that they wouldn't pit me too early. The tyres still felt OK. They were not fantastic, but they felt OK at that point, so we just kept on extending a little bit.”

Given Verstappen ended up with a final laps-led total in 2023 of 1003, his thinking here clearly made a difference in achieving such an accolade. So, Red Bull pitted Perez for more hards on lap 42, then Verstappen the next time by. This gave the leader a reduced advantage over Leclerc of 5.6s at this stage at the end of Verstappen’s out-lap. But he had an eight-lap tyre life offset with which to work and so by the end of lap 48 the gap was back up to 8.2s.

Perez therefore became the focus. For Red Bull it was all about getting him back towards the podium, but for Leclerc and Ferrari there was a chance his progress would thwart Mercedes’ attempt to preserve its pre-event four-point gap to its red rival in the standings.

Over the four laps post-stop two, Perez finally passed Tsunoda and then homed in on Norris. Then on lap 47, he closed to attack Norris on the approach to Turn 6. Norris “tried to let him past… four car lengths away from the apex”, but when Perez sailed past this, they clashed between the chicane’s two parts – forcing Norris to cut Turn 7 and stay ahead.

After each had aired their inevitably differing views of the incident over the airwaves, Perez got Norris at the same spot on the following tour. But as Perez was hoovering up the 4.4s gap to Russell ahead over the next six laps, the stewards handed him a five-second penalty for causing the Norris clash. Their reasoning was that Perez “dived in late, missed the apex of the corner and understeered towards the outside”.

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Perez eventually made it past Norris, but not before copping a five-second penalty for avoidable contact

On lap 54, Perez forced his way to the inside of Turn 9 with a neat, DRS-assisted dive on Russell and suddenly he was third. On the road, with Hamilton barely in the points and Sainz set not to score even further behind in his doomed hope racing for a safety car period that never came, at this stage Ferrari needed the six-point swing it could grab if Russell was kept off the podium and Leclerc could hang on to second.

Leclerc, therefore, had to try something. In a smart move that evoked memories of Sainz gifting Norris a DRS tow to keep the Mercedes pair at bay in Singapore, he hatched a plan to give Perez that aid and pull him clear of Russell to the flag. Had he been successful, it would have overturned Mercedes’ eventual three-point constructors’ edge.

“As soon as I was aware about the five seconds penalty, basically,” Leclerc explained when Autosport asked when he’d begun forming his plan. “Then, I was constantly asking the gap between George and Checo. When they told me that Checo had passed George, I knew Checo was behind me and his best chance was obviously to get the DRS from me and try and pull away as much as possible from George.

In the end, Norris felt McLaren was “missing something” as he “had to push very hard to keep up with the Mercedes and Ferrari, and when I did that, I destroyed the tyres very quickly”

“There was quite a bit of discussion between my engineer and myself, and I let him know as well that this was my plan.”

In the end, Leclerc actually gave up second on the road on the final lap – pulling over on the run to the Turn 5 hairpin early in the second sector. He then had to stick close enough behind Perez so he’d get the place back when the penalty was applied post-race and hope Russell was too far back to do likewise. But, in the end, the Mercedes was only 3.9s behind Perez at the flag.

“It was the logical thing to do in Ferrari’s position, but they only did half of the job,” said Horner, who saw Verstappen end up with a final winning margin of 18s. “Because they let Checo through but then didn’t [back off and hold Russell up].

“As Checo has demonstrated in that sector of the circuit [in 2021, famously against Hamilton here] you can hold up quite a bit of time there. Charles just needed to hold off George a little more to get that extra second.”

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Russell joined Leclerc on the podium as the Ferrari driver elected not to back him up to slot the penalised Perez between them

Norris blew a pole shot and typical Abu Dhabi details went against further action

Speaking after qualifying, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said Norris had been “very close” to being in pole contention. It can’t be known if the Briton might have edged Verstappen, because in Q3 only the Red Bull had two new-tyre runs and Norris’s Turn 13 mistake came on his sole attempt with fresh softs.

It’s tantalising to think how he might have made the opening laps more exciting for Verstappen, Leclerc and therefore the race overall had he started at the pack’s head. Yet, in the end, Norris felt McLaren was “missing something” as he “had to push very hard to keep up with the Mercedes and Ferrari, and when I did that, I destroyed the tyres very quickly”.

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur reckoned the difference on the day came down to his squad having an “advantage of pace, [so] you can [tyre] manage – you don't have the deg”. This was particularly the case in the Turns 2 and 3 swoops, where Vasseur said the McLarens were “flatout when we were managing the tyres”.

Red Bull also solved what Horner called “something set up-wise that disconnected the car between high and low speed in FP3”, in terms of final ride height adjustments over the track’s now considerable bumps in places between FP3 and qualifying. Horner said Red Bull then did “a little bit more tuning in that direction”. This, he explained, “brought the car back in to a little more normal operating window” and was a big factor in how Verstappen’s weekend overall played out.

He’d also produced a theory post-qualifying for why racing remains so tricky at F1 level around this track. That “the off-camber corners… [don’t] really help the racing”.

“More banked corners would help,” Verstappen added. “So, around the hotel, they need to bank that instead of off-camber. And at Turn 7, that little crest, it always throws you off a little bit and especially when you're behind, you just lose a lot of traction.”

Given Abu Dhabi is set to return as F1’s season finale for an 11th straight year in 2024 and has embraced layout changes to improve its spectacle in recent years, that might just be worth a look at for the organisers if Vegas voices continue to call for one of F1’s bigger moments to move home.

Photo by: James Sutton / Motorsport Images

After a scare in FP3, Verstappen had things all his own way in Abu Dhabi