Why McLaren's tactic to kill the drama in the 2025 F1 title decider was so effective

Until this year's race brought the title to 11, 10 Abu Dhabi Grands Prix have been won from pole position since Yas Marina arrived on the F1 calendar in 2009. Overtaking has ever been a challenging task here, dictating processional racing built on strategies embracing minimal risk and safety in numbers.

These thoughts will have been playing on McLaren team principal Andrea Stella's mind, for he was Fernando Alonso's race engineer during the second Abu Dhabi GP, when Ferrari pitted Alonso to cover the pitstop of Red Bull's Mark Webber, only for Fernando to spend the rest of the race studying Vitaly Petrov's gearbox while Sebastian Vettel romped home to win the race and the championship. Vettel, like Max Verstappen in 2025, had not led the championship all year.

So when Verstappen beat both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to pole position on Saturday, McLaren's much-derided strategists had to formulate their plan around smothering any peril Red Bull could attempt to induce as the grand prix unfolded. Norris had a 12-point championship lead over Verstappen and was safe provided he could finish third or higher, while Piastri's mathematical route to the title was more demanding since he lay four points behind Max.

It could not be taken for granted that Norris would be allowed to plod around in second or third place by the other competitors, given the presence of George Russell and Charles Leclerc behind the McLarens on the grid as well as Verstappen in front. Since the best-case mathematical permutations for Max to claim the championship required him not only to win the race, but also for the McLarens to lose positions, it was reasonable to expect some gamesmanship from the Red Bull pitwall.

McLaren had to neutralise that possibility, particularly the potential for Max to ape Lewis Hamilton's tactics in the 2016 season finale and back his rivals into the chasing pack. That dovetailed very neatly with what Piastri needed to do to keep his own championship ambitions on the boil: to win the drivers' title he had to beat Max, either by winning outright or by finishing second with Verstappen in fourth place or lower.

Thus McLaren split its strategy, starting Piastri on the hard-compound tyre it believed was the optimal choice for the race, given the possibility of graining affecting the mediums on which it expected Verstappen to start. This would enable Piastri to attack Max – provided Oscar survived the first corner and the opening lap.

Piastri, on hards, as Verstappen's closest rival meant he was unable to back up the pack during the race

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

Putting Verstappen under pressure would serve the purposes of both McLaren drivers because it would prevent Max backing them into the pack: his mathematical route one to the title involved winning. Anything less than that relied on even more circumstances potentially outside his control.

So, beyond the key briefing to the McLaren drivers of not taking each other out at Turn 1, the possibility of Piastri overtaking Norris on the opening lap also formed part of the conversation, according to team principal Andrea Stella.

"Yes, it was planned," he confirmed. "We did discuss, first of all we discussed even more than usual that we obviously wanted to have absolutely clean racing in the first lap. But we also discussed that with Oscar on a hard tyre, not making life difficult for Oscar to take the second place and then try and attack Verstappen, was a strategic option that Lando was supporting.

"They did a clever move to put Piastri on hard tyres. That's why we couldn't bunch up the whole field, because the benefit would have been on the side of Piastri" Helmut Marko

"It was a good and fair overtaking by Oscar, but in itself this is a scenario that we discussed, so it wasn't the hardest of the battles, because there was a general interest from this point of view."

With Piastri putting Verstappen under pressure, Norris could drive to a target lap time and only had to worry about the unexpectedly quick place of Ferrari's Leclerc behind. The gameplan served the purposes of both McLaren drivers.

Ahead of the race, the key unknown was the amount of graining the medium tyres would experience on a track where teams have to dial understeer into their cars to protect the rear axle from thermal degradation as a result of the many traction events throughout the lap. Generally speaking this reduces as the track evolves through more rubber being laid down, but McLaren had made an early decision to back the hard compound as the better race tyre and save two sets per driver.

Norris still had traffic and threat from behind to deal with on his way to securing the title in third

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

"Once we saw the result of qualifying, we started to think about what the start tyre would have meant in terms of strategic options," said Stella. "I think everyone entered the race today not clear whether it was a one or a two [stop], but I think everyone was clear that the hard would have been a good tyre. And if there's somebody on a hard chasing somebody on a medium, the one on the medium needs to push and at some stage might have to pit.

"We were, if anything, a bit surprised that Max could go so long and so fast on the medium tyres. It's always a kind of a collective decision, because drivers bring their point of view, the strategy team bring their point of view, the race engineers, myself as a team principal. Zak [Brown] actually said he was happy with what tyres we picked, so final sign off.

"So it's a collective decision which is made through several conversations. It's not even a single meeting. You sometimes have a hypothesis on Saturday, you go, you sleep on it, in the morning somebody comes like, 'we considered this…'. The decision was made a couple of hours before the race."

With Piastri pressuring Verstappen, the chief peril Norris had to deal with was passing Max's team-mate Yuki Tsunoda after making an early pitstop at the end of lap 16. A few more laps and Norris could have pitted and come out ahead, but the early stop was triggered by the undercut threat from Leclerc, who was responding to Russell pitting the previous lap.

Tsunoda, like Piastri, had started (from 10th) on hards. He was briefed by the pitwall to make life difficult for Norris and did his best – swerving hard enough to generate a rather harsh five-second penalty – but could not overcome the offset in tyre age.

Piastri's long first stint on hard tyres served two purposes because it narrowed Red Bull's options hugely. Verstappen could not back up the pack in the first stint because of the likelihood of Piastri getting ahead and exploiting his theoretically longer tyre life to dictate the race. Neither could Max do it in the second stint because he was then running on hards while Oscar was on much younger mediums.

"They did a clever move to put Piastri on hard tyres," said Red Bull driver advisor Helmut Marko. "That's why we couldn't bunch up the whole field, because the benefit would have been on the side of Piastri."

Red Bull had limited strategy options once McLaren put Piastri on the mediums

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

Since Verstappen had another new set of mediums available to him, there was also the possibility of bringing him in for a second stop on or before the point where Piastri made his pitstop to get off the hards. Leclerc had just made a second stop for mediums, forcing McLaren to stop Norris again and fit his spare set of new hards. At this point Verstappen could potentially have backed up the pack and left Norris vulnerable to attack from Leclerc.

"It was considered," said Marko, "but because Piastri started on the hard tyre, he would have benefited more. And you always have to factor in a safety car somewhere. So it would have been much riskier. And with the speed Leclerc and Russell had, it wouldn't have helped anyway."

So the 2025 season finale didn't quite pan out as the edge-of-the-seat spectacle it was expected to be. And that was just how McLaren wanted it.