‘Hamilton’s Ferrari dream is OVER’ – Abu Dhabi last announcement…
McLaren and Lando Norris emerged victorious at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as they finally claimed the constructors’ title.
Whilst Ferrari put up a good fight towards the end of the season, a deleted lap time for Charles Leclerc handed the championship to their rivals.F1
The Abu Dhabi GP did not disappoint on-track either, after Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri collided on the opening lap.
Verstappen was subsequently issued a 10-second penalty, which the champion was not pleased about serving despite the stewards finding him at fault for the incident.
His Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez also had an Abu Dhabi GP to forget, where he spun and exited the race on the first lap.With lots to unpack from the final race of the season at Yas Marina, let the GPFans team take you through the Abu Dhabi GP with their hot takes.
McLaren get their title, Hamilton gets his relative ‘going out on a high’ at Mercedes and Verstappen continues to rant at everyone and everything as F1’s resident ‘man yells at cloud’.But as F1 2024 ends and the countdown to F1 2025 starts already (if like Christmas a premature build-up wasn’t already the case) then this was also a good race to take a final assessment on how Charles Leclerc will fare against Hamilton ahead of their Ferrari pairing as team-mates.
Like Hamilton, the Ferrari star too had to crawl up the grid from the back of the pack after an unfortunate qualifying session, and it’s usually these sorts of drives where you can mark out the great from the good.His P3 was the real drive of the day as he ends the season on a high. Leclerc is a superior driver to Mercedes’ George Russell, and on this evidence he could quickly end any sort of honeymoon Hamilton will enjoy after he waltzes into Maranello.
Will Charles Leclerc beat Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari?
READ MORE: Verstappen COLLIDES with McLaren F1 star in chaotic start to Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Chris Deeley – US Lead Editor
Thank you, Max Verstappen. Alright, there were a whole heap of little sub-plots in Abu Dhabi (thank you Sky, yes, we know, sixth place in the championship is worth £10m) but without the drivers’ champ taking advantage of his free hit race to punt Oscar Piastri into a spin there would have been precious little jeopardy on Sunday.
This has been the longest season in F1 history, and by god it’s felt like it at times. Some 1,500 laps of racing and countless more in qualifying and practice, we were so close to ending on a real damp squib.Then Verstappen hit Piastri and made this race really fun, sparking off a chain reaction of nudges (nice one Oscar, what you really needed was to run straight into a Williams), spins and penalties.Is Verstappen the best driver on the grid right now? You can argue that back and forth. But you cannot argue that he isn’t the protagonist of the sport.R
Max Verstappen’s first lap crash in Abu Dhabi garnered criticism
Matt Hobkinson – Global Lead Editor
Max Verstappen is feeling the consequences of his actions.The Red Bull star called the stewards “stupid idiots” for their decision to hand him a penalty after his collision with Oscar Piastri.But the truth is that he played a huge role in the severity of that punishment before the race had even begun.His aggressive driving with Lando Norris in Mexico, and numerous incidents previously, lit the touchpaper for the stewards to hand out more severe penalties for incidents like these.As Martin Brundle so excellently put it – if Max doesn’t want to get penalised, then don’t run into other people.He has rarely had to fight alongside other cars in previous seasons, but he might need to get used to it for 2025.
