Lando Norris finished fourth at the 2025 F1 Qatar GP, after a strategic blunder from his McLaren team left him down the order and needing to fight back for a podium position, which he couldn’t quite recover in the closing stages.
An early safety car – crucially on lap 7 – for a clash between Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly meant that there were just 50 laps remaining, and with the weekend’s restrictions of a 25-lap limit for tyre sets, it provided the perfect opportunity for teams and drivers to take their first stop under safety car, and just a single pit stop on lap 32 under green flag conditions, to get to the end.
Most teams and drivers up and down the field took this opportunity, including Norris’ title rival Max Verstappen – who had already overtaken him at the start – whilst the two McLarens stayed out and caught the safety car at the start of lap 8, which meant they lost the possibility to make a pit stop and retain track position over their main rival.
“Nothing wrong” with McLaren’s approach to the strategy
Although it proved to be a major blunder in hindsight – one that took him out of a comfortable podium and any chances of victory at the Qatar GP- Norris was still defensive about McLaren’s thought process behind the decision to stay out, saying he would’ve lost time “either way” due to having to double-stack with his team-mate and F1 title rival Oscar Piastri:
“We thought we did what was correct, so nothing wrong,” he said. “Probably yeah, [should have stopped under safety car].
“But both of us should have done. So I would have been [done] over either way, because we would have double-stacked and I would’ve potentially lost time.
“[I would’ve lost] a bit of time, [but] I probably wouldn’t have lost a position, I don’t think,” he admitted afterwards. “It’s something that we will talk about and review. I also have the faith that the team are making the right call.“
The current F1 championship leader said it wasn’t “hard” to continue racing after realising they had done the wrong call, and instead just focused on the race ahead:
“It wasn’t [hard], I still had a long race ahead of me, so I had to focus and do my best.”
Norris reflects on “not his finest” weekend at Qatar and the title race
The Briton’s P4 finish in Qatar means that he lost a further 13 points to a charging Verstappen, with Piastri also gaining six points over him. That leaves the championship to go down to the wire as a three-way battle in Abu Dhabi next week – but Norris isn’t worried about it, as he believes his recent run of form has put him in position that the destiny of the title is in his own hands:
“Nothing I can do about it, obviously not our greatest day, not our greatest weekend,” he admitted. “But I’ve had, I don’t know if anyone saw the run of results I had before that, you know, they were great.
“So I’ve put myself in this position, I’m still happy.
“It wasn’t our finest day, it wasn’t my finest weekend in terms of driving and putting things together.
“But that’s life, you know, everyone has bad weekends, so I take it on the chin, we all take it on the chin and we’ll see what we can do next weekend.”
When asked about his approach heading into the all-important title showdown next week, the McLaren F1 driver emphasized that he will treat it as any other race, and that “nothing is different“:
“It’s the same as every weekend, I try and beat them, they try and beat me, it’s nothing different.“
Norris heads into the Abu Dhabi finale on 408 points, 12 more than Max Verstappen, and 16 more than his team-mate Oscar Piastri, with just 25 up for grabs in the final race of the F1 season.
