Win in Abu Dhabi and hope for carnage: how Oscar Piastri can still win the F1 world title
If Oscar Piastri is going to break through for Australia’s first Formula One driver title in 45 years, it’s going to be the hard way.The McLaren driver enters this weekend’s final round in Abu Dhabi trailing teammate Lando Norris and Red Bull’s four-time reigning champion Max Verstappen in the standings.The 24-year-old has had to overcome a curse from a fast food chain and dubious enforcement of the so-called papaya rules just to stay in the mix for the title, and his team were to blame for a strategy error that cost him victory last weekend in Qatar.But a window for Piastri remains open, however narrow, for what would be one of the most unlikely final-round championship comebacks in Formula One history.Already 2025 is the first season to have three or more drivers still in the title race heading into the final round since 2010, when Sebastian Vettel secured his first of four titles.
That year Mark Webber – now coincidentally Piastri’s manager – and Fernando Alonso were the top-ranked drivers entering the final round, but finished well behind Vettel, who made up a 15-point deficit to clinch a memorable championship.Piastri is currently 16 points behind Norris, and four behind Verstappen, and needs to finish first or second simply to earn enough points to eclipse Norris’s total heading into the race.Then he needs to rely on his McLaren colleague and Verstappen underperforming or failing to finish.A Piastri victory would be enough for him to claim the driver’s title as long as Norris finishes no better than sixth.Second place for the Australian would have his title aspirations relying on an even more improbable set of results.
Sign up to Sport in FocusOur picture editors select their favourite sporting images from the past week, from the spectacular to the powerful, and with a little bit of fun thrown inafter newsletter promotion- Piastri first (25 points for 417), Norris 6th or lower (at most 8 for 416) and Verstappen second or lower (at most 18 for 414)- Piastri second (18 points for 410), Norris 10th or lower (at most 1 for 409) and Verstappen fourth or lower (at most 12 for 408) Norris has placed below sixth only four times this season.He failed to finish in Canada after a collision with Piastri, and in the Netherlands due to a late oil leak.The Bristol-born driver was also disqualified alongside his teammate in Las Vegas due to excessive wear on the underside of the car.Verstappen looms as an even more imposing challenger, given he has won five of the past eight rounds to surge into championship contention.He also has form in Abu Dhabi, having won four successive races there from 2020.
That run of dominance in the UAE only ended last year during a race marred by a first corner incident.Verstappen clipped Piastri, sending him into a spin that pushed him to the back of the pack in a miserable day that ended in 10th position.The contact also saw the Dutch driver tumble down the order, before he finished sixth behind runaway leader Norris.A similar degree of carnage, or some Sonny Hayes-like help, appears to be the only path left for a Piastri championship.
Homes in Tunbridge Wells without water for days after wrong chemicals added
Thousands of homes have been without water for four days in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, after South East Water accidentally added the wrong chemicals to the tap water supply.Schools across the area have been shut for two days, and residents have been filling buckets with rainwater to flush toilets. Cats, dogs and guinea pigs have been given bottled mineral water to drink as the people of Tunbridge Wells wait for their water to be switched back on. Currently, 18,000 homes are without water.The water company accidentally used a bad batch of coagulant chemicals at its Pembury treatment site, meaning it had to be closed down in order to clean out the pipes
OECD warns Reeves higher taxes and spending restraint will limit consumer expenditure
Rachel Reeves has been warned by a leading thinktank that tight government spending and higher taxes will restrict consumer expenditure, despite predicting the UK economy will grow at a faster pace than France, Germany and Italy next year.Analysts at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the government’s ongoing “fiscal consolidation” – meaning higher taxes and reduced government spending – will act as a “headwind” to the UK economy, with “past tax and spending adjustments weighing on household disposable income and slowing consumption”.The Paris-based organisation predicted that the UK would expand by 1.2% next year, while the big three eurozone economies would each fail to reach 1%.Offering a boost to Reeves after she faced calls to resign after the budget, the UK’s growth rate was upgraded from a previous forecast of 1% next year
‘It’s going much too fast’: the inside story of the race to create the ultimate AI
On the 8.49am train through Silicon Valley, the tables are packed with young people glued to laptops, earbuds in, rattling out code.As the northern California hills scroll past, instructions flash up on screens from bosses: fix this bug; add new script. There is no time to enjoy the view. These commuters are foot soldiers in the global race towards artificial general intelligence – when AI systems become as or more capable than highly qualified humans
AI’s safety features can be circumvented with poetry, research finds
Poetry can be linguistically and structurally unpredictable – and that’s part of its joy. But one man’s joy, it turns out, can be a nightmare for AI models.Those are the recent findings of researchers out of Italy’s Icaro Lab, an initiative from a small ethical AI company called DexAI. In an experiment designed to test the efficacy of guardrails put on artificial intelligence models, the researchers wrote 20 poems in Italian and English that all ended with an explicit request to produce harmful content such as hate speech or self-harm.They found that the poetry’s lack of predictability was enough to get the AI models to respond to harmful requests they had been trained to avoid – a process know as “jailbreaking”
‘We make a great living’: Emma Raducanu on why she won’t moan about the tennis calendar
British No 1 on home comforts of Bromley, joys of commuting and being ‘creeped out’ by paparazziEmma Raducanu has garnered many endorsement deals in her nascent career, but there is perhaps one elusive sponsorship that would be most pleasing to the British No 1 women’s tennis player: ambassador of the London Borough of Bromley.During a roundtable discussion with tennis journalists at the end of a gruelling yet satisfying season, Raducanu is merely attempting to describe a quiet off-season spent in her family home when she finds herself delivering a sales pitch about the benefits of living in Bromley. “I’m just so settled,” she says. “I’ve barely been in the UK this year because I’ve been competing so much, but I think just spending really good quality time with my parents has been so nice. I have loved just being in Bromley
‘Your column was very unfair’: what happened when I met World Athletics | Sean Ingle
It really is quite the scene. Midnight in Tokyo, Usain Bolt is DJing and the launch party for the World Athletics Ultimate Championships is in full swing. And then the World Athletics chief executive, Jon Ridgeon, walks up to me and says: “I read your recent Guardian column, and I thought it was very unfair.”Imagine Gary Lineker going in two-footed, having never picked up a yellow card in his career. This is the track and field equivalent
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