Lando Norris wins F1 world title in Abu Dhabi despite Verstappen’s GP win

about 10 hours ago

In tears and almost rendered speechless by the sheer weight of emotion, what winning his debut Formula One world championship meant to Lando Norris was writ large across every inch of his face,What had begun as a childhood dream and at one point this season had seemingly slipped from his grasp was, finally, a reality he clearly found hard to take in, as he sealed it with third place at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix,It would have taken truly a heart of stone not to have been moved by it all as he secured the title after what has been an enormously hard‑fought season across 24 gruelling races that went to the wire at the Yas Marina Circuit,Despite his title rivals finishing ahead of him in the race – Red Bull’s Max Verstappen winning and his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri taking second – Norris did enough to close it out with a gutsy, nerveless drive that gave way to untrammelled emotion as his podium place was just enough to pip Verstappen to the title by two points,“I’m not crying,” Norris said through the sobbing inside his helmet before being embraced by his equally tearful mother, Cisca, as he then tried to embrace as many of his team as he could.

Twenty minutes later, as he stood on the podium as world champion, the tears were still streaming.This was stirring stuff indeed and while Formula One can at times be a cold, technocratic sport, this was a reminder that it is very much made up of all too human participants and Norris was a popular victor, embraced enthusiastically by his fellow drivers at the end.There were understandably moving moments at McLaren too, where tears were not being held back in the garage.As Norris becomes the 11th British driver to take a world championship it finally brought to an end McLaren’s drivers’ championship drought that stretched back to 2008 when Lewis Hamilton last won it for the team.It was 27 years since McLaren had secured the drivers’ and constructors’ double in 1998, with Mika Häkkinen the champion and David Coulthard third.

Moreover they did it after a serious wobble, having floundered at the previous two rounds, with a double disqualification in Las Vegas and then an egregious strategy call at the penultimate round in Qatar last weekend,Norris’s fourth‑place finish in that race, overtaking Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli in the final stages to gain the two points by which the British driver won the title, proved to be one of many key moments,It marks a remarkable turnaround for the team since a nadir in the mid‑2010s, when they twice finished ninth in the constructors’ championship,It is a revival helmed by Zak Brown, the chief executive who joined in 2016, and recently by Andrea Stella, who as team principal has delivered an operationally sharp outfit with a hugely competitive car,Norris used it to do exactly what was required of him in an enormously intense and high‑pressure contest at the Yas Marina Circuit, including making a series of bold overtakes and with flawless execution by himself and McLaren.

For the Australian Piastri – who had looked so strong in the championship leading from the fifth round in Saudi Arabia to the 20th, the Mexican GP – there was clear disappointment that he had faltered in the final third to be surpassed by his teammate, but he gave his all in Abu Dhabi.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 promotionPiastri emerges having demonstrated that he, too, is world champion material.To have been so competitive in only his third season in F1, taking seven wins, was very impressive and he feels his time is still yet to come.Brown was not the only person to predict that Piastri was a future world champion.Verstappen, too, had been brilliant to force the fight to the wire and he did all he could in Abu Dhabi with the win but, having come back from 104 points behind in August, he just did not quite have enough to overhaul Norris and he finished only two points short, that margin the Briton had gained on the closing laps in Qatar when Antonelli ran off the track.

Verstappen was not disappointed, however, feeling that he and his team had given their all in a fight to the end.For Norris it was no little achievement for the 26-year-old driver in his seventh season in F1.He has done a hugely impressive job to stick at his task, maintain composure and belief even when under the cosh.After failing to finish at the Dutch GP with a mechanical issue, which dropped him to 34 points back, he maintained his resolve and, in the final third, regained the lead and ultimately the title with a swathe of strong finishes and victories.The race itself did not offer the fireworks required to have turned Norris’s title charge on its head with a 12-point lead over Verstappen, but the Briton made what nonetheless must be considered a champion’s drive.

He knew third would be enough after Piastri passed him with a brilliant move to go round the outside at turn nine to claim second and he held it even through the tensest moments of jeopardy when, after the first round of pit stops, he emerged in traffic.He reacted with decisive instinct, passing Antonelli then Carlos Sainz.He then made a bravura move to dive past Lance Stroll and Liam Lawson in one swoop before catching Yuki Tsunoda.Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate was tasked with holding him up but Norris was bold.He burst up the inside, almost completely off the road as the Japanese squeezed him wide to take the place on the back straight.

The incident was investigated and for several impossibly tense laps the title potentially hung in the balance, until Tsunoda was penalised and Norris exonerated.He had made the charge vital to the title fight and in maintaining the place he held to the end it was job finally done and his childhood dream fulfilled.While Norris became the first Briton to take the title since Hamilton last did so in 2020, the contrast in fortunes between the two could not be starker.As the young guns fought for the title Hamilton, the grand champion of the old guard, could manage only eighth place in Abu Dhabi, a dismal ending to what has been a dismal season for him.Making his debut with Ferrari had been greeted with such enthusiasm and optimism but has yielded only what has comfortably been his worst season.

He finished sixth in the championship and has failed to take a podium for the first time.He has looked jaded and disillusioned at these last few races and clearly cannot wait to reset over the winter in the hope of better things in 2026.

businessSee all

Ministers urged to close £2bn tax loophole in car finance scandal

Ministers are being urged to close a loophole that will allow UK banks and specialist lenders to avoid paying £2bn in tax on their payouts to motor finance scandal victims.Under the current law, any operation that is not a bank can deduct compensation payments from their profits before calculating their corporation tax, reducing their bill.UK banks have been blocked from claiming this relief since 2015, but it has now emerged that those due to pay redress as part of the pending £11bn car loan compensation scheme can exploit it because their motor finance arms are considered “non-bank entities”.The Guardian has learned this includes the operations of big high street names including Barclays and Santander UK, and Lloyds Banking Group, which is the UK’s biggest provider of car loans through its Black Horse division.Specialist lenders in the scandal, which include the lending arms of car manufacturers such as Honda and Ford, also fall outside this taxation rule

1 day ago

Cloudflare admits ‘we have let the Internet down again’ after outage hits major web services – as it happened

Technical problems at internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare today have taken a host of websites offline this morning.Cloudflare said shortly after 9am UK time that it “is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs [application programming interfaces – used when apps exchange data with each other].Cloudflare has also reported it has implemented a potential fix to the issue and is monitoring the results.But the outage has affected a number of websites and platforms, with reports of problems accessing LinkedIn, X, Canva – and even the DownDetector site used to monitor online service issues.Last month, an outage at Cloudflare made many websites inaccessible for about three hours

2 days ago

BP to scrap paid rest breaks and most bank holiday bonuses for forecourt staff

BP is ditching paid rest breaks and most bank holiday bonuses for 5,400 workers in its petrol forecourts as it attempts to offset a planned rise in the independent living wage.The company has told workers in its 310 company-run forecourts that it will be changing their benefits in February. Workers at a further 850 BP-branded forecourts run by partners are on different pay deals.BP is an accredited member of the Living Wage Foundation’s fair pay scheme, under which employers commit to pay staff an annually set wage to meet living costs.Hourly pay for BP’s affected workers will rise to a minimum of £13

2 days ago

Financial markets now certain the RBA will hike interest rates in 2026

Financial markets are now pricing in a 100% chance the Reserve Bank will hike rates in 2026, in what would be a blow to mortgage holders but may take some steam out of an overheating property market.The latest forecasts represent a turnaround from just two weeks ago, when traders were factoring in an even chance that the next RBA move would be a cut by its May meeting.It comes as data showed inflation is now moving in the wrong direction, alongside this week’s national accounts and household spending figures which showed the economy is accelerating into the new year.Adam Donaldson, the head of interest rates strategy at the Commonwealth Bank, said “the market has come to the conclusion that the Reserve bank won’t be cutting rates any further”.“Basically, from February onwards, the market is starting to price some risk that rates will go up

2 days ago

UK first-time buyers in best position to snap up property in a decade, data shows

Buyers attempting to get on to the property ladder in the UK have received a lift, after figures from Halifax showed they are in the best position to snap up a home in a decade.Britain’s biggest mortgage lender said that the average price of a UK property hit a record high of £299,892 in November, after a marginal month-on-month rise.However, Halifax said when property prices were compared with average incomes, affordability was at its strongest since late 2015.The lender added that taking into account higher interest rates – the average two-year fixed mortgage rate is 4.85%, according to Moneyfacts – mortgage costs as a share of incomewere at their lowest level in about three years

3 days ago

‘Tough market conditions’ hit UK half-year retail sales at Frasers Group

The owner of Sports Direct and Flannels has said sales have fallen at its UK retail businesses amid heavy discounting by rivals and “very subdued” consumer confidence.Frasers, which is controlled by the former Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley, said sales at its UK sports division were down 5.8% in the six months to 26 October to £1.3bn despite growth at the main Sports Direct chain because of “planned decline” at its Game outlets and the Studio Retail online arm.Michael Murray, the chief executive of Frasers Group, which also owns House of Fraser department stores, Jack Wills and dozens of other brands and a number of shopping centres, said “market conditions are tough” and “consumer confidence is very subdued”

3 days ago

politicsSee all