By Alan Baldwin
DOHA, Nov 30 (Reuters) – Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won the Qatar Grand Prix, while McLaren blew it, to take the Formula One title battle with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to a season-ending showdown in Abu Dhabi next weekend.
Championship leader Norris finished fourth, behind the Williams of Spaniard Carlos Sainz, with the Briton’s advantage slashed to 12 points as McLaren paid a heavy price for a strategy blunder when the safety car was deployed early on.
Verstappen’s third win in a row in the night race moved the four-times world champion up to second in the standings, now four points clear of Norris’s Australian teammate Piastri who started on pole but finished second.
The top three drivers each have seven wins for the season.
“We stay in the fight until the end,” said Verstappen, who has been champion since a controversial 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix duel with Lewis Hamilton.
“It’s still possible now,” added the Dutchman, who has staged an astonishing comeback from 104 points off the lead at the end of August when his hopes of remaining in the reckoning right down to the wire looked over.
MCLAREN STAY OUT AS ALL BUT OCON PIT
McLaren stayed out while everyone else except Haas’s Esteban Ocon pitted after Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg tangled with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly on lap seven and triggered the safety car.
“I think in hindsight it’s pretty obvious what we could have done,” said Piastri of the strategy blunder.
“We lost the victory with Oscar and we lost the podium with Lando,” was the verdict of team boss Andrea Stella.
Verstappen, third on the grid, passed Norris at the start to slot into second behind Piastri while Mercedes’ George Russell plunged from fourth to seventh.
The pitstop dropped the Red Bull to fourth but that became third when Ocon was given a five-second penalty for a false start and pitted to serve it.
Norris had already questioned McLaren’s strategy over the radio.
“We should have just followed him (Verstappen) in, no? If we knew the car ahead was staying out,” he asked, with race engineer Will Joseph assuring him that “they have lost all flexibility for the remainder of the race.”
It looked to others, however, that McLaren had paid a price for a determination not to favour either driver in the title battle by having to stack them in the pits.
Piastri pitted on lap 24, coming back out in fifth and moving up to fourth when Norris came in a lap later and slotted back in behind.
The rest of the field had to pit on lap 32, due to Pirelli putting restrictions on how long cars could run on a set of tyres for safety reasons — a move forcing a minimum two-stop strategy.
That gave the stewards several unsafe releases to consider, with Haas’s Oliver Bearman handed a 10-second stop-and-go penalty.
NORRIS PASSES ANTONELLI ON PENULTIMATE LAP
Verstappen returned to the track in third, only 7.7 seconds off the lead but set to go to the end while the McLarens had to pit again.
Piastri made a lightning 1.8-second stop on lap 43, rejoining in third with a target of making up 17.2 seconds on Verstappen in the closing 14 laps. He was 7.9 behind at the chequered flag.
Norris pitted on lap 45 and came out in fifth with Sainz and Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli ahead, passing the Italian on the penultimate lap.
Russell finished sixth with Fernando Alonso seventh for Aston Martin and Charles Leclerc eighth for Ferrari.
Liam Lawson took two points for Racing Bulls and Verstappen’s teammate Yuki Tsunoda completed the top 10.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Pritha Sarkar and Toby Davis)
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