For the first time in his career, Lando Norris can call himself a Formula One champion. 

Norris clinched the 2025 title in a tense final race of the season at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, finishing in third place and scoring just enough points to hold off his opposition. Max Verstappen, who entered the finale 12 points shy of Norris in the standings, won the race from pole position but ultimately didn’t close the gap enough to win his fifth straight championship.

With the result Sunday, Norris ended the season with 423 points, while Verstappen ended with 421. McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who was still mathematically alive at the start of Sunday’s race, finished second in the Grand Prix to secure third in the season standings with 410 points.

Norris became just the 35th driver to hoist the F1 drivers’ championship and the first McLaren champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008. His victory cemented a banner year for the team, which won the constructors’ championship in dominant fashion for the second straight season.

Norris arrived at Abu Dhabi with a clear advantage, but a blistering lap from Verstappen in Saturday’s qualifying session put the McLaren driver on the back foot. The situation grew more tenuous at the start of Sunday’s Grand Prix when Piastri dodged past his teammate halfway through the first lap. Had Norris slipped to fourth with Verstappen crossing the line in first, Verstappen would have won the title. 

F1 2025 Contenders’ Championship Standings

DriverPoints
Lando Norris (McLaren)423
Max Verstappen (Red Bull)421
Oscar Piastri (McLaren)410

But the 26-year-old McLaren driver, as he’d done for much of the second half of the season, settled in and was flawless for the rest of the race. After his first pit stop, he cut through the midfield, which included a dazzling double overtake of Lance Stroll and Liam Lawson. He nearly ran out of road when passing Yuki Tsunoda, who was given a five-second penalty for weaving on a straight, but managed to keep his car under control and get back into the top three. His team delivered from the pit lane, putting together two flawless stops and making the correct calls to keep him ahead of fourth-place Charles Leclerc.

Sunday’s drive exhibited the kind of composure that Norris found over the course of the season following a rocky start in 2025. Coming off of a ‘24 season in which he applied a significant amount of pressure to Verstappen late in the year but still came up short, Norris couldn’t quite put together a perfect weekend after a victory in the opener in Australia. Piastri, his McLaren teammate, quickly raced out to a lead in the standings with four wins in the first six races of the campaign.

It would take until the Monaco Grand Prix, over two months later in late May, for Norris to win again. But just three weeks later, he would have his biggest blunder yet in Montreal, crashing into the back of Piastri and failing to finish the race. 

The Canadian Grand Prix incident would prove to be an inflection point for Norris’s season, as he would rattle off back-to-back wins in Austria and Great Britain, before winning once again just before the summer break in Hungary. As Piastri began to slip from the lead, Norris seemed to only grow stronger—even as Verstappen began an impressive turnaround in his Red Bull. 

The most consequential results came in Mexico City and São Paulo, both Norris wins and the latter of which featured victories in both the sprint race and the Grand Prix. Considering Verstappen had won three of the previous four races, Norris stemmed the rising tide of the Red Bull just in time, giving himself just enough wiggle room to close out the closest world championship finish since 2008 in Abu Dhabi.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Lando Norris Holds Off Max Verstappen to Win First F1 Title By Two Points.

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