Headline: Domenicali’s simple wish for Abu Dhabi: no repeat of 2021 as Norris, Verstappen and Piastri square up
Three drivers, one last swing under the Yas Marina lights. Lando Norris arrives with a 12-point lead over Max Verstappen, Oscar Piastri a further four adrift. It’s not quite winner-takes-all — unless the winner is Norris — but it’s close enough to prickle the back of the neck.
And if Formula 1’s CEO Stefano Domenicali has a wish for Sunday night, it’s refreshingly uncomplicated: let the title be decided by the drivers, not by the rulebook’s fine print.
“I’m sure that Sunday night, there will be a lot to write, to take, to share,” Domenicali told reporters in Abu Dhabi. “And I would say the only hope that I have is not to have the intense night of ’21. That’s the only thing that we really hope.”
The last time the championship went to the wire here, in 2021, the showdown morphed from blockbuster to firestorm. Lewis Hamilton led comfortably after the start and had one hand on a record-breaking eighth crown. A late crash brought the Safety Car, Red Bull rolled the dice for fresh tyres on Verstappen, Mercedes stayed out to protect track position, and the rest is the debate that still splits the sport down the middle. Lapped cars, unlapped cars, one lap to settle everything — and a title that will forever be argued over, depending on which colours you wear.
Abu Dhabi 2025 carries a different kind of tension. There are three protagonists and countless pit-wall variables. Safety Cars, Virtual Safety Cars, track limits, time penalties, late yellows — they all lurk in the margins waiting to rip up carefully written scripts. There’s also a new name in the hot seat: race director Rui Marques will be the one holding the whistle when the finale tightens.
The arithmetic is clean enough. Norris has the cushion, Verstappen has the experience, Piastri has the nothing-to-lose swagger that makes outsiders dangerous. Only a Norris victory puts this entirely in his hands. Anything else invites permutations, and with two teams and three drivers in the mix, the strategic games could be ruthless from the first pit window.
For Norris, this is the moment to prove a season’s worth of consistency can stand up to the darkest, most stressful two hours of the year. He’s been outspoken about wanting to win this on merit, and he may well need to do exactly that. Qualifying will tell us plenty, but Abu Dhabi has a habit of laughing at Friday form and turning Saturday into an emotional trampoline. Track evolution, the dusk-to-night crossover and safety car timing have shaped countless storylines here.
Verstappen, who knows more than anyone how finals can get messy, will be banking on keeping things simple: qualify well, control what he can control, and make sure he’s the one with leverage if and when the race breaks open. He’s been here before. He tends to make these nights look very small.
Piastri is the wild card, and that isn’t a slight. If he’s within range after the first stint, don’t expect him to wait patiently for the top two to blink. A late stop under caution, a two-stop gamble, even a long first stint trying to spring a surprise — all of it sits on the table when you’re chasing from just off the lead and the calendar’s run out.
The sport knows what’s at stake off-track too. The post-2021 changes were designed to make procedures clearer, decisions cleaner, and the end of grands prix less vulnerable to improvisation. No one in the paddock wants the title decided in a stewards’ room at midnight. Domenicali’s message was as much to the system as it was to the spectacle: keep it tight, keep it tidy, and let the drivers settle it.
Abu Dhabi finales can be cagey, but they’ve also served up their share of gut punches — just ask Ferrari in 2010 or Mercedes in 2016. Add three contenders and modern F1’s microscopic margins, and you’ve got the sort of grand prix where the championship may be won in the pit lane as much as on the apex.
Nerves will crackle, pit crews will rehearse until they’re numb, strategists will run scenario trees until dawn. And eventually the lights will go out and somebody’s Sunday will turn into a lifetime story.
F1 doesn’t need perfection to finish the season well. It just needs clarity and a clean fight. On that, at least, the entire grid seems aligned. As Domenicali put it, let’s not have another intense night like ’21.
If that wish is granted, we might get something even better: a champion crowned on the road, under the lights, and with nothing left to argue about come Monday morning.
