Title fight twist: Piastri to miss Abu Dhabi FP1 as McLaren hands seat to O’Ward
Oscar Piastri will start the Abu Dhabi finale with one fewer hour of practice than his title rivals after McLaren confirmed he’ll sit out FP1 to make way for Pato O’Ward.
It’s not gamesmanship, just housekeeping. The 2025 sporting regulations require each team to run a rookie in four FP1 sessions during the season, a rookie being anyone with no more than two grand prix starts. Lando Norris has already ticked off his two races on the sidelines (Austria and Mexico), while Piastri has only missed one (Monza). With the final box still empty, McLaren will plug O’Ward into the MCL39 for the opening session at Yas Marina.
It’s a lousy bit of timing for Piastri, who rolls into the finale chasing a first F1 crown in a three-way scrap with Norris and Max Verstappen. Norris leads the standings heading to Abu Dhabi, with Verstappen and Piastri in range after a swingy run-in that’s seen form ebb and flow between the McLaren pair while Verstappen has quietly racked up wins since the summer break.
One hour of lost running isn’t the end of the world—especially this deep into a 24‑round season, at a track every engineer in the pit lane can draw from memory—but it trims Piastri’s runway. He’ll need to condense his long-run work and qualifying prep into FP2 and FP3 while Norris and Verstappen gather that extra slice of early data under evolving dusk conditions.
O’Ward, McLaren’s long-serving reserve and IndyCar ace, is no stranger to the program and, crucially for the team, believes he now understands how to switch the car on quickly.
“I better understand what the car likes now,” he told McLaren’s website. “Every car prefers a certain style, or a different way of bringing it into the window… The simulator can give you a good idea, but it can’t come close to the feelings you actually get when you are in a car. I try not to think about it when I’m in the car, I try to let my body remind itself.”
That’s the payoff for McLaren: a clean, efficient run plan from O’Ward with feedback the engineers can use immediately, rather than a rookie learning the ropes. The team’s baseline is strong; the MCL39 has generally been in the window from the first laps on Fridays, and O’Ward’s familiarity should keep it that way.
Still, the sporting picture is stark. Norris arrives with the advantage, Verstappen brings the muscle memory—he’s the only one of the trio with title-winning experience and is chasing a fifth straight crown—and Piastri has to punch cleanly from FP2 onwards. Verstappen, opportunistic as ever, made hay with McLaren’s Qatar misstep and has won five of the last eight to drag himself into this fight. That’s the form line Piastri has to disrupt.
What changes with one fewer session? Margins. Out-laps into traffic, long-run tyre deltas on a green track, how the rear axle reacts when the temperature drops under the lights—these are the little things drivers usually bank in FP1. Piastri will rely more heavily on the sim and Norris’s early read, then jump straight onto the sharper end of the program.
No one inside McLaren will be reaching for the panic button. The rule exists, the box has to be checked, and O’Ward is a safe pair of hands. If anything decides this championship, it’ll be the kind of moments we’ve seen all year: a bold out-brake into Turn 6, a pit wall call on a marginal VSC, or the nerve to extend a stint when the rear tyres are pleading for mercy—not an hour with the lap counter running on a Friday.
All the same, in a season that’s turned on details, here’s one more for the pile. Piastri’s job is simple, if not easy: make FP2 count, keep the noise out, and land every blow that’s there to be landed when it matters. The stage is set; the clock just starts a touch later for car number 81.
