The last race of the season is finally upon us, and while we don’t have the tense showdown of last year — some may say thankfully so given the aftermath — the sport arrives in Abu Dhabi with a surprising number of lose ends to tie up.
The battle for second in both championships has attracted renewed interest after the chaos of Brazil. Red Bull Racing has done its best to prevent an internal feud from forming after Max Verstappen denied Sergio Perez a chance to take the upper hand over Charles Leclerc for second place, and this weekend we’ll find out he extent of the damage done last weekend.
But while Ferrari is on the attack in the drivers standings, it’s on the defensive against Mercedes in the teams championship. The German marque is on the move and Ferrari has been caught out focused on 2023. Could it really slip to third after such a dominant start to the season?
And that’s just the battle for second. Every position but first and last in the constructors championship is still live, and with millions on the line with each place, the battle won’t let up in the final round.
The driver market is also in its final stages. Four drivers are on their way out — some more permanently than others — while one driver is still fighting to make himself eligible to fill his contract to race for Williams next year.
There’s a surprising amount up for grabs for a supposedly dead-rubber race.
WHO WILL FINISH SECOND?
Second place. Runner-up. First of the losers. Whatever you want to call it, both Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez want it. As do their teams.
This battle tightened significantly and dramatically last weekend in Brazil, with Leclerc drawing level on points and taking second position on countback courtesy of his more numerous wins.
Perez was frustrated to lose the place after Verstappen ignored a team command to let him through to sixth on the final lap.
For the drivers it’s about pride and, more importantly, about potential bonuses in their contracts for high finishing positions.
For their teams, it would be a marker of the success of the season. Leclerc led the title early in the year; Ferrari would want him to at least finish second as a small sign of intent for next year.
For Red Bull Racing it’s more about completeness. Despite the team’s dominance in 2010–13, Mark Webber was never able to finish second to Sebastian Vettel. This is its latest best chance to check that box and say it truly dominated the year.
The equation is simple: whoever finished ahead of the other wins if they’re in the points. It puts Verstappen’s insistence that he’ll do whatever he can to help Perez into a vaguely disingenuous light given it’s difficult to imagine circumstances in which he’d be able to intervene to benefit his teammate given the points situation — a points situation he had a hand in engineering last weekend.
CAN MERCEDES OVERHAUL FERRARI?
“The morale within the team is booming,” George Russell said arriving in Abu Dhabi. “I think we’ll be going for it.”
Mercedes is in a fighting mindset in the final month of the season.
Its United States Grand Prix upgrade has put it second on the road in terms of pure pace at three very different circuits — Austin, Mexico City and Interlagos — and put it in a dominant position last weekend, when Russell collected his maiden grand prix victory.
The team has capitalised on Ferrari’s slowed development pace, with the Scuderia having admitted that it long ago switched focus in 2023, in part thanks to budget constraints.
Mercedes, though, has been incentivised to continue pushing the W13. The better it understands this year’s car, the better the chance it won’t make the same mistakes next year.
And so after struggling so badly early in the campaign, it arrives at the final race just 19 points shy of Ferrari in second place and with a genuine chance at taking an unlikely runner-up finish from what looked for so long like its annus horribilis.
It’ll take something special to bridge that gap though.
Mercedes has outscored Ferrari by more than 19 points only twice this year, in Azerbaijan and France. It needed at least one red car to retire in each to achieve it.
Last weekend finishing one-two ahead of a Ferrari three-four was worth 17 points — close but no cigar.
This weekend it’ll certainly have to contend with a faster Red Bull Racing car, and the track itself will suit the Ferrari car well too, at least on paper.
In that regard this track is Mercedes’s sternest test since its Austin upgrade. A strong performance might be its most satisfying yet — and a very strong performance might bring more than just pride.
“Even in Brazil, on a circuit that we didn‘t expect to be quite as competitive, we were still very quick,” Russell said. “So yeah, we’ll be going for it.”
With so much pride on the line, it could be a cracking battle.
WHO’LL WIN THE MIDFIELD MILLIONS?
There are several big-money midfield battles still to be decided in Abu Dhabi. Considering most of these teams aren’t operating at the cost cap ceiling, the extra cash would mean a great deal to them for 2023.
Alpine versus McLaren
A catastrophic São Paulo Grand Prix for McLaren, with both cars retiring, and a strong result for Alpine has blown out this margin to virtual unachievable proportions.
Alpine leads McLaren by 19 points, proportionally more significant than the same gap between Ferrari and Mercedes given how difficult it is for these two teams to score podium-size points.
It would take a miracle for McLaren to reverse these places.
Alfa Romeo versus Aston Martin
It’s the battle no-one saw coming after Aston Martin’s dreadful start to the year, but its mid-season switch in philosophy has been paying late dividends, as the team had hoped, and it’s now just five points behind Alfa Romeo in the fight for sixth.
Alfa Romeo, meanwhile, is suffering more from a return to reality than a form slump. The Swiss team’s strong start under the new regulations was down to launching a car that was closest to the minimum weight while most others were significantly heavier.
Weight loss is essentially free time, and Alfa Romeo has slid backwards through the year as the discrepancy has shrunk. The team has scored just three times since the Canadian Grand Prix; Aston Martin has collected 10 top 10s since then.
The momentum is clearly with Aston Martin, and Sebastian Vettel will surely be motivated to bow out on the relatively high of a strong performance.
But Valtteri Bottas is enjoying a mini resurgence, with two strong races in a row. One or two points would surely be enough to seal the deal for Alfa Romeo.
Haas versus AlphaTauri
Haas is still mathematically in contention for seventh, sitting 13 points behind Aston Martin, but realistically its fight is with AlphaTauri behind. The two lower midfield teams are split by only two points after decent starts to the year petered out into disappointment.
Pierre Gasly has put AlphaTauri’s underwhelming slide from sixth to ninth down to the car being overweight, neutering its other development gains. Haas has also been outgunned in the development battle, bringing only one major update to the car for the season. Both teams have recorded one top-five finish apiece but have otherwise wallowed near the back of the pack.
Even points would see Haas keep the place on countback. AlphaTauri has outscored Haas by three points only three times all season and is yet to get both cars into the top 10 on the same weekend. But given how sporadic the scoring has been for both teams, a sudden reversal of positions can’t be ruled out.
WHO CAN GO OUT ON A HIGH?
Formula 1 will say goodbye to four drivers this weekend. Some of the farewells will be permanent, though it’s difficult to know how many.
Four-time champion Sebastian Vettel is retiring from the sport after a long and a fizzling post-Ferrari career with Aston Martin — though occasionally we’ve glimpsed the old Vettel, his superb fighting finish to the United States Grand Prix last month just one such example.
A good result this weekend could move his team one place higher in the standings, as good an achievement as any within reach this weekend.
Daniel Ricciardo is the highest profile among the drivers with uncertain futures, with the eight-time winner hoping for a 2024 return after a year on the sidelines.
He’s scored just twice since the mid-season break, and his Abu Dhabi record is also relatively uninspiring, with a pair of fourth-place finishes the best he’s managed.
With fourth in the teams championship almost certainly lost to Alpine, pride is all he’s racing for this weekend. He’s only one point behind Sebastian Vettel in 11th in the standings. Either way it will be his lowest finish since his last season for Toro Rosso in 2013, when he ended the year 14th.
Haas confirmed this weekend that Mick Schumacher is out next year despite his improving form. Scoring points for just the third time in his career will be his aim this weekend. He’s also only two points behind Lance Stroll for 15th in the standings.
Finally, Nicholas Latifi is also leaving F1 after being dropped by Williams for the to-be-confirmed Sargeant. He’s scored just once this year and is only two points behind teammate Alex Albon. After three years racing at the back, he’s unlikely to find a path back to the paddock.
WILL SARGEANT EARN HIS F1 SEAT?
There’s rarely anything up for grabs in FP1, but the hour-long practice session could make or break Logan Sargeant’s F1 trajectory.
Sargeant is signed to Williams next season but is yet to earn his superlicence.
A driver needs 40 superlicence points to race in Formula 1. Currently he has 28. He’ll earn his 29th if he completes 100 kilometres of incident-free running in FP1. He’ll earn another two points if he completes this weekend’s F2 rounds without a penalty, taking him to 31.
That means he can finish the championship as low as sixth, which awards 10 points, and still qualify.
If he were to pick up a penalty, he could finish no lower than fifth, which awards 20 points.
He’s currently third in the championship but only 12 points ahead of the driver in seventh.
Given he’s also suffered a downturn in form in recent rounds — he hasn’t been on the podium since July — the pressure is on to hold his position.
That pressure will be especially high given the tight turnaround on either side of his FP1 session with Williams.
He’ll have only 100 minutes to switch from F2 practice to F1 practice and then only half an hour to get ready for crucial F2 qualifying.
Perhaps the one positive from that fraught situation is that F2 rivals Felipe Drugovich, Jack Doohan and Liam Lawson will be doing likewise for Aston Martin, Alpine and Red Bull Racing respectively.
Jack Doohan is his closest challenger, just nine points behind him in fourth, while Lawson is seventh and 12 points adrift. Drugovich has already won the title.
It could be some of the tensest few hours of Sargeant’s young racing career.
Elsewhere, IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward will be in Lando Norris’s McLaren, Robert Shwartzman will take over for Carlos Sainz at Ferrari and Pietro Fittipaldi will be in Mick Schumacher’s Haas.
Alfa Romeo will field veteran reserve driver Robert Kubica in Zhou Guanyu’s car as part of its development plans for the 2023 car.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
The season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is live on Kayo and Fox Sports.
First practice is at 9pm (AEDT) tonight followed by FP2 at midnight.
Final practice starts at 9:30pm on Saturday ahead of qualifying at 1am on Sunday.
The pre-race show started at 10:30pm on Sunday before lights out at midnight.
