Max Verstappen claimed pole position for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, a vital first step in attempting to clinch the world championship in the decisive season-finale at Yas Marina.

His title rivals – McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri – took second and third in a competitive and tense qualifying session, with the protagonists in three-way title fight duking it out for the top spots on the grid.

Norris still holds the advantage as they enter the final rubber. Leading the championship, he is 12 points in front of Verstappen and 16 clear of Piastri. Norris will claim his debut F1 title and become the 11th British driver to do so if he finishes in front of both his rivals or claims third place or better. Verstappen would need to win and hope Norris finishes outside the podium places. Piastri would need to win and have his teammate finish sixth or lower.

Simon Lazenby’s voice is faltering. And so are my fingers. Giles Richards’ report from Abu Dhabi will be with us soon.

Verstappen’s constant feedback is key, Collins argues. That’s how Red Bull can turn around the improvements from FP3 so quickly.

Bernie Collins and Nico Rosberg focus on the lack of pressure on Verstappen compared with Norris.

Nico Rosberg is praising Lando Norris for that front-row lap. “He did an amazing job.”

So our grid:

1. Max Verstappen

2. Lando Norris

3. Oscar Piastri

4. George Russell

5. Charles Leclerc

6. Fernando Alonso

7. Gabriel Bortoleto

8. Esteban Ocon

9. Isack Hadjar

10. Yuki Tsunoda.

11. Oliver Bearman

12. Carlos Sainz

13. Liam Lawson

14. Kimi Antonelli

15. Lance Stroll

16. Lewis Hamilton

17. Alexander Albon

18. Nico Hülkenberg

19. Pierre Gasly

20. Franco Colapinto

Benson Boone (me neither) presents Verstappen with the pole position trophy.

“We need a bit of luck with what is happening behind us,” says Verstappen. That’s the truth.

Piastri hedges on whether he can get past the men in front of him. Piastri knows the odds are against him.

Norris’s turn. “It’s tough. Max did a good job … Disappointed not to be on pole.” He ducks the question of whether he wants a win or a podium to start with, then says he wants the win too

Verstappen speaks. “In Q2 I stayed in scrub tyres, in Q3 we could push … We maximised everything we could … We did all we could.”

Zak Brown looks pretty happy. Norris looks a bit distant. He knows he’s close, but has nothing to celebrate yet. He is the man with everything to lose.

Kelly Brook congratulating Verstappen. I should mention that George Russell is fourth.

Kevin Cassingham writes: “It feels like Verstappen on pole is ideal for Norris. Let him shoot up the road and Norris can just concentrate on the podium.” Certainly better for him than Piastri on the front row.

The Red Bull garage is jumping. Piastri sounds quite low-key, as you’d expect.

Piastri is on his last lap. Norris going well too, Verstappen just fastest.

Out laps for the McLarens on new tyres. This is it.

Brundle reckons the tow could have already given Verstappen pole. He’s 0.327 faster than Piastri, 0.456 better than Norris.

Red Bull trying to use Tsunoda to give Verstappen a tow, it seems. A rare contribution from the Japanese.

Verstappen comes in at 1min 22.295. Norris 1min 22.751 but on old tyres. Piastri 1min 22.622, again on old tyres.

Q3 is go. Verstappen, with two sets of new tyres to play with, is fastest in the first sector for the whole of qualifying.

Lewis Hamilton all but lost for words. So sad to see.

Red Bull’s Laurent Mekies pleased to see Hadjar, next year’s number two driver, rejoicing in his seventh place. “There will be a few cars in the mix for pole,” he thinks, given three-tenths covers the top 10.

Sven Verelst writes: “Why is Spa so slow? Because there is a bus stop on the road.”

Only one picture of that chicane, here’s Rubens Barrichello in 2002.

Antonelli out, 13 places worse off than Russell. The Italian is baffled by what went wrong.

Piastri down in eighth. Norris stays third and abandons his lap, to preserve his tyres.

Norris on his final lap. Should be fine. Sainz, Lawson, Antonelli, Stroll and Bearman in the drop zone.

Two and a half minutes to go. If the cutoff time is right then Russell, Verstappen and Norris are through.

Predicted knockout time is 1min 23.0000000000.

Hadjar, Tsunoda, Antonelli, Bearman and Lawson in the drop zone.

Leclerc only manages 10th. Ferrari really want 2025 to end, roll on the new regulations.

Piastri comes through in fourth but Norris is back on, slipping into second till Verstappen knocks him down.

Russell fastest! 1:22.730 from the Mercedes driver who could be a major factor on Sunday.

1min 22.912 for Verstappen. Bearman looking good too.

Piastri on track now so Norris will be the last driver out.

Q2 is upon us. Verstappen is out early. The Sky speculation is that a different look to the rear wing is giving Piastri the edge over Norris.

“A big lap, a very big lap,” says Zak Brown of Piastri. He sounds relaxed about Norris’s prospects, though.

And that is that for Q1.

1. Piastri. 2. Verstappen. 3. Antonelli. 4. Alonso. 5. Leclerc. 6. Norris. 7. Sainz. 8. Russell. 9. Bearman. 10. Lawson. 11. Stroll. 12. Ocon. 13. Hadjar. 14. Bortoleto. 15. Tsunoda

OUT

16. Hamilton. 17. Albon. 18. Hülkenberg. 19. Gasly. 20 Colapinto.

You could hear Hamilton’s voice breaking as he acknowledged his failure on the team radio.

Hamilton in 15th … He’s on another lap. Can he at least make Q2 after his Qatar misery? No! Bortoleto knocks him out.

Brilliant from the Australian. Verstappen, Antonelli and Leclerc have all beaten Norris.

Here’s Norris, looking good. 1min 23.178 but now Piastri fastest by half a second!

Ocon, Albon, Leclerc, Gasly and Colapinto in the drop zone. Leclerc tried out some mediums, should be changing now to make a decent time.

Bernie Collins explains that Norris lost two-tenths at turn one, and that’s the difference between where he is and being fastest.

Piastri now third fastest. So all the big guns are through. Hamilton will be happy to be fifth fastest at this stage.

Here comes Norris. 1min 23.430sec, 0.176 slower than Verstappen but that should be enough to reach Q2. It’s very tight, though, as Russell goes fastest.

Verstappen is out. Looking for a fifth pole here today. 1min 23.325. Tsunoda fourth fastest.

Hamilton tries to banish the memories of that FP3 crash. Comes in 1min 24.068sec. Immediately beaten by Stroll, but track limits do for him.

Here we go. Cars are moving on to the circuit, but not those of our main men.

David Flynn is in touch, to complain about the Flintstones to praise Max:

“I’ve always had a nagging doubt about just how good Max is, his first title was given to him by the stewards and he’s had a superior car since the last regulation changes, but this season backs up what Horner has told us, he’s a generational talent with the ruthlessness mentality to match the driving skill.”

Hard to disagree, though the clash with Russell in Spain was a reminder that ruthlessness can go too far when you have a fast car at your disposal.

If you too know any bad jokes about grand prix venues, why not email me? Or you can always send in your views on qualifying.

We are 10 minutes from the start of qualifying.

Why is the United Arab Emirates’ sole grand prix in Abu Dhabi and not Dubai? Perhaps they are not so keen on motor sport in Dubai; people can be fussy. When it comes to 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, for instance, the people in Dubai don’t like the Flintstones, but the people in Abu Dhabi do.

If that’s unclear, say the last bit out loud.

“The whole of Italy is still supportive,” Rosberg says of his old teammate. “But at some point that will change.”

Nico Rosberg cannot believe Hamilton went off in FP3 when all by himself, in the dry. It really is very sad to see one of the greats struggling like this.

We are 15 minutes from the start of qualifying.

Sky are focusing on an also-ran: Lewis Hamilton. It’s reflective of the fact that very little is going on in the buildup to qualifying. On Sunday there will be grid walks and celeb-spotting, but now it’s just a question of waiting.

We are 20 minutes from the start of qualifying.

Here’s a question: would you rather be second or third fastest? Norris’s misjudgment in Qatar qualifying left him without a final shot at pole, but also on the wrong side of the track. 1st, 3rd, 5th etc line up more or less on the racing line, which gets cleaned of debris by all the cars driving over it. The even numbers are on the dirty side and it was noticeable at lights out that the cars 2nd, 4th and 6th all struggled to get away.

We are 25 minutes from the start of qualifying.

Of course, there are other issues at stake. Mercedes are seeking to confirm second place in the constructors’ standings and start the weekend on 459 points, 33 ahead of Red Bull. In all probability, though, Mercedes could afford two DNFs: it is hard to see Yuki Tsunoda, binned by Red Bull in the week, landing the sixth place that, coupled with a Verstappen win, would land his team that runners-up slot. The Japanese has managed 33 points and one sixth place in his 21 races, in Azerbaijan where the two McLarens faltered. Liam Lawson, Tsunoda’s predecessor, did not register in his two Red Bull races.

While writing this I realised that, given the failures of the second Red Bull, in effect Lando is up against someone going Solo.

Back in the drivers’ standings, Antonelli is two points behind the sixth-placed Lewis Hamilton. The Italian would win any tie-break with the Briton by virtue of having the sole second place between the two of them.

We are 30 minutes from the start of qualifying.

There was no silver lining in Qatar for Piastri. He surely needs two DNFs from his rivals – perhaps mutually inflicted – if he is to claim the title that seemed to be his for the taking through much of the summer. His mood will not be helped by the fact that McLaren’s policy of fairness to their drivers contributed to their keeping the cars out, as pitting could have left Norris stuck in traffic; by trying to be fair to the Briton internally, they wound up being unfair to Piastri externally.

Had Piastri won in Qatar and all else remained equal, then the standings would look like this:

1. Norris 408 pts

2. Piastri 399 pts

3. Verstappen 389 pts

Victory in Abu Dhabi would then have given the Australian 424 pts; third place would have given Norris 423 pts, meaning the Briton would have needed second to hold off his teammate. If pitting at the safety car had given Norris third and three more points, then Piastri would still have had the title shot that Verstappen, 3-1 or 5-2 with the bookies, holds now. Instead the Australian is the 14-1 outsider.

“At the minute I feel good – I don’t think about it till you guys ask,” Norris has said.

“Everything is just a bonus,” says Verstappen, who was so far back at the end of August.

“I’m not getting my hopes up,” says Piasrtri. “If I can achieve it, it would be nice,” he adds, in a low-credibility understatement.

Handy, not commanding, is Martin Brundle’s description of Norris’s lead. “It only needs a puncture or an errant backmarker,” Brundle points out.

We are 40 minutes from the start of qualifying.

The silver lining for Norris in Qatar was Kimi Antonelli’s mistake that cost him and Mercedes fourth place and allowed the Briton two extra points. Sky Sport’s Karun Chandhok never hides his enthusiasm for what is going on but while David Croft was trying to call the conclusion of the race in front of him the Indian ex-driver was positively bursting to share the significance of Norris’s unexpected gain: from needing a top-two finish in Abu Dhabi to be sure of the championship, now he needed only third spot. With good reason he is the 1-3 favourite to win the title.

(If you are a Taurine-sceptic and ever need to explain to someone why it’s hard to warm to Red Bull as a whole, then the fallout from that moment is one to have bookmarked. Verstappen’s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, and Red Bull’s motor sport adviser, Helmut Marko, brought down death threats from Oranje-men on the Mercedes driver’s head by immediately claiming the Italian had deliberately helped Norris, an allegation they had to retract in humiliating fashion after the death threats to Antonelli and the denunciation by Antonelli’s team principal, Toto Wolff. The immediate assumption of dirty tricks could be considered something of a tell, while any chances that Christian Horner’s departure would help Red Bull back on to Wolff’s Christmas card list surely went down to zero.)

We are 50 minutes from the start of qualifying.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but for what it’s worth, here’s how it went in the practice sessions: pretty well for Norris.

He missed out on a clean sweep, after being fastest in FP1 and FP2, coming in second by 0.004 in FP3 – but it was George Russell in the Mercedes who pipped him, rather than either of his title rivals.

Verstappen was third, 0.124 slower than Russell, and Piastri, +0.259, was pushed down to fifth by Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin. The 2025 nightmare continued for Lewis Hamilton, who crashed in his Ferrari.

Back to the race. There are all sorts of points permutations possible, if Russell, say, lands the win. But given Piastri needs 1st or 2nd to overtake Norris, it is impossible for all three drivers to wind up on the same total. Abolishing the extra point for fastest lap has spoiled the fun a little.

Norris cannot tie with anyone who has actually won the race, which means the Briton is champion if he finishes 1st equal on points with either Verstappen or Piastri. All three have seven wins, negating the first tie-breaker, but Norris has eight second places to Verstappen’s five and Piastri’s four.

For the record, 1st 25pts, 2nd 18pts, 3rd 15pts, 4th 12pts, 5th 10pts, 6th 8pts, 7th 6pts, 8th 4pts, 9th 2pts, 10th 1pt.