McLaren are world champions with fewest F1 race wins in 25 years · RaceFans

McLaren clinched the Formula 1 constructors’ championship with their sixth grand prix victory of the season last weekend.

The team has been waiting 26 years for its latest title win. This was its ninth, giving them as many as Williams, and only Ferrari have more.

McLaren’s half-dozen wins is the fewest any constructors’ championship-winning team has achieved since 1999, when Ferrari succeeded them, also winning six times. McLaren won seven times that year, and also outstripped their 2024 wins total without taking the title in 2000 (seven), 2005 (10), 2007 (eight, disqualified from the standings) and 2012 (seven).

The race marked the end of Lewis Hamilton’s tremendously successful association with Mercedes’ works team. He joined them from McLaren, and since then Mercedes have taken more wins than McLaren every season, until this year.

Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen, Eddie Irvine, Suzuka, 1999 — Ferrari took the title but McLaren scored more wins in 1999

Lando Norris’s victory in the season finale meant no driver has taken back-to-back wins over the last 15 grands prix. The last to do so was Max Verstappen in the Canadian and Spanish grands prix. This is the longest run without a consecutive race winner since a 15-round run across the 2012 and 2013 seasons, which was bookended by back-to-back victories for Sebastian Vettel.

Norris scored the fourth victory of his career, giving him as many as Carlos Sainz Jnr who finished second behind him. Dan Gurney, Eddie Irvine and, fittingly, Bruce McLaren are all four-time winners, though only one of McLaren’s wins came at the wheel of a McLaren, unlike all of Norris’s.

Ferrari achieved their best ever result at Yas Marina, getting both their cars onto the podium for the first time. But victory continues to elude them at the circuit adjacent to the Ferrari World Abu Dhabi theme park: In 16 seasons they are still yet to claim a win there.

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Perhaps Hamilton will change that. He has the most victories at Yas Marina of anyone, and is the only driver to have won at the track with two different teams: Four with Mercedes, plus McLaren’s only victory at the track prior to last weekend.

Will Stevens, Caterham, Yas Marina, 2014 — Stevens was the last driver to make their debut in a finale

Hamilton’s last-lap pass on George Russell was significant for the battle between the pair of them over the last three years. By passing his team mate, Hamilton ensured he has out-scored him by 697 points to 695 over their time together.

Verstappen could have equalled Hamilton’s Yas Marina win tally, but a first-lap collision with Oscar Piastri left him sixth. He also missed the chance to equal the record for most consecutive wins at the same grand prix, having taken victory in Abu Dhabi every year since 2020. The record is five, held by Ayrton Senna (Monaco, 1989-93) and Hamilton (Spain, 2017-21).

With Sergio Perez’s future uncertain, it remains to be seen whether this will be the final race for him and Max Verstappen as team mates. If not, they missed their last chance to record their 100th podium together.

Jack Doohan made his grand prix debut at the final round of the season, which was the first time in a decade this has happened. Will Stevens was the last driver to start his career at the final race, also at Yas Marina, in 2014. He drove for Caterham in what proved their final start.

Kevin Magnussen bowed out of his final race in some style by setting the fastest lap. In the final race in which a bonus point was available for this, no one scored it, as Magnussen finished outside the top 10.

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However he ensured F1 equalled the record for most different drivers who set fastest lap in a season. This record was set in 2012, and surprisingly, of the two drivers who did it in both years, neither of them was Fernando Alonso, who finished runner-up in the championship that season without setting the fastest lap:

Finally, Valtteri Bottas bowed out of F1 by becoming the third driver in history to receive a penalty which, as yet, he has no opportunity to serve. He collected a five-place grid penalty for his collision with Magnussen. Robert Shwartzman incurred the same while participating in a practice session earlier this year and failing to observe a yellow flag.

Meanwhile Jenson Button remains yet to serve the three-place grid penalty he got for flipping Pascal Wehrlein onto a barrier during the Monaco Grand Prix seven years ago. Coincidentally, poor Wehrlein suffered a remarkably similar crash in the Formula E season opener in Brazil last weekend.

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