Norris achieves feat which eluded Hamilton by taking McLaren to constructors’ title · RaceFans

There were many ‘lasts’ on the starting grid for the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

It was the last time either Sauber driver would start a Formula 1 grand prix for the foreseeable future. The same was also true for Kevin Magnussen and, it seems increasingly likely, Sergio Perez as well.

Franco Colapinto seems likely to bag a return after his last appearance for Williams before making way for Carlos Sainz Jnr. But the driver who triggered the Ferrari man’s move was always going to be one of the night’s biggest stories.

Lewis Hamilton, in his 245th and final start as a Mercedes driver, lined up only 16th – and that was two places better than he’d qualified, thanks to others’ penalties. The stage was set for a recovery performance worthy of one of the sport’s greats, but could the same driver who’d struggled so terribly in Qatar deliver it?

Hamilton had enjoyed tremendous success since leaving McLaren 12 years earlier. His former team, meanwhile, had been in the doldrums for much of the time, and only now were poised to clinch the constructors’ championship for the first time in a generation – providing they could see off Ferrari.

McLaren held the whip hand at the start. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri had annexed the front row ahead of Sainz. The second Ferrari of Charles Leclerc languished even further back than Hamilton – 19th, thanks to a penalty for a battery change and a deleted lap in Q2.

World champion Max Verstappen looked well placed to capitalise on the championship-minded drivers ahead of him from fourth, though he only moved up to that position thanks to Nico Hulkenberg’s penalty from qualifying. When the five red lights went out, however, Verstappen proved far too eager to assert his advantage.

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The RB20 made another of its faultless getaways from a low-grip starting position. Verstappen was immediately alongside Sainz and fancied a look on the inside of Piastri. But this was too much – he understeered wide at the exit and thumped the McLaren, sending both into a spin.

Further on the opening lap, Valtteri Bottas knocked Sergio Perez sideways at turn seven. The Red Bull suffered terminal damage, ending Perez’s race and possibly his F1 career. The Virtual Safety Car was briefly summoned but once the race resumed they were flat out to the final flag.

Norris aced the restart and led Sainz, followed by Pierre Gasly who looked well-placed to secure sixth place in the constructors’ championship for Alpine. George Russell, fourth, made fruitless attempts to pass Gasly into turn nine over the following laps. Hulkenberg gave chase in fifth, followed by Fernando Alonso and Kevin Magnussen who had profited from the first-lap dramas to run seventh.

Leclerc, however, had done even better out of the chaos and vaulted 11 places to eighth. The first lap had gone even better than Ferrari dreamed: Leclerc had gained five more places than any other driver had on the first lap of a grand prix this year, and one of the McLarens was now running in the 19th position he had started from.

Hamilton, the only driver to take the start on hard tyres, could be reasonably satisfied to find himself 12th. But further progress proved difficult: While Liam Lawson offered no resistance to ‘stable mate’ Verstappen, who took 10th off him on lap three, the RB driver kept the Mercedes behind far longer.

Norris couldn’t build up a satisfactory gap over Sainz through the first stint. He also noticed his team’s situation become much more precarious after the start.

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“I was watching the TV screens and I saw Charles was P8 after lap one, so I was a little bit nervous,” he admitted afterwards. “Carlos was never far away. I think the biggest I got the gap was to, like, 4.2 seconds in the first stint, and that’s not a very nice gap in my opinion. It’s a bit too close to my comfort.”

Sure enough, when Norris pitted in reaction to Sainz’s lap 25 stop, even though he enjoyed the quickest complete pit stop of the race, the gap between them slashed. Sainz spent just four thousandths of a second longer on pit road than Norris, and had the gap down to 1.6 seconds briefly – threatening to get within DRS range.

At the same time, Sainz knew he couldn’t afford to mistreat the set of tyres which he needed to take him 33 laps to the chequered flag. “I did a very fast out-lap to try and get within DRS range, trying to overtake Lando after the pit stop,” he explained. “Also in case they had a half a second to a second slower pit stop that could put us within reach – that’s why we sent the undercut.

“Then after he came out in front of me, you go through this thought process: Do I push like hell now to get within DRS, but Lando can also push and keep me out of the DRS and that means I’m going to destroy my tyres and not have a chance at the end of the race of putting him under pressure? Or I save my tyres to try and put them under pressure at the end like I did in the first stint?

“So it’s a very difficult thing to judge with these tyres to use the first three laps to extract the peak of the tyre or to save that to the end of the race.”

But given the way the final stint panned out, Sainz doubts there was anything more he could have done. “I don’t think it would have mattered,” he reflected. “I think McLaren and Lando today, with a hard tyre, they were just one or two tenths quicker and he could have used that pace whenever he wanted, to keep me at bay.

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“On the medium I really strongly believed we had a chance. But little by little with the hard, it just seemed like it was getting tougher and tougher. That’s where I think the weakness of our car started to also appear and the strengths of the McLaren started to appear again and it slipped away from us a bit.”

Leclerc moved his way up to third by picking off the Haas drivers and Alonso, none of which were inclined to waste their time fighting him, then pitting early to jump ahead of Russell. Gasly held third until he made his very early pit stop, which satisfied Alpine’s target of covering off the Haas drivers, a task made easier by Magnussen suffering a slow pit stop and then being harpooned by Bottas.

Despite pitting later than Leclerc, Russell didn’t have the pace to chase him down. Instead after lap 43 the second Mercedes of his team mate began to loom larger in his mirrors.

Mercedes had delayed Hamilton’s pit stop as long as they could, aided by the knowledge Verstappen had been handed a 10-second time penalty by the stewards. “Stupid idiots,” fumed the Red Bull driver when his team finally informed him as he entered the pits on lap 29, long after the penalty had been issued.

Once Hamilton picked off Hulkenberg and Gasly he began to chase down Russell. He came close to reaching DRS range on the penultimate lap. Then Liam Lawson’s RB came to a stop and the DRS zones were briefly disabled, threatening to deny Hamilton a last-lap attack.

They were reactivated just in time, however, and Hamilton zoomed up behind his team mate on the back straight. Heading into turn nine, he swept around the outside of the other Mercedes and into fourth place, as Russell heeded team principal Toto Wolff’s warning to “keep it clean”.

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That was some measure of recompense for Hamilton’s miserable Saturday, where an ill-advised strategy in qualifying and misfortune with a bollard conspired to leave him 18th. Behind Russell, Verstappen was a lonely sixth on a rare day when he never figured, Gasly secured sixth in the points for Alpine with seventh place, followed by Hulkenberg and Alonso.

The second McLaren of Piastri claimed the final point. But he could have done more to help his team had he not rear-ended Colapinto after the VSC period, which earned him the same penalty Verstappen got for ruining his race.

Piastri’s plight meant McLaren suffered a nerve-shredding wait over the second half of the race, to confirm their first constructors’ championship in 26 years. With Norris leading the two Ferraris, any drama for him threatened to send the title their rivals’ way.

But there was no repeat of the yellow flag drama which wrecked Norris’s race a week earlier. And the MCL38 continued its unprecedented run of never letting its drivers down all season long.

Lewis Hamilton spent the first six years of his career driving for no one other than McLaren. He won the drivers’ title with them, but never took them to the constructors’ championship.

Lando Norris has now spent as long with them, but ended his sixth year at the team by delivering the constructors’ crown they have waited for since before he was born. The team erupted in joy.

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“I’m very, very happy,” he beamed afterwards. “Just as I’m sure everyone in the team is.

“Today was a very special day for all of us. It was ours to lose today and I’m sure at certain moments people thought that it was not far away from being lost: Two Ferraris up there and Charles doing a great job to get back to the podium.

“Oscar was super-unlucky. He got taken out in turn one so, for a minute, my heart was like, ‘oh God, it’s not looking as likely’.

“But if I just kept my head down and kept focused, I knew I could deliver and do what I got to do.”

Norris came to terms with losing the drivers’ championship to Verstappen two weeks ago, and declared himself proud to have returned the constructors’ crown to the historic team which brought him into F1.

“The bigger picture, us winning a championship for the first time in 26 years, you wouldn’t have thought that. When you say the name ‘McLaren’ it feels wrong to say that they’ve not won a championship in 25 years. But for me to be part of that, for Oscar to be part of it, is something we’re incredibly proud of.

“Delivering that for the team has put the biggest smile as possible on everyone’s face. This is the biggest reward you can give back to everyone who designs the car, builds the car, gets the partners. Everyone has played such a big part, so just proud. Proud is my biggest thing. Of course, I’m happy I finished the season this way, but I’m way more happy for the team than I am for myself.”