2025 Qatar Grand Prix

Championship standings

Norris leads the Drivers’ Championship with 390 points. Piastri and Verstappen are tied twenty-four points behind in second and third.

Previous race

Verstappen won in Las Vegas, his second victory on the Strip. Norris started from pole but made a mistake at the race start, allowing Verstappen to take a controlling lead. Norris and Piastri were both disqualified after the race for excessive plank wear, elevating Russell to second and Antonelli — who started seventeenth and carried a five-second penalty to the line — to third. The disqualification significantly tightened the championship, pulling Verstappen and Piastri level on points and cutting Norris’s lead from 24 to match the final margin.

Championship permutations

Norris can clinch his first Drivers’ Championship at this event if he outscores both Piastri and Verstappen by two points over the sprint and main race weekend combined. The title cannot be decided in the sprint alone.

Sprint format

Qatar is the sixth and final sprint weekend of the season.

Entrants

This is Norris’s 151st race with McLaren, making him the driver with the most starts for the team.

Penalties

Bortoleto carries a five-place grid penalty for the main race for causing a collision with Stroll at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Tyre choices and limits

Pirelli brings the three hardest compounds — C1, C2 and C3 — designated hard, medium and soft. A limit of 25 laps applies to each set of tyres across the weekend; with the Grand Prix run over 57 laps, every driver must make at least two tyre changes. Unlike the 2023 race, laps completed under the safety car or virtual safety car count towards the limit.

Practice

The sole free practice session was topped by Piastri ahead of Norris and Alonso.