Abu Dhabi F1 championship finale draws bizarre parallels to 2007

For a Formula 1 season that has been so dominated by one team and its two drivers, this weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix season finale unbelievably features three drivers with a shot at taking the world championship.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen splits McLaren's Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in the driver standings. McLaren's 800-point total is nearly double that of any other team, yet their drivers are unbelievably tied with Verstappen for the F1 wins lead with seven each this year.

The sport has not seen such a dominant team of drivers still within touching distance this late in the season since 2007, which ironically also featured McLaren's two competitors, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, and Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen lurking in the distance. Naturally, this has caused fans to draw many parallels between that famous season and 2025.

Raikkonen, like Verstappen, trailed the two McLarens by as many as 20 points, the equivalent of two race wins under the 2007 points system, with just six races to go, before making a miraculous comeback to take the title by a single point in the finale.

Verstappen, while having nine races and three sprints at his disposal, has cut his massive 104-point deficit, the equivalent of just over four race wins, down to just 12 with one race remaining.

Two teammates starting the season hot, before making critical errors, taking points off each other, and allowing another driver to catch up? You can say both 2007 and 2025 have seen that exact scenario unfold, too.

While these seasons have unfolded in different ways, such as McLaren doing everything possible to keep things fair by enforcing their controversial "Papaya Rules", the effect, on paper, is projecting to be the same.

Following the Qatar Grand Prix, two more incredible parallels between 2007 and 2025 have surfaced.

Despite their unprecedented dominance, the overriding theme for McLaren in 2025 has been their self-inflicted wounds keeping the world championship so close.

Over the past handful of races, this list has grown extensively, including their double DNF on the opening lap of the United States Grand Prix sprint race, their double disqualification in Las Vegas, and now their mystifying strategic blunder in Qatar that even left Piastri speechless. All of those races were won by Verstappen, no less.

McLaren's latest error moved Verstappen up into second in the standings, with just 12 points separating him from the world championship lead. What's even crazier than his comeback itself is how it directly relates to 2007.

If you were to convert 2007's points format to the one used today, Raikkonen would have also been trailing the world championship leader by 12 points entering the finale.

Additionally, should Verstappen complete the biggest comeback in Formula 1 history, he would join Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel in 2010 as the only drivers this century to win the championship after not leading the standings at any point following the second race of the season.

In the cases of Verstappen and Vettel, they will have done so after not leading the championship at any point, and both as Red Bull drivers against two McLarens.

Mind-blowing, indeed.

Despite the trends seemingly favoring Verstappen, there are a few scenarios working for Piastri, and against Norris.

On each of the five most recent occasions when at least three drivers have entered the season finale with a chance of winning the world championship, namely 1981, 1983, 1986, 2007, and 2010, the championship leader has never walked away with the title.

Furthermore, in both 2007 and 2010, the third place driver entering the finale won the championship. In short, Norris fans need to cover their eyes, and Piastri fans need open their teary eyes, because it's as far from over as it gets.

Everyone, including Verstappen, claimed it was over after the Spanish Grand Prix, yet here we are. Everyone figured Norris' 34-point deficit after his engine failure in the Dutch Grand Prix was insurmountable, yet he has the best chance of anybody to take the title.

Everyone claimed Piastri was finished after his terrible seven-race run from Italy to Las Vegas, yet he's coming off perhaps the best weekend performance-wise of his entire career in Qatar, which inched him eight points closer to his maiden title.

If Verstappen wins in Abu Dhabi, Norris just needs to finish on the podium. If Piastri wins the race, Norris only needs to finish fifth. Admittedly, it's very hard to see Norris finishing off the podium and losing the title.

But this season has already been full of twists and turns, errors from both team and driver, and heroics from all three drivers. Plus, Verstappen's first world championship in 2021 was won amid bizarre circumstances, to say the least, when the title battle most recently came down to the Abu Dhabi finale.

Whether it be Piastri's relentless consistency for the first two-thirds of the season, Norris recovering from several setbacks and having a late-season resurgence, or Verstappen pulling off what is already by far the biggest comeback in Formula 1 history, the eventual world champion will have unequivocally earned it.