Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

"We will aim to maximise every opportunity""We will aim to maximise every opportunity"

The final Qualifying of the 2025 season proved a highly competitive affair, with tight margins throughout the field as the grid was set for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Read on for all the reaction from the team trackside at Yas Marina Circuit.

Darkness enshrouded the circuit on Saturday evening as the cars rolled out for the final Qualifying session of the year.
The gaps between cars this season have been incredibly small more often than not, and that was the case again in Abu Dhabi, but both our drivers navigated safely through Q1.
Lance unfortunately was eliminated at the next stage of the session by less than a tenth of a second, and will line up on the grid in P15 on Sunday.
Fernando, meanwhile, made it through to Q3, eventually posting a lap-time good enough to take sixth for the Grand Prix.
The team will be giving it their all to achieve points in the final round of the year, with sixth place in the Constructors' Championship still up for grabs.
Earlier in the day, Young Driver Jak Crawford took sixth place in the F2 Sprint Race.

THE LATEST FROM THE TRACK

Into the night we continue our climb

And so here we are, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the final bow of the 2025 season, the last race for the AMR25, and the end of a technical era. There are a lot of laps between here and car launch, back in February, but still everything to play for this weekend, and you, our fans have been with us every step of the way for which we're hugely grateful.

The Yas Marina Circuit has had its share of thrillers down the years, and drama we shall have again. After two points-scoring races in Qatar, Fernando is chasing a top-10 finish in the Drivers' Championship, while we're up to seventh in the Constructors' Championship, with opportunities ahead and threats behind.

In F2, a tough weekend in Lusail has ended Jak's chances of securing the title – but he still sits second in the table and needs a good final run out to secure that to end the season on a high note. He's going to be flying between the separate pit lanes this weekend, combining his F2 programme with an appearance for us in Free Practice One, plus preparation for the upcoming Yas Marina rookie test. Meanwhile F2 driver Cian Shields will also get his first taste of F1 machinery behind the wheel of Fernando's car in FP1.

TRACK INSIGHTS

Yas Marina CircuitYas Marina Circuit

We arrive in Abu Dhabi carrying momentum from our positive result in Qatar, so let's try to repeat that this weekend.
Fernando Alonso

Toggle below to highlight parts of the track.

Sectors
Turns
DRS

Circuit length (km)
5.281
Number of corners
16
Race distance (km)
306.183

NEED TO KNOW: ABU DHABI GP

The essential Abu Dhabi travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

Mastering Yas Marina

The magic of racing at Yas Marina Circuit

Strategy insights from Abu Dhabi

Ultimate Abu Dhabi Grand Prix facts

Last time out

The essential Abu Dhabi travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

For F1 teams – at least, for the ones without a monumental, season-defining finale, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix tends to feel like the last week of school. It’s a convivial paddock for having a chat with friends; and there will be an end of season meal for the whole trackside team. This is a good venue for that. There are plenty of great restaurants downtown, in the area known as 'between the bridges', or even on Yas Island where the circuit is located.

The majority of the teams will stay on the island, where the track is part of a much larger entertainment complex. There are plenty of hotels, and so, therefore, is the most prized of race weekend luxuries: a short walk into work. For fans, beyond the racing and the live music programme at the track, the island has golf courses, an excellent karting circuit, a shopping mall and a variety of theme parks. It also has an IKEA – though we've never really worked out why...

Beyond Yas Island, and into the city, the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is absolutely stunning, while anyone taking the coastal route from the track back to the city across Saadiyat Island will pass the great dome of the Louvre's Abu Dhabi branch. The Corniche is lively, and for anyone visiting for the race from a part of the world that is currently damp and dark, that combination of coruscating blue sky and green water is a real tonic. This part of town is also a gateway to a thriving watersports industry, which features everything from reef snorkelling to drifting around the various islands on a sunset cruise aboard a traditional dhow. It’s likely to be a lot more calming that whatever happens on the track come Sunday evening.

Mastering Yas Marina

The Yas Marina Circuit made its debut in 2009 as a multi-track warren of a circuit, capable of many different configurations. The grand prix layout changed for 2021, reducing the corner count from 21 to 16, while lopping off a quarter of a kilometre from length. It did this by changing two chicanes into a low-speed hairpin and a faster parabolic loop – all with the intention of introducing more overtaking potential.

It remains, however, a track where each sector has different characters. Sector One has high-speed corners, Sector Two long straights, while Sector Three is a low-speed, highly technical tour of the marina. The compromises this promotes are… uncomfortable. The third sector is where there's time to be gained or lost, and requires plenty of downforce on the car… but for raceability, high top speeds on the long straights is essential. It's tough to find the happy compromise.

The other thing that makes this track interesting is a grip level that can be quite variable. It isn't the busiest of circuits, and so there's a lot of track evolution in the early stages, while the surface rubbers in. Combined with the big track temperature differential between the afternoon sessions in full sun, and the evening sessions under the lights, it makes it a very difficult place to truly understand.

The magic of racing at Yas Marina Circuit

The few remaining tickets for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix were selling like hot cakes this week, with a Championship showdown to savour and plenty of head-to-head battles up and down the order. This is one of the best races for spectators, with each of the grandstand clusters offering a really good view and a real chance of seeing some action. The North Grandstand has the Hairpin; the West Grandstand has the Chicane, and the South Grandstand has the parabolica – they're all at the end of a straight, all likely to be very active during the race. With this generation of cars, the parabolic corner has tended to have a bit more of the overtaking, though the chicane is where the marshals tend to be most busy sweeping up the debris.

...but the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix has always offered a bit more around the edges of the racing. There are four Fan Zones dotted around the track, with the usual mix of food and merch. The main one is behind the main grandstand, but the East Gate complex tends to have the live music.

This isn't to be confused (and, in fairness, isn't likely to be) with the main after-race concerts, which take place at the arena, currently going under the name Etihad Park, which is behind the North Grandstand. Plenty of races now twin their racing and concert tickets, but Abu Dhabi got that particular ball rolling, and they still do it best. This year's headliners are Benson Boone on Thursday, Metallica on Saturday and Katy Perry on Sunday.

Strategy insights from Abu Dhabi

We have the same tyre allocation this year as last, and no particular reason to expect a different sort of race. The top eight finishers last year all ran a one-stop, primarily Medium-Hard, with the outlier being Lewis Hamilton, ending his record-breaking Mercedes career with a Hard-Medium to rise from P16 on the grid to P4 at the flag.

Fernando was the first car home trying something different. His Medium-Hard-Hard two-stop netted him P9, but wasn't particularly effective.

Interestingly, Lance was the protagonist for the two-stop, pitting on lap 11. It started the cascade, dragging in cars ahead to defend against the undercut. It fizzled out before it reached the front of the field, with the leaders confident in their time gaps to keep going. This was different to 2023, when Fernando triggered the cascade by pitting on lap 12, and everyone was dragged in, with almost the whole field running a Medium-Hard-Hard two-stop. Both of these options are on the table again. The one-stop race looks marginally quicker, but if the right car pulls the pin early, it may force the entire field into a two-stop.

Finally, a word about the Soft tyre. In the three races held during this regulatory era, there have been only four meaningful Soft tyre stints. No-one used the Soft in 2023, and Kevin Magnussen was the only driver to fit one last year – and this because, after a collision and spin, he had nothing else available.

Ultimate Abu Dhabi Grand Prix facts

1 | The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix made its debut in 2009, and has been held every year since. All of the races have been held at the Yas Marina Circuit.

2 | It is the only race billed as a day/night grand prix, beginning before sunset and ending in the dark. In the purely the technical sense, the Bahrain Grand Prix has also started during astronomical twilight a couple of times...

3 | Lance started his 100th Grand Prix here, back in 2021.

4 | This is a very good race to start at the front. In 16 attempts, only one winner has come from beyond the front row – Kimi Räikkönen in 2012 from P4. That aside, we've seen 11 wins from pole and four from P2.

5 | The race has usually been the final round of the Championship, the only exceptions being 2011-2013. Unsurprisingly, it's seen the World Championships decided on many occasions. The Constructors' Championship went down to the wire and decided here in 2021 and 2024; the Drivers' title was decided here in 2010, 2014, 2016 and 2021, and will be again in 2025.

6 | The 2014 race had double points on offer for the season finale – thus Lewis Hamilton holds the record for the most points scored by a driver on a race weekend, with 50 for victory, while Williams are the team to score the most points on a race weekend, coming away with 66. Perhaps surprisingly, neither changed their position in the respective championship tables.

7 | Sebastian Vettel's final F1 race was at this track, signing off from a two-year stint in green at the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with a point for tenth – the same as he scored for eighth on his debut at Indy in 2007.

Last time out

Our adventures in Abu Dhabi didn't begin particularly well, with both Seb and Lance failing to score in 2021. Since then, however, we've come home with points from the season finale at each opportunity.

In 2022, Lance came home in P8, but all attention was on Seb in his final race. He had some great tussles on his way to P10, and celebrated with donuts on the grid. Like Da Vinci, he can draw perfect circles – albeit with 1,000hp under his right foot rather than a quill.

2023 was another double-points finish. Fernando started and finished P7, but had to scrap all the way to get there, using every ounce of skill to keep competitive a car that was suffering for straight-line speed. Lance, meanwhile, used an alterative strategy to rise from P13 on the grid to P10 at the flag. He was the only car to complete the full race distance having started on the Hard tyre, reversing the standard two-stop strategy and running a long first stint.

Last year's race had the cars both gamble on a two-stop strategy that didn't really work out very well, but Fernando ensured the AMR24 ended its shift with two points for ninth place.

Session Times

FP1

FP2

FP3

Quali

Race

Talking Points

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In the cockpit

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"We will aim to maximise every opportunity""We will aim to maximise every opportunity"

THE LATEST FROM THE TRACK

Into the night we continue our climb

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"We will aim to maximise every opportunity""We will aim to maximise every opportunity"

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