PARIS – When the 2025 season revved into gear in Melbourne back in March, there was every expectation that this would be a championship to savour.

Even though Max Verstappen had collected a fourth successive title in 2024, the pace of the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in the second half of the season suggested that this year would be tight.

And so it has proved with the three of them still slugging away for the title as the 24-race season comes to a conclusion in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, with Norris 12 points ahead of Verstappen and Piastri a further four points back.

Here is a look back at some of the key moments that built up to such a gripping climax.

If the season started well for McLaren with victory for Norris in Melbourne, it was near perfect in the second race in Shanghai as Piastri led home a 1-2 that sent a warning through the pitlane.

The McLarens were undoubtedly the best cars on the grid – it would take something special to stop them.

Verstappen finished fourth for Red Bull but the team announced later that his teammate Liam Lawson was being demoted with immediate effect to their sister Racing Bulls team, to be replaced by Yuki Tsunoda.

Piastri began to emerge as the dominant McLaren driver and their likely world champion as he picked up three wins on the bounce: in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Miami to make it four wins from the first six races.

That win in Miami extended his lead over Norris to 16 points.

It was also a difficult weekend for Verstappen, who finished 17th in the sprint – his first pointless finish in any race format since the 2016 Belgian Grand Prix – and then fourth in the main race after starting on pole.

There were rumblings across the paddock in the first half of the season that all was not well at Red Bull and had not been since the storm in 2024 when a female team employee had accused principal Christian Horner of sexual misconduct.