ABU DHABI: Max Verstappen took pole position for the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Saturday and will look to finish a crushingly dominant year with a 19th win.
Victory on Sunday would take the Red Bull driver onto 54 career wins, past former Red Bull star Sebastian Vettel and into third place all time.
“It’s been a very special season and we’ve been enjoying it a lot,” Verstappen said. “Very proud of what we have achieved.”
The three-time F1 champion’s 12th pole of the season took him to 32 overall. He starts the race ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in second place and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in third.
“Never bet against me,” Verstappen said afterward, jokingly referring to a comment made by his Red Bull team principal Christian Horner.
Horner informed Verstappen that he had won a bet for 500 euros ($547) made with Red Bull boss Helmut Marko as to where Verstappen would qualify.
“You’ve just won me 500 euros,” Horner told Verstappen over radio when he crossed the line.
With a few minutes left, Verstappen led from McLaren’s Lando Norris and Piastri under floodlights at the Yas Marina circuit.
Norris slid late while pushing too hard on his last timed lap and Piastri moved ahead of him, while Leclerc jumped up the leaderboard with an excellent lap to place .14 seconds behind Verstappen.
“Everything felt good, I’m very happy with that lap because I didn’t expect to be on the front row,” Leclerc said. “It’s a good surprise.”
Mercedes driver George Russell qualified in fourth ahead of Norris with AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda in sixth and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso seventh. Nico Hulkenberg (Haas), Sergio Perez (Red Bull) and Pierre Gasly (Alpine) completed the top 10.
It was a bad session for Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton (11th) and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. (16th).
Sainz failed to make it into the second part of qualifying — known as Q2 — and complained of too much traffic near the end of Q1 with several drivers coming out of their garages late.
Still, for a leading driver — Sainz is the only driver other than Verstappen or Perez to win a race this season — it was a poor performance after he crashed early in Friday’s second practice session. Potentially costly, too, with second place in the constructors’ championship at stake.
Heading into Sunday’s race, Mercedes was in second and held a four-point lead over Ferrari. Teams get more money at the end of the season the higher they finish.
“I hope tomorrow goes well,” Leclerc said. “It is the target to beat Mercedes in the constructors’ championship. That is all that matters this weekend.”
But Mercedes is struggling for form, and Hamilton was knocked out of Q2. The seven-time F1 champion said there was “something not right with this car” and faces the strong likelihood of a second straight season without a win.
Williams driver Logan Sargeant goes from last on the grid with his F1 future still uncertain. The American has only one point this season with a best result of 10th place at the United States GP last month.
Earlier Saturday, Russell topped the third and final practice session ahead of Norris and Piastri with Verstappen in sixth.
“What a turnaround because in practice it was not looking good,” Verstappen said. “Around here on the tires you have little slides, it can cost you a lot of lap time and that is what was happening in practice. But then in qualifying it was a bit more connected.”
When his form picked up, Horner was happy to win a bet in a season where Red Bull has lost only one race out of 21.
Piastri, meanwhile, was pleased to bounce back from a difficult qualifying session last weekend at the Las Vegas GP. He started from 18th and finished the race in 10th.
“The car is very quick this weekend,” the 22-year-old Australian said. “Happy to be back in the top three.”
F1 champion Verstappen takes pole position for season-ending Abu Dhabi GP
https://arab.news/239zu
F1 champion Verstappen takes pole position for season-ending Abu Dhabi GP
- Victory on Sunday would take the Red Bull driver onto 54 career wins
- The three-time F1 champion’s 12th pole of the season took him to 32 overall
Da Costa claims first win with Jaguar in Jeddah E-Prix Round 5
- The Portuguese driver led home Sebastien Buemi, with reigning champion Oliver Rowland completing the podium
JEDDAH: Antonio Felix da Costa delivered a flawless performance to give Jaguar TCS Racing their first win of the 2026 season in Round 5 of the Jeddah E-Prix on Saturday.
The Portuguese driver led home Sebastien Buemi, with reigning champion Oliver Rowland completing the podium.
Da Costa was the first of the lead group to activate both of his mandatory 50kW all-wheel-drive Attack Mode boosts, using the strategy to pull clear of his rivals.
He held on to win by 2.5 seconds, marking his first victory for Jaguar and his first since Portland in 2024.
The race saw several lead changes as drivers battled in an energy-critical contest.
Buemi moved into second using an attack mode overlap to edge Rowland, who had also led early on. Mahindra’s Edoardo Mortara, despite securing back-to-back pole positions, had to settle for fourth, adding strong points but leaving the team wishing for more.
Dan Ticktum narrowly beat teammate Pepe Marti to fifth, while Jaguar’s Mitch Evans finished seventh.
Round 4 winner Pascal Wehrlein of Porsche could only manage eighth, ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne in the Citroen and Taylor Barnard of DS Penske.
Race winner da Costa said the victory was especially satisfying given the challenges of adapting to life with Jaguar TCS Racing, describing the move as “a massive workload” with “a lot of things to learn and new faces and names.”
He added that the result was a timely reward after several competitive outings that had not delivered the desired outcome.
“We’ve been having good pace but we haven’t been able to capitalise on it, so I’m happy to get this one done by race five,” he said.
He further explained that his decisive moment came when he was able to combine a small on-track gap with attack mode, noting that “only a big drama could really take this away from us.”
However, the closing stages were not without tension, as warning alarms flashed on his dashboard.
“I kept asking, ‘Do I need to manage something? Do I need to go slower?’” he said. “They told me to acknowledge the alarms and crack on. It was a little bit stressful, but it’s a great feeling when you know it’s only up to you to bring this one home.”
Buemi said his early decision to lead the race was driven by survival as much as strategy.
“If you fight for P3 or P4 it’s a jungle out there,” the Envision Racing driver explained. “If you want to just survive you want to make sure you’re at the front.”
Buemi acknowledged that da Costa ultimately managed his energy more effectively, adding: “He was able to go flat out a bit longer than me and that’s why he made that gap.”
Reflecting on the result, he said finishing second was still a strong outcome after starting from the back of the grid the previous day.
Completing the podium, Rowland said overnight changes paid off after a difficult run of form.
“The last two races I struggled quite a lot, I just had no pace,” he said.
He praised his crew for working late into the night to turn things around, adding: “I just wanted to stay out of trouble.”
In the championship standings, Wehrlein leads Mortara by six points (68-62), with Rowland on 49. In the teams’ table, Porsche sits on 113 points to Jaguar’s 86, while in the Manufacturers’ World Championship, Porsche holds 143 points to Jaguar’s 124.
