Page navigation
Weekend context
With the drivers' title already settled, Qatar became a weekend about momentum, sprint points, and the still-open constructors' battle. That mattered because Losail rewards sustained high-speed balance and tyre control, making it a useful late-season test of which team still had the broadest usable performance window.
Sprint and qualifying summary
Piastri won the sprint ahead of Norris and Russell, which gave McLaren another valuable scoring step in the constructors' fight. Verstappen then recovered the main Saturday narrative by taking Grand Prix pole with a 1:20.520 ahead of Russell and Norris. The split outcome across sprint and qualifying made Qatar a good snapshot of late-2024 complexity: no single team owned every phase.
Race result at the front
| Pos | Driver | Team |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull |
| 2 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari |
| 3 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren |
Verstappen won in 1:31:05.323, Leclerc finished second, and Piastri took third, while Norris set the fastest lap in 1:22.384. The broader point was not just that Red Bull could still win individual races after the title was secured, but that Ferrari and McLaren remained close enough to keep the constructors' story alive into the finale.
Why the result mattered
Qatar reinforced the split nature of the 2024 endgame. Verstappen and Red Bull still had the ability to control a clean main race, but McLaren and Ferrari kept trading meaningful points in the battle that still mattered most structurally at the end of the year: the constructors' championship.
Prev: Las Vegas Grand Prix
Next: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix