Verstappen flies into three-way title decider as Norris falters

Team errors enable world champion to take drivers' title down to final race

- Giles Richards

Toto Wolff angrily denied Kimi Antonelli had let Lando Norris pass

Max Verstappen believed he had long since "checked out" from being able to defend his world championship.

Yet the Dutchman, while down, was far from out and has, with victory in the Qatar Grand Prix, battled and bludgeoned his way back into contention just as McLaren have somehow contrived to leave Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri vulnerable to his late charge, as Verstappen forced the title race to the wire at the final round next weekend in Abu Dhabi.

With Lando Norris, the title leader, fourth and his teammate Oscar Piastri second in Doha, after McLaren made an egregious strategy error, there will now be a three-way fight to the finish at the season finale, with 16 points separating all three drivers. Verstappen is 12 points back from Norris, with Piastri a further four worse off. It is a scenario that was all but unthinkable when Verstappen was 104 points behind Piastri after the Dutch Grand Prix on 31 August and he had in effect written off his championship ambitions.

Earlier in the weekend the McLaren chief executive, Zak Brown, had jokingly compared Verstappen to the horror movie trope of a character that will simply not stay dead. The world champion's response as he revelled in the sheer glee of lurching back into McLaren's nightmares was simply: "You can call me Chucky."