Formula1.com
Doha
The Qatari desert hosts the first leg of a two-race shoot-out to decide this year’s constructors’ championship with three teams – McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull – still in the mix.
Red Bull are the reigning world champions, but they are outsiders at 53 behind with only 103 points remaining. This is despite them winning eight races while McLaren and Ferrari have won five apiece.
"We have a mountain to climb in the constructors’,” said Red Bull boss Christian Horner. "But we’ll never give up and Max [Verstappen] has obviously been brilliant so far this year. We need Checo [Sergio Perez] to get on the scoreboard a little more in these next couple of races to have any chance.”
Perez has been Red Bull’s Achilles heel this year. While team mate Verstappen wrapped up a fourth successive drivers’ championship last weekend, Perez lags way behind in eighth, a mammoth 251 points adrift. The Mexican has scored a meagre nine points in the last six Grands Prix weekends – Verstappen managed more than that tally in Las Vegas alone.
Unless Perez finds a way to reverse his recent run of form and recapture the kind of pace that helped him score four podiums in the first five races, Red Bull’s chances of winning the title or even finishing better then third look slim.
That leaves McLaren and Ferrari as the frontrunners with the opportunity to end respective long waits for the title. Ferrari, who trail McLaren by 24 points, last won the constructors’ championship in 2008. McLaren’s last came a decade previously in 1998.
Ferrari chipped 12 points out of McLaren’s lead in Las Vegas as they finished 3-4, but they had anticipated a stronger showing given the track layout – with slow corners and long straights – suited them to well last year.
They now head to Qatar to compete on the Lusail International Circuit which is laced with medium and high-speed long radius corners that are linked with long flat-out stretches. These are the kind of turns that should in theory suit McLaren.
The papaya cars have excelled in these corners all year – and were very quick in Qatar last year. Oscar Piastri took his first F1 pole and converted it into the Sprint win. The Australian and team mate Lando Norris then had their final Q3 lap times deleted, dropping them from 2nd and 4th to 6th and 10th. Their pace was clear as they recovered to finish second and third respectively.
Leclerc and Sainz reckon it’ll be a tricky weekend – but they retain hope they can end a 16-year wait for a world title for Ferrari.
"It’s going to be until the very end,” said Leclerc. "They are going to be very strong [in Qatar], so we’ve got to have a good weekend. I would be very surprised if we recover points from them but we’ve got to so we’ll do our best.”
Sainz added: "Over the last few weekends we’ve done a good job. [In Qatar] the maximum might be a P5 or a P6. I expect to struggle and I expect McLaren and Mercedes to be very strong, probably also even Red Bull given that they were strong also in quali in Austin.”