A flawless drive by Verstappen, a great last race by Vettel and a nerve-wracking battle for second place! How did the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix end?

With the championship titles already decided a month ago, the battle for second place remained to be decided at the Yas Marina circuit. In the Constructors’ Cup, second place was secured by the Ferrari stable. Its driver, Charles Leclerc, overcame Sergio Pérez in a thrilling duel to become world vice-champion.

The last race of the season also decided the other duels in the Constructors’ Cup. Aston Martin closed the points gap to the Alfa Romeo team, but Valtteri Bottas’ fifth place from the Bahrain VC meant that the Swiss stable retained sixth place overall.

American team Haas retained eighth position in the standings. The AlphaTauri stable did not do well all weekend and did not close the two-point gap.

Four drivers said goodbye to Formula One after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Sebastian Vettel has decided to retire after 15 seasons. Daniel Ricciardo, Mick Schumacher and Nicholas Latifi have lost their places in the team.

Start and opening laps

Both Red Bulls started from the front row without any problems, Verstappen quickly built up a lead over his teammate, who also managed to pull away from the red monoblocs behind him.

At the first corner, Hamilton managed to overtake Carlos Sainz, starting ahead of him in fourth place. But the Spanish driver didn’t give up and tried to take his position back at turn six.

In the melee, Hamilton was forced to go off track and jump over the raised kerb next to the track. He did return to the track ahead of the Ferrari, but as this action was against the rules, he had to give up fourth place.

With the help of DRS, the Briton did get back ahead of Sainz on the very next lap, but from that point on everything went downhill for the seven-time world champion. He complained to the team on the radio about the drop in performance and before he could get back up to the same pace as before, he was in sixth place, two seconds behind teammate Russell.

Battle of the midfield

As the situation in the top six places settled down, the eyes of the spectators shifted to the Vettel – Ocon pairing. The four-time champion, bidding farewell to Formula One, had long been pushing the French driver in eighth place.

After several failed overtaking attempts, Aston Martin decided to leave their driver on track longer and risk a one-stop pit stop race. The German driver had to fight his way back into the points from seventeenth place.

Fernando Alonso failed to finish his last race in the Alpine stable. He was forced to retire on lap 28 due to a water leak.

Sergio Pérez’s pursuit

The most important battle on the track was undoubtedly the one between Sergio Pérez and Charles Leclerc. Both drivers had 290 points in the Drivers’ Cup before the race and were competing for second place overall.

After the first stops Leclerc began to close the gap on the Mexican, who responded with a relatively early second tyre change on lap number 35.

The Maranello-based stable assessed the situation that the Monegasque driver would have a better chance of maintaining second place on the track than stopping for new tyres and overtaking Pérez. The Red Bull driver thus had a daunting task ahead of him, to close the gap to 20 seconds in 20 laps.

The whole battle came down to the last lap, which Leclerc entered with a 1.8 second lead. But the Ferrari driver kept the situation under control and didn’t even let Pérez try to attack.

A bad afternoon ended in the worst possible way for Hamilton. With just three laps to go, his gearbox failed and he had to retire from the race. It was Mercedes’ only non-finish for mechanical reasons all season.

Max Verstappen ended his dominant season with an absolutely flawless performance. He finished the race almost 9 seconds ahead of Charles Leclerc to record his 15th victory in 2022.

Sebastian Vettel bid farewell to the queen of motorsport with an amazing performance. He dragged his Aston Martin to 10th place and scored his 37th point of the season, which meant 11th overall in the Drivers’ Cup.

Source: F1TV