Sky Sports commentator Martin Brundle believes that Lando Norris has the early advantage at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. While McLaren’s pace on the opening day confirmed expectations, the team’s strong form has not stopped Max Verstappen from remaining a serious title contender going into the season finale. However, what has caught Brundle’s attention is what he sees as Verstappen’s constant stream of exaggerated complaints.
As the paddock prepares for the final race of the year, the former Formula 1 driver has been vocal about both McLaren’s strengths and Verstappen’s behaviour during practice.
A Calm Norris Leads the Way
Reporting from the Yas Marina Circuit, Brundle highlights that Great Britain could see its first world champion since 2020 if Norris maintains his form over the weekend. The McLaren driver topped the timesheets during Friday’s practice sessions, appearing composed throughout.
“Lando looked very serene and calm,” said Brundle after FP2. “He knows exactly what he has to do. McLaren, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri need to stick to their method as much as possible to make this look like a normal Formula 1 weekend. So far, they look strong.”
Norris’ control and confidence were evident, and with McLaren arriving in Abu Dhabi as the favourites in terms of raw pace, his performance on Friday suggested that the team is handling the pressure well.
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Piastri needs a reset after a tough Friday
While Norris impressed, the same cannot be said of Piastri. The Australian missed FP1, which put him at a disadvantage when he returned to the cockpit for the second session. Brundle noted the visible difference between the teammates, something that Jos Verstappen had already hinted at during the previous round in Las Vegas.
“Oscar did have a few challenges because he missed the first free practice session,” Brundle explained. “He will be a little concerned that he wasn’t immediately quick. The rear of his car was also sliding around a bit more.”
Having finished eleventh in FP2, Piastri now faces the task of quickly closing the gap to Norris. Brundle believes this is still possible, but the Australian must respond swiftly.
“Piastri still has the third free practice session, so he can recover,” said Brundle. “They know this circuit extremely well, and they also know the car well at the end of the season. So it should be fine, but when he studies the data, he’ll realise he needs a spectacular Saturday.’
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Sky Sports presenter Rachel Brookes asked Brundle whether Piastri could simply adopt Norris’ set-up to fast-track his progress. Brundle made clear that, in today’s Formula 1, such transparency is standard practice.
‘Nowadays, everything is very open within the teams. You have access to your teammate’s settings, and they also experiment with settings in the simulator,” he explained. “In my day, you could still change something and keep it secret, but that’s not how it works anymore. They even know each other’s strategies.”
The implication is that if Piastri wants to close the deficit, every available resource is at his disposal. What he needs now is to execute his plan.
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Verstappen’s radio messages raise eyebrows with Brundle
The other major talking point on Friday was Verstappen’s radio messages. Despite finishing both sessions in second place and emerging as Norris’s main rival, the reigning champion repeatedly expressed frustration about various aspects of his RB20.
This type of feedback is common in practice, and Verstappen’s technical input is often praised for helping Red Bull fine-tune their car. However, Brundle feels that the Dutchman goes too far, particularly on Fridays.
“Red Bull will fine-tune this. We’ve said it before, but Max blows everything out of proportion on Fridays,” he said. “He wants these points to get all the attention.”
Brundle suggested that Verstappen’s mindset may be influenced by his dominance across sprint weekends, where Friday performance carries unusually high significance.
“Max is the sprint king, and on sprint weekends you have to perform well on Fridays. Red Bull can solve this quickly. Max will perform well, but it seems that McLaren is stronger in terms of pure speed. We expected that, too.”
Standard complaints or signs of frustration?
Brundle rounded off his analysis by questioning the substance of Verstappen’s complaints, describing them as the ‘usual’ issues all drivers face during practice runs.
‘Max is talking about different problems at different points on the circuit. He’s complaining about grip, balance and handling. Basically, all the standard things,” he concluded.
Just a week earlier, Brundle had criticised Verstappen for his comments about McLaren, telling the Dutchman to “keep his mouth shut” and avoid unnecessary provocation.
With the title still up for grabs and tensions rising ahead of qualifying, the final weekend of the season is shaping up to be as much about psychology as it is about competition.
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Having moved to Ferrari this season in a fanfare of Italian PR, Lewis Hamilton has described this year as a “nightmare” and his “worst season ever in Formula One.”
The seven times champion’s year peaked at round two in China, where he qualified on pole for the Sprint before going on to win the shortened for race on Saturday morning. Yet the cruel racing gods intervened, and both Hamilton and his team mate were disqualified from the Grand Prix on Sunday for excessive wear of the SF-25 skid blocks.
Ferrari introduced a new suspension upgrade in Belgium to deal with the ride height issues which plagued their car, yet since the new component, their average points scored each weekend has fallen from 19 to 14.
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The group president John Elkann praised the engineers and mechanics for the improvements he claimed they had made to the car, despite the actual deterioration in their statistics, going on to tell his drivers to “talk less and focus more on the driving.”
Clearly Maranello is a divided place and unlike Carlos Sainz at Williams who has overcome his switch of team, Hamilton cuts a lonesome figure in the paddock and is still sending in “documents” for the team to consider in how to improve their operation.
In Qatar, Fred Vasseur was asked why Ferrari’s form had collapsed since the final six races of 2024, when their SF-24 was by far the quickest car. He dodged the fact that Ferrari had in a moment of madness decided to build a completely new car and run a push rod suspension, a design they have no experience with.
“Quite early in the season, McLaren was so dominating in the first four or five events that we realised it would be very difficult for 2025,” said Vasseur. “It meant that we decided very early in the season, I think it was the end of April, to switch (the development focus) to ’26. It was a…READ MORE ON THIS ARTICLE
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Ha – who does Brundle think he IS, telling Max to keep his mouth shut?! The man is a four times World Champion and HE knows what best suits HIM to get the best out of his team and car ….
Really, sometimes these pundits get way too wrapped up with their own importance.