The 2025 season comes down to the lights of Yas Marina. Formula 1 arrives in Abu Dhabi with the title fight still alive, while Formula 2 closes its campaign with Leonardo Fornaroli already crowned but the teams’ championship and several key positions still up for grabs.
Weekend Breakdown: Abu Dhabi GP 2025 Schedule and Session Times
Formula 1 and Formula 2 sign off the year at Yas Marina with three days of running from late morning into the sunset. All key sessions take place in falling temperatures, so expect big swings in grip between practice, qualifying and the races.
Yas Marina Circuit Guide: How Abu Dhabi GP 2025 Will Race
Yas Marina is a 5.281 km circuit, with 58 laps deciding the 2025 F1 world title on Sunday night. Since the 2021 reconfiguration, the layout flows more than it once did. The old fiddly chicanes in the first and final sectors have been replaced by faster, more open corners.
Turn 5 hairpin and Turn 6 chicane form the main overtaking sequence, fed by a long DRS zone down the first back straight. Turn 9 – the fast, sweeping left at the hotel end – is now a big commitment corner, punishing understeer and rear instability. The final sector still demands traction out of slow corners as the track threads under the hotel and alongside the marina.
Race lap records by each series:
- F1 – 1:25.637 – Kevin Magnussen (Haas) – 2024
- F2 – 1:35.077 – Oscar Piastri (Prema Racing) – 2021
Weather and track conditions
Abu Dhabi closes the year with exactly the kind of weather teams want for a title decider: dry, warm and stable. Forecasts point to clear skies all weekend, daytime highs around 29–30°C, and evening temperatures dropping to 24–26°C. Rain risk is effectively zero, with only light coastal winds expected.
Friday — December 5
F1 impact
FP1 will be mainly about systems checks, aero rakes and long-run mapping on a relatively green circuit. With the session held in hotter, non-representative conditions, teams will focus on race-pace balance and brake cooling rather than chasing lap time. FP2 is the crucial one: the lower track temperature and dusk-to-night crossover closely match Sunday’s race window, so this is where qualifying and long-run simulations will be locked in.
F2 impact
F2 Practice takes place in hotter conditions than either race, so drivers will wrestle with sliding rears and aggressive surface degradation. That makes it useful for understanding how far they can lean on the softest compound later in the weekend. By the time Qualifying begins, the sun will be lower, track evolution will be strong thanks to F1 mileage, and getting tyres into the window on the out-lap will be critical.
Saturday — December 6
F1 impact
FP3 remains a bit of an outlier: it is hotter and sunnier than qualifying, so teams will treat it as a back-up session to confirm overnight changes rather than a pure pace reference. As the sun sets, the circuit gains bite and balance shifts toward the front, which can catch out drivers who were comfortable on Friday. In qualifying trim, managing tyre preparation through the slower Sector 3 corners is crucial; a small lock-up or snap can bake the surface and cost crucial time onto the main straight.
F2 impact
The Sprint starts with a high grip level but rising tyre wear. Cars on the softer compound will have strong early pace but must avoid overheating the rears out of the Turn 7 hairpin and the hotel complex. With no mandatory stop, track position is king, yet those who keep life in the tyres can pounce in the final five laps when rivals begin to struggle off the slower corners.
Sunday — December 7
F1 impact
The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will again begin in daylight and finish after dark, so teams must chase a moving target. Opening stints will take place on a warmer, more slippery surface, which should favour cars kinder on their rear tyres. As the sun disappears, grip improves and the balance nudges forward, allowing drivers to attack more aggressively into the revised Turn 5 hairpin and the Turn 9 left-hander at the end of the back straight.
Any Safety Car will compress strategic options, but with relatively low degradation compared to Qatar or Bahrain, expect a “classic” one-stop race unless an early neutralisation encourages bolder two-stop plays.
F2 impact
The Feature Race is the last long-run test of the year for Formula 2 and will be held in the warmest conditions of Sunday. The heavier fuel load and softer tyre allocation mean rear-axle management becomes the main story: over-push early, and drivers will pay dearly as they try to put power down out of the slow chicanes in the final ten laps.
Tyres and strategy
F1: C3, C4, C5 – soft might join the party
Pirelli brings its softest trio to Yas Marina: C3 (hard), C4 (medium) and C5 (soft). Each driver receives two sets of hards, three sets of mediums and eight sets of softs, with an extra set of softs reserved for those who reach Q3.
Historically, Abu Dhabi has been a low-graining, low-degradation venue since the current tyre generation arrived. Pirelli notes that thermal degradation is concentrated on the rear tyres, particularly in the traction zones of the final sector. That pattern, combined with last year’s race data, suggests a one-stop strategy remains the baseline, most likely medium to hard.
However, with graining now less of an issue, Pirelli believes the C5 soft could play a bigger role than just a Qualifying compound. If temperatures cool enough in the Grand Prix, we may see aggressive two-stop strategies built around multiple soft stints, especially for cars starting outside the top ten or gambling on a late Safety Car.
With the title on the line, the temptation will be to stay conservative. But if someone needs to overturn a points deficit, Abu Dhabi’s low wear and high track position reward may push them toward a brave soft-led plan.
F1 tyre options, Photo Credit: Alpine F1 Team
F2 tyre choice at Yas Marina
For the final round of 2025, Pirelli has brought the Medium and Supersoft compounds to Formula 2, the same aggressive pairing used at several earlier venues this season. The yellow-walled Medium offers strong consistency over long runs but is harder to switch on, especially in the cooler evening periods. The red-walled Supersoft delivers a large one-lap performance step and will be the default tyre for Qualifying and the early phases of the Sprint, yet it is unlikely to survive flat-out for an entire Feature Race stint without careful management.
Yas Marina’s layout leans heavily on traction zones rather than sustained high-speed corners, which means the rear tyres take the brunt of the workload. Expect most teams in the Abu Dhabi GP 2025 round to build their Feature strategies around starting or finishing on the Supersoft, using the Medium as the “anchor” compound in the middle of the race when fuel loads are highest. A late Safety Car could reward anyone who has saved a fresh set of Supersofts for a final sprint to the flag.
What to watch
F1: Title Fight and 2026 Auditions
Title decider under the hotel lights
Abu Dhabi hosts the final act in what could be one of the closest title fights in recent memory, as Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri head into the 2025 finale separated by a narrow margin. Norris holds a 12-point lead over Verstappen and 16 over Piastri, giving him a clear but delicate advantage.
Yas Marina will test every shade of driver ability. Norris arrives with consistency, calm under pressure, and a healthy dose of recent experience here. His calculating approach to tyres and timing may pay off.
Verstappen, meanwhile, brings momentum. His late-season surge leaves him a dangerous opponent. On a track with sweeping corners and long straights, his raw pace and attack-mode prowess could flip the championship.
Piastri remains the wildcard. His qualifying pace all season has been among the best. Yas Marina’s reprofiled layout rewards straight-line speed and strategic execution. If he nails a perfect lap and manages to control the tyres and race tempo, he could take the crown.
This finale is more than a fight for 2025. It is a test of nerves, team strategy, tyre management and split-second decisions. Every braking zone, every DRS zone and every pit-stop call could tilt the balance.
Goodbyes, auditions and 2026 positioning
For some drivers, Abu Dhabi may be a farewell. Others are effectively auditioning for a bigger role in 2026, whether as de facto team leaders or as reference points against incoming rookies. Add in the presence of freshly crowned junior champions in the paddock and the whole weekend becomes a rolling job interview.
Friday’s first practice session for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will be busier than usual. Nine non-regular drivers are scheduled to take part across the grid as teams complete their mandatory rookie-running quotas and give reserve drivers one last taste of 2025 machinery.
The group is a mix of profiles. Several current Formula 2 frontrunners are set for another step in their graduation campaign, using Abu Dhabi’s low-risk layout and stable weather as an ideal environment to log mileage. One of the seats will be filled by a driver already confirmed for a future RB race role, turning FP1 into a live shakedown before his full-time promotion. Ferrari, meanwhile, will field a rare brother-pairing across its works and customer entries, while one well-funded newcomer takes up the final slot in a deal that underlines how valuable FP1 track time has become.
F2 storylines
Fornaroli’s victory lap and the battle for second
With the drivers’ title already secured in Qatar, Leonardo Fornaroli arrives in Abu Dhabi as a back-to-back junior champion, looking to put a final exclamation mark on his 2025 F2 campaign. The more immediate drama is behind him: Jak Crawford, Richard Verschoor, Luke Browning and others are locked in a tight fight for runner-up in the standings.
Expect some asymmetric strategies: those with little to lose may gamble on aggressive tyre calls or bold moves into Turn 6, while the drivers clinging to championship positions will try to stay out of trouble.
Teams’ championship goes to the wire
Invicta Racing arrive in Abu Dhabi with one hand on the trophy, but not both. Their Qatar haul leaves them on 296 points, 35 clear of Hitech TGR and 57 ahead of Campos Racing. With 2025’s final Sprint and Feature still to run, that gap is big enough to give Invicta breathing room, yet small enough that one bad Sunday could still twist the table.
Invicta’s strength has been continuity. Leonardo Fornaroli’s title run delivered four wins and nine podiums, while Roman Stanek added regular top-six finishes to keep the floor of their weekends high. Even when they missed the front row, they usually banked double-points scores, which is where teams’ titles are really won.
Hitech TGR, by contrast, built momentum late. Dino Beganovic and Luke Browning have turned the car into a constant podium threat since the summer, and Qatar underlined that form again with strong race pace and fastest lap in the Feature. If Invicta stumble in Abu Dhabi, Hitech are the most likely to punish them.
Campos sit as the outside shot. Oliver Goethe’s pure speed and Rafael Villagómez’s breakthrough results mean they can still swing weekends if the race turns chaotic. They probably need a win plus trouble for both Invicta cars, yet Yas Marina’s tight pit exit and safety-car friendly layout have produced shocks before.
Feature Image: Red Bull Content Pool