Five Things to Know About the 2025 Qatar GP

We're almost at the 2025 finish line as Formula 1 returns to the Middle East for the final two rounds of the season.

Qatar is next up, with the sport making its fourth trip to Lusail since its introduction to the calendar in 2021.

Are you ready for our weekend on the Doha outskirts? We've got five things to get you in the mood below.

Qatar will see the final Sprint weekend of the 2025 season to give us the last round with competitive action across all three days this year.

It'll be the third consecutive Sprint for the Qatar Grand Prix after a maiden outing back in 2023, on a Saturday that saw F1 history being made.

Max Verstappen won his third F1 title as Oscar Piastri secured his first P1 finish in an F1 race. But our attention was on Alex Albon's sublime drive in the FW45.

Albono started the 19-lap race in P17, but sped through the field to a P8 finish by the chequered flag. That morphed into a P7 classification after a penalty for Charles Leclerc, concluding Alex's incredible 10-place advance up the order.

There'll be some fascinating strategies in place across the Qatar Grand Prix's three days of running thanks to a tyre mandate in place for all three days.

No set of tyres will be allowed to do more than 25 laps across the entire weekend for safety reasons in a decision that'll effectively enforce a two-stop strategy in Sunday's race.

More than that, though, there'll be alterations across all five sessions to accommodate the maximum permitted laps.

Teams who 'scrub' tyres to put a heat cycle through them before using them for a stint will need to consider whether that's worthwhile. Any drivers who qualify down the order won't be able to do a long-run hard-tyre gamble in the hopes of a Safety Car either.

Plus, all teams will know that their rivals must stop by a certain lap when battling on track, giving the pit walls rare insight into the limits of strategies for other cars on track.

Formula 2 has had a long break since its last round in Baku to support the Azerbaijan GP.

That means our Williams Racing Driver Academy hopefuls will hit the track for the first of their final two 2025 rounds.

Luke Browning is firmly in contention for the F2 crown. Although he has a 27-point deficit to the championship leader, the point-scoring system in the championship means there are 39 points available at each round and it's all to play for.

Of course, Victor Martins will be joining Luke for the Formula 2 racing, and it's a return to a track where he's shown speed in the past.

He stormed to a second-row start in last year's qualifying session with a P3 grid slot in the series' first-ever competitive session at the track.

Formula 1 fans will of course know that Singapore proudly boasts its title as the home of F1 night racing after being the first location to have the sport speeding under the lights in 2008.

Did you know that Qatar has a similar story, though? The Lusail International Circuit is a track that we've only ever raced on under the bright lights since we first visited in 2021, but MotoGP did so first.

The pinnacle of two-wheel motorsports also saw the debut of night racing in 2008, but it was Lusail, rather than Singapore, for our biking cousin.

Although we also race under the night sky here, we're thankful lights out is coming in the evening at 7 pm local time rather than MotoGP's 11 pm start back for that inaugural night round.

Carlos' P5 result from Las Vegas helped us score another 10 points to our World Constructors' Championship tally for 2025.

That allowed us to reach 121 points as we flew out of the Americas leg of the calendar for our highest tally since 2016.

We're now 31 points ahead of our P6 rivals, and any extra points-scoring finishes from Carbono will help galvanise our position in the standings as the remaining opportunities for points dwindle.

There'll be just 43 possible points remaining for the teams by the time we leave Qatar and head to Abu Dhabi.

It's a big ask, but should we outscore Racing Bulls by 13 points across Sprint and the race, we'll lock in P5 before we even reach Yas Marina unless there's a shock result for those in the chasing pack.