McLaren holds a key advantage over Ferrari going into a potentially title-deciding Qatar Grand Prix. The Woking team know that if it out-scores Ferrari by 15 points to increase its lead to 45 or more, it will leave Lusail with its first constructors' title since 1998. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri start third and fourth on the grid, with Ferrari pair Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz fifth and seventh, with Piastri and Norris having scored a maximum haul of 15 points with a one-two in the sprint. And the two have a potentially key advantage over the Ferrari pair in terms of strategy. Norris and Piastri both have two brand-new sets of the hard tyres available, having not used them in practice, whilst the Ferrari drivers only have a single set. It is the same story for medium tyres, with Leclerc and Sainz having no new fresh C2 sets, with the McLaren drivers having one new set apiece. Pole-sitter George Russell also has his two hard tyres untouched, but no new fresh set of mediums, although he did simply scrub a set for a single lap at the start of qualifying. Max Verstappen has two new hards, one medium and a joker of a fresh set of softs, which could come in handy on a late safety car or red flag restart. Pirelli is predicting a straight-forward one-stop strategy being the fastest way to complete the race by starting on the mediums and running to between laps 19 and 25 before swapping to the hards. Alternatively, a two-stop is possible either on a medium-hard-hard strategy or medium-hard-medium. You can check out the remaining tyre sets and race strategy predictions below!
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