<p>It was all lined up. The penultimate race weekend of the season at a track that isn&#39;t exactly condusive to overtakes. Lando  just needed to outscore both his rivals by 2 points over the sprint and the Grand Prix to claim his first World Driver&#39;s crown, he was starting ahead of Max Verstappen in both races and he&#39;s had the measure of Oscar Piastri recently. It&#39;s a sure thing isn&#39;t it?</p><p>This week on the podcast we look back at the race weekend where Lando Norris could well have lost the championship after McLaren took a gamble on strategy straight out the Ferrari playbook and managed to keep the 3 way title fight alive right up to the final race of the season next weekend in Abu Dhabi (and we all know how that&#39;s gone before don&#39;t we). How did they manage to get everything so wrong and be the only team not to pit under a safety car with 50 laps to go when there were compulsory stops after a maximum of 25 laps on a set of tyres?</p><p>At least for the likes of us we&#39;ve got another season where the finale isn&#39;t a dead rubber/lame duck and we&#39;re not going to know who the 2025 World Champion is until Sunday afternoon (unless something goes badly wrong in qualifying of course!) So of course we&#39;re speculating like nobody&#39;s business on that and on what the 2026 RedBull &amp; VCARB lineups are going to be along with which one of the 5 prosepective drivers is going to be left without a seat (spoiler, it&#39;s Yuki) until someone messes up and gets demoted/fired! Obviously we&#39;ve got a good few tangents as well as it wouldn&#39;t be an episode of 3L4W without them!</p><p>And if you want to join in with the chat during the races (along with practice and qualifying) head over to our <a href="https://discord.gg/gG8rkzm">⁠Discord⁠</a> where there’s always a great crowd of people to watch along with. And on the socials we’ve got our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/3legs4wheels">⁠Facebook⁠</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/3legs4wheels/">⁠Instagram⁠</a>, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/3legs4wheels.com">⁠BlueSky⁠</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/3legs4wheels">⁠Twitter (or is it X)⁠</a> and Paul’s attempts at Sim Racing on our <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/3legs4wheels">⁠Twitch⁠</a> channel. And if you want to support us you can donate to our <a href="https://www.patreon.com/3legs4wheels">⁠Patreon⁠</a> as well from as little as £/$/€ 1 per month</p><p>Enjoy</p>