The key moments which decided McLaren driver Lando Norris' run to the Formula 1 title

After McLaren driver Lando Norris clinched his first Formula 1 title at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday, here's a look at some key moments which helped decide the championship fight.

Defending champion Max Verstappen won the Abu Dhabi GP from pole position for Red Bull, but Norris held his nerve to finish third.

Having entered the race with a 12-point lead on Verstappen, Norris did enough to beat Verstappen by two points overall in the standings and to finish 13 points ahead of McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri, who placed second in the race.

The very first race of the season in Australia had a split-second moment in the rain with an outsized impact on the standings.

As the rain fell, both Norris and Piastri slipped off the track. Norris held the slide and continued on to victory in Melbourne, while Piastri spun out and trailed in ninth in front of his home crowd. That meant an immediate 23-point swing in Norris' favor.

It also helped Verstappen secure a second place which helped his points tally later on. Lewis Hamilton was 10th in a result which paved the way for a disappointing first season with Ferrari.

Asked ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix about the moments which could have changed the title race, Norris pointed to his collision with Piastri at the Canadian GP in June.

Norris was chasing down Piastri with three laps to go when he attempted an ambitious overtake, hitting his teammate and bouncing into the wall. He apologized to the Australian and to the whole McLaren team.

Other notable mistakes included a qualifying crash in Saudi Arabia, while Norris' hopes were also hit by a rare engine failure at the Dutch Grand Prix. A home win at the British Grand Prix was an emotional high. “I'll remember this more than anything,” he said.

Verstappen surged back into the title fight in the second half of the season, and it coincided with an earthquake at Red Bull.

Longtime team principal Christian Horner was ousted after the British Grand Prix, at the halfway point of the season. At the time, Verstappen was struggling to match the pace of the McLarens and hadn't committed to be with the team for 2026. Weeks later, he said he'd stay.

Horner's replacement Laurent Mekies oversaw a turnaround that began with a sprint race win for Verstappen in Belgium and six Grand Prix wins since then. It hasn't all been plain sailing — at one point, Verstappen dropped 104 points off the lead — but Red Bull is firmly back among F1's top teams.

McLaren's “papaya rules” started with a simple statement — “let 'em race” — but swiftly got more complicated.

Rules and precedents were negotiated over team radio, most notoriously at the Italian Grand Prix, when Piastri was asked to give up a place to Norris, who'd had a slow pit stop. Piastri indicated he thought a slow stop should just be part of racing.

McLaren also had to step in with unspecified “consequences” two races later when Norris and Piastri made contact on the first lap in Singapore.

Australia hoped for its first champion in 45 years after Piastri finished on the podium in 14 of the first 16 races of the season, winning seven. It was championship-level consistency.

Then came Baku.

With the F1 paddock still buzzing over McLaren's decision in favor of Norris in Italy, Piastri had the worst weekend of his career in Azerbaijan in September, and his form dropped off sharply after that.

The Australian crashed in qualifying, then jumped the start and crashed on the first lap. He wasn't on the podium again until the Qatar Grand Prix more than two months later.

Verstappen would have been out of contention before Abu Dhabi if not for two costly blunders by McLaren which helped Red Bull’s four-time champion back into the contest.

Firstly, a setup error at the Las Vegas Grand Prix meant both Norris and Piastri's cars were running too close to the ground, causing illegal wear underneath the car. Both were disqualified, meaning a big swing in Verstappen's favor.

At the following race a week later in Qatar, McLaren opted not to bring Norris and Piastri in for fresh tires under a safety car. Every other team pitted. That strategy call handed Verstappen the win and left Piastri “speechless” in second, with Norris fourth.

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

McLaren driver Lando Norris of Britain celebrates after becoming a world champion after the Formula One Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

FILE - McLaren driver Lando Norris of Britain, right, and McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia during the driver's parade at the Qatar Formula One Grand Prix, in Lusail, Qatar, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025.(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri, File)

FILE-McLaren driver Lando Norris of Britain, centre, is flanked by his teammate Oscar Piastri of Australia, left, and Kick Sauber driver Nico Hulkenberg of Germany, right, as they celebrates after winning the British Formula One Grand Prix race at the Silverstone racetrack in Silverstone, England, Sunday, July 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic, File)

FILE - First place finisher Red Bull driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands celebrates after the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix auto race, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025 in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

FILE -McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia, left, and McLaren driver Lando Norris of Britain walk through the paddock after the qualifying session ahead of the Italian Grand Prix at the Monza racetrack in Monza, Italy, Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)

McLaren driver Lando Norris of Britain celebrates after becoming a world champion after the Formula One Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

MILAN (AP) — Milan’s storied Teatro alla Scala celebrates its gala season premiere Sunday with a Russian opera for the second time since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But this year, instead of drawing protests for showcasing the invader’s culture, a flash mob demonstrated for peace.

La Scala’s music director Riccardo Chailly conducts Dmitry Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” for the gala season opener that draws luminaries from culture, business and politics for one of the most anticipated events of the European cultural calendar.

Shostakovich's 1934 opera highlights the condition of women in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and was blacklisted just days after the communist leader saw a performance in 1936, the threshold year of his campaign of political repression known as the Great Purge.

A dozen activists from a liberal Italian party held up Ukrainian and European flags in a quiet demonstration removed from the La Scala hubub that aimed “to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by (President Vladimir) Putin’s Russia, and to support the Ukrainian people.’’

The party underlined that Shostakovich's opera exposes the abuse of power and the role of personal resistance.

Another, larger, demonstration of several dozen people in front of city hall called for freedom for the Palestinians and an end to colonialism, but was kept far from arriving dignitaries by a police cordon. Demonstrations against war and other forms of inequality have long countered the glitz of the gala season premiere.

Chailly began working with Russian stage director Vasily Barkhatov on the title about two years ago, following the 2022 gala season premiere of the Russian opera “Boris Godunov,” which was attended by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, both of whom separated Russia’s politicians from its culture.

But outside the Godunov premiere, Ukrainians protested against highlighting Russian culture during a war rooted in the denial of a unique Ukrainian culture. The Ukrainian community did not announce any separate protests this year.

Chailly called the staging of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth" at La Scala for just the fourth time “a must.’’

“It is an opera that has long suffered, and needs to make up for lost time,’’ Chailly told a news conference last month.

La Scala’s new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, defended the choices made by his predecessor to stage both Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth” and Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov " at the theater best known for its Italian repertoire.

‘‘Music is fundamentally superior to any ideological conflict,’’ Ortombina said on the sidelines of the press conference. “Shostakovich, and Russian music more broadly, have an authority over the Russian people that exceeds Putin's own.’’

American soprano Sara Jakubiak is making her La Scala debut in the title role of Katerina, whose struggle against existential repression leads her to commit murder, landing her in a Siberian prison where she dies. It’s the second time Jakubiak has sung the role, after performances in Barcelona last year, and she said Shostakovich's Katerina is full of challenges.

“That I’m a murderess, that I’m singing 47 high B flats in one night, you know, all these things,’’ Jakubiak said while sitting in the makeup chair ahead of the Dec. 4 preview performance to an audience of young people. “You go, ‘Oh my gosh, how will I do this?’ But you manage, with the right kind of work, the right team of people. Yes, we’re just going to go for the ride.”

Speaking to journalists recently, Chailly joked that he was “squeezing” Jakubiak like an orange. Jakubiak said she found common ground with the conductor known for his studious approach to the original score and composer’s intent.

“Whenever I prepare a role, it’s always the text and the music and the text and the rhythms,'' she said. “First, I do this process with, you know, a cup of coffee at my piano and then we add the other layers and then the notes. So I guess we’re actually somewhat similar in that regard.''

Jakubiak, best known for Strauss and Wagner, has a major debut coming in July when she sings her first Isolde in concert with Anthony Pappano and the London Symphony.

Barkhatov, who at 42 has has a flourishing international career, said “Lady Macbeth” was a “very brave and exciting" choice.

Barkhatov's stage direction sets the opera in a cosmopolitan Russian city in the 1950s, the end of Stalin’s regime, rather than a 19th-century rural village as written for the 1930s premier.

For Barkhatov, Stalin’s regime defines the background of the story and the mentality of the characters for a story he sees as a personal tragedy and not a political tale. Most of the action unfolds inside a restaurant appointed in period Art Deco detail, with a rotating balustrade creating a kitchen, a basement and an office where interrogations take place.

Despite the tragic arc, Barkhatov described the story as “a weird … breakthrough to happiness and freedom.’’

“Sadly, the statistics show that a lot of people die on their way to happiness and freedom,’’ he added.

Stage director Vasily Barkhatov sits during an interview with The Associated Press prior to the dressed rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

External view of Teatro all Scala ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

Soprano Sara Jakubiak has her makeup done ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

The stage is prepared ahead of the dressed rehearsal of the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, by Dmitri Shostakovich, at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)