Lewis Hamilton crashed his Ferrari in the final practice session of the Formula One season in Abu Dhabi this Saturday, with Mercedes’s George Russell denying McLaren’s championship leader Lando Norris a sweep of fastest times.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Russell was 0.004 quicker than his fellow Briton, who dominated Friday at Yas Marina and was still the fastest title contender.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Norris leads Red Bull’s four-times world champion Max Verstappen by 12 points with McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri a further four adrift.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If the 26-year-old Norris finishes in the top three on Sunday he will be champion but a fast Mercedes in the mix could complicate matters.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Verstappen was third, 0.124 off the pace, while Piastri was fifth fastest and behind Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Seven-times champion Hamilton brought out red flags when he spun at turn nine before spearing into the tyre wall halfway through the session.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Something buckled at the front and snapped the rear,” the Briton, yet to stand on the podium since joining Ferrari from Mercedes in January, said over team radio.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There had been drama already, with Norris having to swerve to avoid a dawdling Red Bull driven by Yuki Tsunoda and the Japanese then caught up in a pitlane collision with Mercedes’s Kimi Antonelli and both cars suffering damage.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mercedes released the Italian rookie from the garage straight into Tsunoda’s path, with stewards investigating.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“You told me yes and Tsunoda was coming,” exclaimed Antonelli.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Verstappen was also complaining about his car jumping. “I can’t keep my feet on the pedals,” he said over the radio.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20606,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-20605","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Lewis Hamilton crashed his Ferrari in the final practice session of the Formula One season in Abu Dhabi","published_date":"2025-12-06 16:31:37","news_description":"Lewis Hamilton crashed his Ferrari in the final practice session of the Formula One season in Abu Dhabi","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24583,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20605\/revisions\/24583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=20605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}