The Other F1 Championship Battles You're Forgetting About This Weekend

Everyone's talking about Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen entering the Formula One season finale tied in points, but let us not forget that we have some other battles taking place further down the grid to earn a handful of those coveted points — and the prize money that comes with them.

I know, I know. It doesn't sound as exciting. But prize money is prize money, and everyone wants some of that.

In case you've forgotten, F1 divvies up prize money in a weird way that can be a pain in the ass to explain. Basically: a certain amount of prize money is equally distributed among the top 10 teams in the series, and any other team gets a participation fund. Another amount of money is divided up based on a team's finishing position, with the first-place team getting more money than the second place team and so on down the board. Ferrari gets a little extra money just for being Ferrari.

So: it benefits the team to finish higher in the championship standings, which means their drivers need to finish well. So you can imagine that there's some strong incentive here for drivers to duke it out on the track no matter where they're finishing.

Let's look at what's on the table for the finale at Abu Dhabi.

The hottest on-track battle we're likely to see will be for fifth place in the Drivers' Championship. Charles Leclerc currently holds the position with 158 points, but Lando Norris is just four points behind, and Carlos Sainz Jr. is just 4.5 points behind Norris. With these drivers making up "the best of the rest" after Red Bull and Mercedes, we're likely to see a spicy fight between these three drivers.

The battle for 10th place in the Drivers' Championship lies between Alpine teammates Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon. Alonso currently has 77 points to Ocon's 72, and there's still a chance that either driver could nab that final place in the top 10.

We could potentially see a big shuffle among the drivers who are currently ranked 11th or lower, since they're all within a few points of one another. Whether or not that actually happens, though, remains to be seen; these are the drivers who often struggle to score points, so it would take a very good day for one of these drivers to overtake the competition. But at this point in the championship, I'll go ahead and say that anything can happen.

There's just one team that has yet to score a single point this year: Haas. At this point, only grid-wide disaster would enable them to overtake Alfa Romeo for ninth in the championship, but the team will likely be desperate for any points at all to end the year on a high.

A close title battle between drivers from two different teams generally means that the Constructors' Championship will also be close, and this year, it is. Mercedes currently holds 587.5 points, and Red Bull Racing sits just 28 points back. One one-two finish for Red Bull and a truly awful day for Mercedes, and Red Bull could easily nab the crown.

Most of the rest of the teams are currently sitting where they're likely to finish, since it would be a big ask for these teams to score enough points to move forward. Theoretically, AlphaTauri could score the 29 points it needs to jump ahead of Alpine, but it isn't likely to happen. Similarly, Alfa Romeo could make up the 10 points it needs to overtake Williams, but it would be pretty damn difficult.