Lando Norris is the one who has the outcome of the Formula 1 title race in his own hands heading into the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix season finale. But David Croft has been backing team-mate Oscar Piastri for the crown for much of the season and, even though the Aussie is the least fancied of the three to be the world champion by Sunday night, isn’t changing his mind now.

The Sky Sports F1 lead commentator and Scalextric ambassador told Express Sport: “I’m still a very stubborn man. I’m not going to flip-flop around like my colleague Karun Chandhok – he’s got more flip-flops than an Australian beach shop. He’s gone Oscar, Lando, Oscar, Lando all season long.”

“Will Oscar do it? I’d like to think he can. Does he want to qualify third? Will Max tangle with a McLaren at turn one like he did last year? Will that pave the way for Oscar to come through? There’s so many scenarios going into Sunday. As long as we don’t get a repeat of Abu Dhabi 2021 – let’s just follow the rules on this one.”

Piastri led the championship for six months and was the obvious title favourite after the summer break, when he returned from his holiday to win the Dutch Grand Prix while Norris left empty-handed after an oil leak scuppered his chances. But the Aussie went on a rotten run of result at just the wrong time and that has left him third in the standings, four points behind Max Verstappen and 16 off the lead.

Piastri needs his team-mate to finish sixth or lower even if he wins on Sunday, while anything less than second place will not be enough regardless of what his title rivals achieve at the Yas Marina Circuit. And if this is not to be Piastri’s year, then Croft has seen enough from the 24-year-old to know he will be back in contention again in the future.

The Sky Sports favourite said: “I’ve seen in Oscar a world champion in the making. His ability to absorb information, to then use that knowledge as and when needs be out on the race track, he has matured this season as well. He should be a world champion one day – whether it will be next Sunday, it’s probably increasingly unlikely now after the results in Qatar and the results leading up to the last few races.

“There are things in his driving he probably needs to iron out to make sure that, on these low-grip tracks, he doesn’t struggle quite as much in the future. But it is only his third season in F1 and he’s still learning. Lando has got four seasons on him in F1. I think he has that ruthlessness, he has that ability to pounce when he needs to pounce, to understand the strategy, to be calm and rational when making those decisions.”

Verstappen was 104 points off the lead after the Zandvoort race in August and, by that point, had ruled out his own chances of being in the mix. But a combination of a very effective Red Bull upgrade introduced at Monza in September, which has finally helped the Dutchman to compete at the sharp end of the grid again, and several costly McLaren blunders have put him back in the hunt.

The Red Bull racer has repeatedly said he won’t lose a wink of sleep if he fails to win the title again, but Croft isn’t convinced Verstappen means it. He said: “There’s a big difference between a four-time and a five-time world champion. And to win them consecutively, he’ll go up there with [Juan Manuel] Fangio, with [Michael] Schumacher, with [Lewis] Hamilton. That’s the pantheon of greats.

“The way he deals with it is, ‘Nothing’s going to change my life here, I’m already a four-time world champion’. I think he deserves to be a five-time world champion.”

With Norris out in front, there is only one was Croft can imagine his fellow Brit approaching the challenge. He said: “Lando still needs to just keep calm, relax and know that a third place will be good enough for him. There’s a lot of options that that might not happen, but his car is still very good, he’s still very good and they go well in Abu Dhabi. It’s a track he’s won at before, convincingly won last year as well.”

But, in truth, the man who will be commentating live on Sunday’s race for millions of viewers around the world believes F1 will be the real winner, no matter who is champion by the end of it. He added: “The beauty for me for this final race is that whatever the outcome, it’s a great story.

“Either Max, the underdog this season, becomes a five-time world champion, Oscar, in his third season, becomes a champion for the first time, surviving all the pressure and all the adversity that have been thrown at him, or Lando Norris comes good and the driver who joined McLaren as a boy when he was 17 and made the teas for Fernando Alonso can now take his place as the 35th different world champion as very much a man.

“So it’s a coming-of-age story, or it’s a high-five story – but it’s a great story. I just love the way that Formula 1 throws these stories up year after year after year.”