Not buried too deeply in the memory banks is the Oscar Piastri/Alpine debacle of 2022. Then, competing in the F2 championship, Piastri was announced as an Alpine driver for the next season without his consent. This was followed by the now infamous tweet from the driver eloquently denying that he would be racing for Alpine.
Instead, he and his manager, Mark Webber, were already inking a deal with McLaren. What a decision that turned out to be.
Just three years later, Piastri is delivering flawless performances and sits only a few points adrift of leading the driver’s world championship. As in China earlier this season, Piastri delivered not only a pole position on Saturday but also an impeccable drive on Sunday to win in Bahrain. The Aussie driver led cleanly from the pole and never looked fussed on his way to victory. It’s not lost that Piastri’s dominant win comes on a circuit that demands a lot of tyre finessing and is overtly a high degradation. This, his inability to manage tyre wear, was likely his biggest weakness in 2024. But now even this blemish in his copybook has been stamped out with emphatic purpose.
Piastri also seems greatly unfazed by…everything. Winning grands prix? As it should it. Second in the world championship standings? Alright. There is something almost Raikkonen-esque about his calm and unbothered demeanour. Whether he can reach the same great heights as Raikkonen remains to be seen. But what is certain is that Oscar Piastri is not a star of the future but a star right now.
The same couldn’t quite be said for his McLaren teammate Lando Norris this weekend. A messy qualifying left him in sixth place, a misaligning of his car in the grid box got him a five-second penalty, and several overtaking attempts looked dodgy, at best. Still, Norris recovered from the penalty, kept his head down, and came home in third. In so doing, he retains the championship lead now over teammate Piastri.
As good as Norris’s eventual recovery was, the drive of the day came from George Russell. The Mercedes driver was meant to start on the front row but for a 1-place grid penalty after a pitlane infringement during Saturday qualifying. Not to be deterred, Russell raced his way into second. A late-ish safety car, for debris on the track, prompted the appearance of the safety car and meant an extra ‘free’ stop for everyone. Mercedes opted to put Russell on the soft tyre, which he would have to manage for 24 laps. Ever the tyre whisperer, Russell not only kept his tyres alive but simultaneously dealt with several car issues, all the while holding off a charging Norris. Russell, throughout all of 2025, has been lurking under the radar, quietly picking up podiums and racking up the points. Given how much of the season remains to be run, he shouldn’t be ruled out of contention by any means. If Mercedes can close the gap to McLaren, Russell has already proven himself well-ready to take up the fight.
It was a slightly better weekend for Ferrari with Charles Leclerc in fourth followed by new teammate Lewis Hamilton in fifth. It’s not quite what Hamilton’s legion of fans were expecting, but, at the very least, the team seems to be heading in the right direction. There would be no repeats of the heroics of Japan for Max Verstappen, who struggled throughout the entire race with the drivability of his Red Bull. To add insult to a serious lack of pace, the pitstops, too, were disastrous. First, a malfunctioning light system caused a slight delay and then a sticky right-front wheel cost the reigning champion a few more seconds of lost time. In Bahrain, it seemed like the shortcomings of the 2025 Red Bull were amplified. The excessive amount of understeer seemed, at points, undrivable, even for Verstappen. Perhaps the higher speed nature of the Jeddah Corniche circuit at this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Gp, will be more to the liking of the Red Bull. Though Verstappen is abundantly capable of delivering something special the fear is that not even his prodigious talent is enough to drive around the problematic Red Bull every weekend.
Alpine would be well-chuffed with Pierre Gasly’s seventh-place finish, while Esteban Ocon’s first-ever female race engineer, Laura Mueller, coaxed him to a fine eighth-place finish. Yuki Tsunoda scored his first points as a Red Bull driver in ninth ahead of Haas’s Ollie Bearman in tenth.
It is nearly a given that McLaren will turn up in Saudi with the expectation of occupying the top step of the podium. The question now becomes which McLaren will be in P1. Piastri has proven that he is highly capable and blindingly quick, while Norris has stumbled slightly. Is the guard changing at McLaren
