Piastri solidifies a new benchmark in Bahrain

Only two races ago, I was writing about what a big milestone it was for Oscar Piastri to finally have the first pole position of his Formula 1 career, and how it was well-timed to pull him quickly back into range of teammate Lando Norris after he won in China. It’s a sign of Piastri’s progression that by the time he took the second pole position of his career — just two races after the first — it already felt like a normal occurrence. While much of the focus has been on the pressure that Norris is facing, and at times struggling with, there was certainty a degree of pressure on Piastri’s shoulders coming into this season, too. He should take it as a compliment, but the Australian was expected to provide a stern challenge to Norris and step up a level from the 2024 performances that were themselves a clear display of progression on his debut year. With the expectation came the additional pressure. Piastri continued to develop rapidly. Last year’s qualifying head-to-head against Norris was 20-4 in the more experienced driver’s favor, whereas this time around it is already 2-2, and on the two occasions Piastri has been beaten it has been by an average of 0.058s. In Bahrain, Piastri put over 0.4s into his teammate over one lap in qualifying, and that set up his relatively serene run to victory on Sunday, becoming the first repeat winner of the 2025 season in the process. “I’ve been happy with how I’ve driven all season so far,” Piastri said. “Maybe not all the results have been exactly what I wanted, but I think this weekend has definitely been the result I wanted. I’ve been proud of the job that I’ve been doing and very proud of the job the team’s done. “Obviously the car is in a great place. Still has its moments where it bites, but for a lot of the time it’s an incredible car to drive and clearly very quick. I’m very proud of the work we’re doing. This has been a track that’s not been kind to us in the past, so to have a weekend like we have had this weekend is a really meaningful result – outside of the victory.” For McLaren it was a particularly important victory, not only because of the struggles the team has had around Bahrain in recent years — partly caused by a trend of starting the season slowly and updating the car later on — but also because of its Bahraini ownership. On his 50th grand prix start, Piastri delivered the result when there were a significant number of guests and senior personnel on-site, and when he will have been fully aware of how much Zak Brown and Co. wanted the win. But handling external pressure is something that team principal Andrea Stella has noted is a strength of the 24-year-old. “I am impressed, but not surprised,” Stella said prior to Piastri’s victory. “I’m not surprised because, for us, like I always repeat, it was very apparent pretty much straight away that we were dealing with a driver with incredible natural talent, but associated also to some particular characteristics I would say. “I’ve always said that there’s no noise in Oscar’s head, which is a very useful characteristic in Formula 1, and I think this allows him to progress, to process information, to process what’s available in the situations as a way of improving himself at a very fast rate. “For being race 50 in Formula 1, certainly what he’s achieving is pretty remarkable, but what I can say is that considering his qualities, and considering the way he approaches race weekend and his Formula 1 experience, I think he will be able to sustain this growth and this trajectory for the years to come. It’s a very interesting prospect for the entirety of Formula 1 I would say.” Fifty races sounds like a big milestone, but in modern day F1 that’s a little over two seasons, and should serve as a reminder of how rapid Piastri’s rise has been since McLaren grabbed him from Alpine in the summer of 2022. In that time he has shown not only impressive development but also already delivered significant performances, that make the drive in Bahrain a strong one but not necessarily his finest. “If you think of the victory in Baku , for instance, it was a pretty crystalline, clinical victory, that one with Leclerc attacking him every single lap,” Stella continued. “For me, this one is the one in which he’s been just the most robust. No hesitations, no inaccuracies. Everything that was available, he capitalized on. This gives me more the sense of robustness, solid racing. “I think the Baku one was more on the edge. It was more pressure. This one was more managing gaps, if anything. But obviously, being strong at the start, restarts, it shouldn’t be taken for granted for somebody who is in their 50th race in Formula 1, which is quite impressive.” But that’s exactly the compliment Piastri is earning already — that it is taken for granted because it is becoming more surprising if he is not able to put himself in a position to maximize a race weekend. The robustness that Stella talks about is not only a strength of Piastri’s, but it contrasts with what appeared to be a fragility within his teammate in Bahrain. Norris could not put together a clean performance in qualifying or the race and saw Piastri cut his advantage in the drivers’ championship to just three points. Piastri did it in typical, understated fashion, but it was the ideal display to let Norris know just what a battle he has on his hands this year.