SAKHIR, Bahrain — Given his total domination of the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend, it takes a moment to remember that McLaren driver Oscar Piastri is only in his third Formula One season.
On a warm Sakhir evening, Piastri kept cool like an F1 veteran — not looking for a moment like he might lose this race. Even on a track where overtaking was very possible and tire strategy became a big differentiator, plus a safety car wiping away his lead at two-thirds distance, Piastri always had things under total control. He did not make a single mistake. Everything was at ease.
Piastri’s race engineer, Tom Stallard, described his race as “flawless” over the radio after post-race. Piastri’s greatest concern was his drinks bottle not working as normal, requiring him to draw out the water “pretty forcefully” to stay hydrated in the event’s sweltering heat just above 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was reluctant to call it the best race of Piastri’s young F1 career, reserving that status for his superb defeat of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in Baku last year. Instead, he described it as being Piastri’s “most robust” weekend, after the Australian driver had taken pole, led essentially throughout the race and navigated that safety car restart.
“No hesitations, no inaccuracies,” Stella said. “Everything that was available, he capitalized on.”
It contrasted the performance of Piastri’s McLaren teammate, Lando Norris, who, after admitting he felt “a bit clueless” with his car en route to sixth on the grid in qualifying, made a handful of race errors and continues to lack confidence with the MCL39.
He landed an early penalty for lining up outside of his starting box on the grid, an error that Norris said he’d never made before in his career. He then struggled through his on-track skirmishes as he tried to battle back towards Piastri’s lead.
“I just kept stopping myself from making as much progress as I should have done,” Norris said.
The spiral started with the five-second time jump start penalty. While Piastri was able to stream clear at the front, Norris needed to recover ground after serving that sanction in the pits at his first pit stop. Doing so meant he pushed his tires more than usual mid-race, causing them to overheat. He couldn’t bridge the gap to Mercedes driver George Russell, who he’d been tailing in the early part of the race, nor was he able to keep Leclerc back after the Ferrari built up a tire delta for its fresher medium tires after the first stops.
The safety car helped Norris get back in the hunt, bunching up the leading cars, but he again couldn’t capitalize. He even slipped behind the chasing Lewis Hamilton on the restart and then repassed the Ferrari off-track, meaning he had to give the position back and make the move again, costing him even more time.
Norris then made hard work passing Leclerc, locking up at Turn 1 at one stage before ultimately getting the move done where he’d struggled earlier — at Turn 4. Russell, who was nursing a severe brake-by-wire issue on his car and driving without GPS data going back to the Mercedes pit wall, had just enough to hold on for P2 ahead of Norris. The McLaren driver made a move at the start of the final lap, but Russell saw him off.
The recovery was a degree of damage limitation for Norris against Piastri in the title fight, ensuring he retained the lead of the drivers’ championship. But the bigger worry is why he has lacked so much confidence.
“You just know when things click, when you feel confident, when you feel comfortable,” Norris explained. “I’m confident that I have everything I need and I’ve got what it takes. I’ve no doubt about that. That I’m good enough and all of those things. But something’s just not clicking with me in the car.”
Piastri now has four F1 career grand prix wins after his dominant Bahrain drive
Norris went on to explain how there hasn’t been a point this year where he’s had the same kind of trust and understanding in the McLaren car as he’d built up by the end of last year, leaving him to figure out what has changed. “Is it me? Is it something on the car? It’s complicated,” Norris said. “But I’m not doubting myself.
That same struggle is not being felt by Piastri. Although he said there’d been points where it had been “tricky” to drive, “for the most part, I’ve been pretty happy with the car.” Unlocking the undeniable pace it holds has come more naturally to the Australian than it has to Norris. There hasn’t been the same kind of loss of comfort year-on-year on Piastri’s side.
So what has changed between 2024 and 2025? Is it Norris, whose self-critical nature was at its strongest after qualifying on Saturday? No — and Stella was eager to make that clear after the Bahrain race. It’s the car. And that change has not only hurt Norris, but it has seemingly helped Piastri.
“We know that we have made some changes to the car, which made Lando’s life a bit more difficult,” Stella said. “We know technically what this is. Lando is adapting to this. Somehow potentially, it might have played a bit more on Oscar’s end. We are working together to fix it (for Norris).”
Trying to remedy the issue will go a long way to getting Norris back to where he was with the McLaren car through the second half of last year, when he could regularly challenge and sometimes dominate against Max Verstappen and Red Bull.
Stella praised how Norris has not pointed fingers or sought to blame the team, instead recognizing where he must improve by himself.
One thing that is not going to change is how frank Norris will be in assessing his own struggles. Right from his junior racing days, he has always been incredibly hard on himself, never shying away from taking the blame — sometimes too much blame — when things don’t go his way. That much was evident in his comments after qualifying on Saturday.
Post-race, Norris was asked in the news conference about how he avoids falling into a negative spiral when things aren’t going his way, drawing a smile from the Briton.
He just does not think it would be possible for him to hide his emotions, as easy as it might sound. “It will be even harder for me to not show any of these things,” Norris said, explaining that his self-criticism was a way of releasing his frustration and feeling he could even “block my own comments away from my thoughts.” It’s a coping mechanism.
“Sometimes I lack a bit of self-belief, and I have done in the past, but that’s just also me,” Norris said. “It’s the way I do things. It’s the way I work. It’s what has made me as good as I am.
“And maybe at times, (it) has limited me from becoming a better driver. But I know what I can do and I’m happy. I think what I can do and what I can achieve is good enough and easily up there with the best.”
Norris may still lead the 2025 championship, but Bahrain felt like a weekend where momentum has firmly swung in Piastri’s direction, marking the true start of what is anticipated to be a season-long championship fight between the pair. Verstappen, nevertheless, still threatens, with Russell only 14 points off the standings lead, too.
“I thought it started in Melbourne?” Piastri quipped when he was asked about the title battle, before quickly adding that it was still very early in the season and insisting the other drivers were also likely to be in contention.
“It’s going to be a tight year, definitely,” he said. “As long as we have the best car, it’s going to be tight between Lando and I.”
Norris also knew from the campaign’s start it would be a close fight between him and Piastri. But Bahrain showed just how costly anything less than perfect can be when it comes to shipping points.
“Yes, we’ve got the best car on the grid and things like this, but one mistake and I paid the price yesterday (Saturday),” Norris said. “One-tenth, and I would have been second on the grid. So this is frustrating. But it’s close and it’s competitive. And I think that’s a great thing for the sport.”
McLaren has total faith in Norris and his approach, and once his confidence comes flowing back with the car, he’ll surely be able to make good on that belief he can be up there with the best.
The challenge for him right now is precisely how his current struggles are coinciding with Piastri hitting his stride and delivering the kind of complete weekends that successful championships are ultimately built upon.
(Top image: Sipa USA)