SAKHIR, Bahrain — Oscar Piastri has always gone about his business in an understated, fuss-free manner. The charge to the second pole position of his Formula One career in Bahrain was no different.
Piastri continued his domination of the Bahrain weekend through qualifying, topping Q3 ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. But when his race engineer, Tom Stallard, informed him on the radio that he’d secured pole, it didn’t evoke any explosion of joy or emotion from Piastri over the radio.
“Yeah, baby,” Piastri said, his tone content, if not overawed. “Very nice work.”
On a weekend that McLaren was tipped to dominate by its rivals, given the strengths of its car, especially in managing its rear tires in the heat, to see a papaya car on pole was no great surprise. The shock was that it failed to lock out the front row of the grid as Lando Norris languished in sixth place, four-tenths back from his teammate.
At a time when McLaren is F1’s leading team, and both its drivers have been in the fight for the championship from the off this season, momentum swings such as this can have a big impact. For all the focus on Norris going into the new season off the back of his impressive 2024 campaign, where he became a race winner and was Max Verstappen’s closest, most consistent challenger, Piastri has quietly gone about his business.
The step forward he needed to make to match Norris, in particular over a single lap and a big target he wanted to hit following 2024, seems to have arrived.
The Bahrain weekend has summed up Piastri’s progress. Norris topped the unrepresentative FP1 — a session in which Piastri later joked his McLaren “felt more like a rental car” due to the green track and hotter conditions — before Piastri took top spot in second practice. He then was a mammoth six-tenths clear in FP3, surprising himself and McLaren, only to face a tougher challenge from Russell come the final stage of qualifying.
Piastri answered superbly, gaining almost four-tenths of a second between his penultimate and final laps in qualifying to see off all threats.
“I still had to be on my toes because I think a tenth-and-a-half was a bit closer than I expected after this morning,” Piastri said in a news conference after qualifying, explaining he’d found “a little bit everywhere” on the final lap, adding up to the time gain.
“I just felt very comfortable this weekend,” Piastri said. “I’ve felt comfortable the whole season so far with the car we’ve got. But I think this weekend has been another step forward on top of that, which I think I was able to show today.”
Piastri’s comfort was a stark contrast to how Norris felt through qualifying, which hurt him on the final lap when he gained only just over one-tenth of a second on his previous effort. He ended up tumbling down to sixth behind Russell, Leclerc, Kimi Antonelli and, most surprising of all, Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.
Norris’s lap unravelled at the very start. He got too much wheelspin out of the first corner, which compromised the following left-right sequence at Turns 2 and 3 – meaning he was already two-tenths down to Piastri by the end of the first sector. He lost another tenth exiting Turn 10 before more time slipped away through the right-hander at Turn 13.
After qualifying, Norris was incredibly hard on himself, taking full blame for his struggles. “I’ve been off every lap this weekend, just not comfortable,” Norris told reporters. “No big complaints. The car’s amazing. The car’s as good as it has been the whole season, which is strong. I’ve been off it all weekend.
“(I) don’t know why, just clueless on track at the minute. I just need a big reset or something.”
In a separate interview with Sky Sports F1 in the Bahrain media pen, when he was asked where and why he wasn’t quick enough, he gestured towards his head and said: “Here.”
Norris has been open this year about his difficulty in getting the McLaren car to suit his driving style, forcing him to make adjustments to set the very fast times of which it is capable. This weekend, those struggles have felt particularly pronounced.
“I can’t figure it out,” he explained. “Every time I try something, it’s good for one session, and then it’s the wrong thing for the next session, because the winds change. I just can’t flow with the car, and when I can’t flow, I’m not very quick.
“I’ve just got to work on myself. I can’t follow the team, and the car is the best by a long way. But clearly, I’m just not clicking at the minute.”
After qualifying, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told reporters that Norris’s self-criticism stemmed from the Briton being “naturally honest” about his performances, believing that other drivers may choose to hide such thoughts. Norris’s approach, Stella reiterated, is his “a way to excel.”
Norris leads the championship standings (ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP via Getty Images)
Norris is always open about his mindset. When the confidence is there, it exudes from him both on and off the track. When it is lacking, that much is obvious.
Explaining why Norris couldn’t get the lap together at the end of qualifying, Stella explained that it was “more a phase, I think, when it comes to Q3, putting together the lap, that hasn’t worked very well recently.
“But this is a short phase. We are talking about the driver that has led the journey of McLaren to the front, together with Oscar, and delivered us the world championship after 26 years (the 2024 constructors’ title).
“It’s just now in this temporary phase in which, while pushing the car to the limit, there’s a few things that don’t go exactly as he expects. And when you go for the extra one-tenth of a second in Q3, this becomes more visible.”
Stella added it would require “a bit of adaptation” from both Norris and the team, but they understood what the struggles were. He also indicated they would have no bearing on Norris’ race pace. “I’m really looking forward to seeing Lando finding his way back tomorrow to the front of the pack,” Stella said.
As much as McLaren will support both its drivers, the setback for Norris in Bahrain does provide Piastri a huge opportunity in the early phase of their title fight.
The points gap at the top of the standings was all inflicted in Australia, when Piastri slipped off the track during the wet race when the rain returned. He got stuck in the grass and saw a surefire P2 finish become P9 — a loss of 16 points.
He recovered some ground finishing second in the Chinese Grand Prix sprint race, where Norris struggled, before Piastri led the McLaren 1-2 in the main Shanghai race. The five-place gap on the grid between the pair on Sunday does offer Piastri a chance to recover the rest of that ground.
Norris did not wish to dwell on what bearing his difficult session in Bahrain could have on the championship picture, saying he “couldn’t care less,”. He’s focused instead on how to avoid the Q3 performance losses that have plagued his opening rounds of 2025, bar Australia.
“(Piastri is) doing the job I know he can achieve with the car that we’ve got,” Norris said. “So, yeah, well done to him. But I’m more worried about my own performance than others. I don’t care about the rest of it.”
It may be just round four of 24 races, but seizing such chances when your primary rival is struggling is critical to any successful title bid — not that Piastri is getting ahead of himself.
“Let’s see where he finishes first,” Piastri said of Norris. “It’s nice to be on pole. But this is probably the first race so far (this season) where qualifying doesn’t mean everything. I think it’s obviously still important. But I’m expecting him to fight back tomorrow.
“I’ll just try and make sure that I do the best job that I can. And wherever he ends up is where he ends up.”
The anticipation from all of McLaren’s rivals is that it will be incredibly hard to beat in the race on Sunday, given the hot conditions and the abrasive asphalt in Bahrain. Both aspects should make the tire advantage displayed by the MCL39 car so far this year all the more influential over the long race distance of 57 laps.
“I think they’re so far ahead of everybody they can pit early, pit late, (and) they’ll potentially overtake us on-track,” said Russell, who will start third on Sunday after a one-place grid drop penalty was handed to both Mercedes drivers post-qualifying.
“Today we’re on the front row and nobody expected anyone but Lando and Oscar to be on the front row. So maybe (there will be) another surprise tomorrow.”
Seeing Norris recover through to second would be no surprise, considering the race pace advantage McLaren showed over its rivals on Friday in FP2, when the teams completed their Bahrain race simulation running.
But with Piastri so at ease and comfortable with his McLaren this weekend in Bahrain, this is a golden, important chance to claw back some lost points in the early days of the drivers’ championship fight. Come the end of the year in the Abu Dhabi finale, that could prove vital.
Top photos of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris: Kym Illman/Getty Images