Would it be so unreasonable to say that Oscar Piastri will one day win a World Drivers’ Championship? Describing a driver as World Championship material is an entirely different matter from declaring that a driver will one day win. The statistics aren’t in anyone’s favor; the factors necessary (i.e. fast car, good strategy) are outside of any driver’s control. Just ask Charles Leclerc. But with Red Bull’s sharp decline in performance (or, perhaps, lack of necessary improvement), this year’s McLaren is the undisputed fastest car on the grid. Perhaps the most unreasonable part of that declaration is the “one day” framing, which implies some far-off future, beyond rules overhauls and roster shake-ups. If Piastri is to someday win a championship, his best shot might be this year, when all he needs to do is beat Lando Norris. The Bahrain Grand Prix served as proof that he can.
Norris looked beatable all weekend, and was open about it, too. He struggled to find pace, culminating in a P6 finish in qualifying. “I feel like I’ve just never driven a Formula 1 car before,” Norris said after the session. He managed to make up three places on the first lap of the race with an excellent start, but was penalized for being over his grid box. (Max Verstappen, lined up beside Norris on the grid in a struggling Red Bull, wasted no time in immediately calling him out over the radio.) After the first pit stops, Norris was overtaken by Leclerc’s Ferrari, thanks to a rare Ferrari strategy win, and thus after the second pit stops had to try to pass both Leclerc and George Russell—perpetually seen in a podium position without quite being sure how he got there—in order to claim P2. He managed Leclerc to secure the podium; after an ill-judged attempt on Russell in the closing lap of the race, that was all he got.
Meanwhile, Piastri was coasting. He earned pole position in qualifying and fended off Russell in the first lap for the race lead. After that, he had a Hamiltonian (or Verstappenian, or even Norris-esque) cruise to the finish line. While his teammate was trying to chase down that pesky Russell and his equally pesky, glitchy car, Piastri was more than 10 seconds ahead, getting a reminder from his race engineer to drink some water. “I would if it was working,” Piastri responded, dry in more ways than one.
With the victory, Piastri is only three points behind Norris in the Drivers’ Championship standings; he has more wins than Norris on the season, though still fewer podiums. Naturally, the focus after the race was on Norris’s general despondency about his performance in this year’s car, rather than Piastri’s performance. Team principal Andrea Stella came to Norris’s defense afterward, noting Norris’s unique tendency to offload responsibility from the team onto himself. “Which is inaccurate, because we know that we have made some changes to the car, which made Lando’s life a bit more difficult,” Stella said.
While Stella is no doubt correct that it’s healthier for team culture if the driver isn’t routinely lambasting the work of the engineers, Norris’s tendency toward self-flagellation increases the scrutiny toward his own performance, especially with his teammate’s extraordinary chill as a counterpoint—understandable in the context of the race, but maybe an overreaction at this point in the season. The Bahrain GP was an odd mix: an exciting race filled with overtakes, pit stop strategy intrigue, complaints about stewarding, Russell seemingly having to rewire his Mercedes from inside of it, Red Bull struggles paired with Yuki Tsunoda getting close to Verstappen, and yet another surprising Haas performance—but very little story to string it all together. What does Mercedes botching Kimi Antonelli’s pit stop strategy have on a fight for the Championship lead?
The last time teammates in the fastest car could match up against each other like this was in 2016; we can thank Fernando Alonso and Red Bull for enabling the same drama nearly a decade later. Piastri and Norris have not matched the toxicity of the Hamilton–Rosberg pairing, and appear to be plenty cordial off the track, but they’ve had plenty of spats on it, exacerbated by McLaren’s historic lack of race-management skills. It’s still enough to promise tension for the rest of the year. If Piastri had not spun out in Australia, he would be leading the championship. Then again, if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bike.
If Bahrain serves as evidence that Norris hasn’t quite figured out the 2025 McLaren, Australia served as evidence that Piastri still makes plenty of mistakes. Four races is no sample size at all—Norris seemed relatively well-matched by his teammate in some parts of 2024 as well, but pulled out a convincing lead by the end of the year—but it does give hope for a highly competitive season. Wait until the summer break, and you can know exactly how Piastri will match up against Norris. Until then, it’s all about belief.
