Oscar Piastri scored a commanding victory in the Bahrain Grand Prix, delivering McLaren’s first victory in the race.
He came home 15 seconds ahead of George Russell, who had to cope with an unusual fault with his Drag Reduction System over the latter stages. He held off Lando Norris for third place, followed by the Ferrari drivers.Piastri led the field away at the start while Russell took Leclerc for second. Norris also passed the Ferrari driver for third place in what looked at first like the culmination of a superb start.
However soon afterwards came word Norris had been given a five-second time penalty. Replays of the start showed his McLaren was not lined up correctly in its starting position. Norris therefore made an early first pit stop to get his penalty out of the way.
While Piastri continued to lead, Norris moved back into contention, briefly rising to third. However the Ferrari drivers ran long first stints which allowed Leclerc to attack and pass Norris for third.
The positions were reset when the Safety Car was deployed due to debris following contact between Carlos Sainz Jnr and Yuki Tsunoda. The leaders all took the opportunity to pit and the strategists were split over what was the best way to finish the race.
Leader Piastri took a set of mediums for the restart, but behind him Russell was on softs and Leclerc hards. They were followed by Norris and Hamilton on a set of mediums.
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Russell couldn’t do anything about Piastri at the restart, but Norris went after Leclerc, trying without success to claim the inside line for turn one. That opened the door for Hamilton, who took fourth off him. Norris repassed on the outside of turn four, but left the track as he did, and relinquished the place when his team advised him to. Norris went after Hamilton again and soon took fourth off him again.
Norris eventually passed Leclerc for third, then went off in pursuit of Russell. However his chances of passing the Mercedes driver were compromised as Russell was suffering an unusual timing problem which prevented his DRS detection gap being correctly judged. At one point the Mercedes driver used it when he shouldn’t have, prompting an investigation.
As Norris closed in, his race engineer advised him that Russell’s timing problem meant he would have to activate his DRS manually when he got within range. Despite applying stiff pressure to the Mercedes, he had to settle for third place, though it was enough to retain the championship lead.
Leclerc took fourth ahead of Hamilton. Max Verstappen took sixth place off Pierre Gasly, who nonetheless claimed Alpine’s first points of the season. Tsunoda scored his first points as a Red Bull driver in ninth ahead of Oliver Bearman.
This article will be updated.
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2025 Bahrain Grand Prix
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Jere (@jerejj)
13th April 2025, 17:53
Some punchy lunges & defenses throughout the field, & a weird timing system glitch that caused DRS issues for both Russell & Norris.
DRS getting activated when pressing the radio button for Russell & DRS activatable indication light remaining lit for Norris, what a mess.
Jere (@jerejj)
13th April 2025, 17:54
The carbon fiber parts should’ve been manageable with VSC.
Ferdi
14th April 2025, 8:52
Yeah, that was clearly a trigger happy FIA/Liberty scripting moment. Won’t be the last we’ll see this year.
RH
13th April 2025, 17:59
What a joke of a race direction.
Well done PIA, got that one SC restart properly done.
As expected, McL are quite dominant, NOR is not gonna make it, Ferrari had good pace and bottled it by bolting the hards (LEC passed NOR at some point — rare occurence), ANT is special, reminds me of VER a lot — got shafted by the SC.
Red Bull are an absolute joke though — stuck behind Haas and Alpines for eternity like crazy. VER gets GAS in the last lap but we don’t see it for some reason.
DOTD — GAS or RUS or OCO for me.
So far, the four teams at the top are McL, gap, Mercedes, smaller gap, Ferrari, gap, Red Bull.
VER’s overperformance and maximizing points so far puts Red Bull in a position they shouldn’t be in as far as WDC goes. I can see him leaving the team after the disasterclass of today.
Also, two Red Bull scored points, finally a decent second driver move from Red Bull.
Davethechicken
13th April 2025, 18:03
Yuki made a point of not passing him…
MG1982 (@mg1982)
13th April 2025, 18:08
No way RBR is worse than Ferrari.
Edvaldo
13th April 2025, 19:10
The only reason he got stuck was because he was on hard tyres, which were terrible, and later because he had to keep the mediums he was already using for 7 laps longer than everybody else.
Max is already great, no reason to embellish his performances.
Edvaldo
13th April 2025, 19:11
Wrong quote. My bad.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
13th April 2025, 18:00
As Jere says above – so many good drives today.
Gasly is going to get my DOTW when you put it up, and the fact that we only had one retirement with so many so called “Rookies” on the grid is excellent news for the future.
I am watching Max closely …. will he toughen up … or will he crumble ;)
Edvaldo
13th April 2025, 18:18
Yeah, time to forget the vintage tracks. The wide open parking spaces are were the races are at these days.
Sainz seemed extra feisty racing Hamilton, Tsunoda and Antonelli today, didnt he?
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
14th April 2025, 1:09
Perhaps he’s trying to show those teams they should’ve got him instead? They’re all competitive teams in general, even with red bull’s disaster today.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
14th April 2025, 1:10
When it comes to hamilton, I noticed as well.
nunof
13th April 2025, 18:19
I hope Lando is aware he had no right to be anywhere near the podium today. What a disgraceful performance. The only thing he did today was show up and sit on the best car of the pack.
Doggy
13th April 2025, 18:22
That Mclaren/Piastri pulled 15 sec gap in 20 laps. Let that one sink in.
MV sitting in the starting grid: a mosquito is bitting that person on the back of their leg and BTW Lando is out of his grid box
Leo B
13th April 2025, 18:26
Piastri and Verstappen are just not popular in Britain. Sadly for local pundits, Norris and Hamilton drove feeble races. The Sky team were focused on Norris and his chances to bag a win from fifth. Only in the closing stages of the race did they start to applaud Piastri’s drive.
OP is so obviously the top candidate for DOTW, but my guess is others will be voted in ahead of him.
David (@nvherman)
13th April 2025, 23:09
I’m British, and I really rate Verstappen.
David BR (@david-br)
14th April 2025, 0:49
The Norris attention is usually more the ‘how has he messed up this time?’ variety. Hamilton drove OK in the second stint and really Ferrari were unlucky with the safety car. Anyone wanting to cheer on a Brit had Russell there in 2nd. Piastri got my vote for DOTW anyhow.
roadrunner (@roadrunner)
13th April 2025, 18:36
That’s how I like F1. On track battles and strategic variety although unfortunately interrupted by yet another completely unnecessary safety car.
There were some interesting strategies today, but not all worked. Il liked Ferrari’s attempt to start on mediums but why don’t they go for hards (or even better softs) at the first stop to get the less preferred tyres out of the way early. Just like RedBull did with Verstappen. That just gives you so much more options and flexibility for the third stint. It’s the same mistake they did in 2022 at the Hungaroring.
Great strategy by Haas, good though unlucky one by Alpine. They both really nail it more often than not.
Kotrba
13th April 2025, 19:38
Both Ferraris needed to pass cars after their first stop (especially Lewis), so taking hards could have resulted in them being stuck behind other cars, basically what Verstappen experienced behind Ocon. So in my opinion Ferrari was right with the chosen strategy, perhaps they could have taken softs at the end, if SC came up some time later or did not come at all. Hards were maybe conservative, but who knows whether they could have taken them to the flag?
roadrunner (@roadrunner)
13th April 2025, 22:35
Yeah, the safety really caught them out. I guess they wanted to go soft at the end. And the strategy still worked well for Hamilton. But I think they should have saved the best tyre for the longest stint. Had Leclerc done a nice short middle stint on softs he could have attacked Gasly and Norris too and have a good tyre in reserve just in case a safety appears or he feels the need to go for or react to an undercut like Verstappen did for example.
Having said that, had the safety car come out a few laps later with with only the Ferraris yet to stop for a second time they would have benefitted massively. But somehow whenever they try to gamble and try something different they lose.
Edvaldo
13th April 2025, 19:42
Ferrari played their cards right, but the surprise Safety Car caught them off guard. Getting to the end with softs instead, like Russell did, would be better. The hard was too bad for this race and they had no performance at all.
Dex
14th April 2025, 0:25
The worst broadcast ever, and a terrible race organization in general. They ruined this one for me completely.
Craig
14th April 2025, 8:32
Some of the broadcast was terrible and I’m assuming the field was too spread out for a VSC, but even then I’m not convinced an SC was needed.
I’m curious what happened to the transponders and if it was more then just Russell’s causing the issues.
I’m still baffled why the director was focused on Russell and Norris as Piastri crossed the finish line as it was quite clear nothing was going to happen between them.
Michael Torres
14th April 2025, 0:30
FIA was pure chaos this last race
Mr Squiggle
14th April 2025, 1:06
I can’t recall the last time I saw a car cross the line to win a Grand Prix via a small window screen at the top left hand corner of the screen. As the broadcaster thought it was boring and not worth much attention
The sky broadcast today was a disgrace and an abject one at that.
It was fundamentally disrespectful of the act of winning a Grand Prix.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
14th April 2025, 1:15
Ahah, that’s true, but tbh I get annoyed by the opposite thing, as in if there’s an on track battle I want to see that, not the winner who has 15 sec margin.
I was more annoyed that they missed verstappen’s overtake on gasly to watch antonelli who was trying to overtake bearman, despite the fact verstappen was closer to gasly, is known as someone who overtook people at the last turns before, and that he was ahead on track, so it made sense to show the first battle first, then the second.
Craig
14th April 2025, 8:34
Wouldn’t be surprised if the transponder issues made the director think there wasn’t much of a battle going on as it reported Gasly as roughly a second ahead until they crossed the finish line when it reported Verstappen ahead.
Dan
14th April 2025, 4:03
What was wrong with the sky coverage?
Davethechicken
14th April 2025, 8:06
I do not think you can blame SKY for that. AFAIK what is displayed is from the FIA feed and SKY don’t control that, just have the right to broadcast it.
Nitzo (@webtel)
14th April 2025, 7:17
Four races in and all ten constructors have at least 6 points each. This is a good season already…could get better.