Oscar Piastri scored his most emphatic victory to date in Bahrain, with his first ‘hat trick’ of pole position, fastest lap and victory.
He is the 49th driver in F1 history to achieve that feat. He also took the second pole position of his career, which made him the 75th multiple pole-winner in Formula 1 history.On Sunday he claimed his fourth grand prix victory in his 50th start. He now has as many victories as Bruce McLaren – though the McLaren team founder only won once in his own car, taking his other three victories for Cooper. Piastri also draws level with his McLaren predecessor Carlos Sainz Jnr, plus Eddie Irvine and Dan Gurney.
This was McLaren’s third victory in the first four grands prix of the season – two for Piastri and one for Lando Norris in the opening round at Melbourne. It’s their best start to a championship since 1998, when Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard won three races between them in the MP4-13. Until last year, that season was the most recent occasion on which McLaren won the constructors’ championship.
Neither of McLaren’s drivers have ever known the team to start a season so successfully: Norris was born in 1999, Piastri 2001.
For the third race in a row, both McLaren drivers finished on the podium. Norris has now done so for five races running, which is his longest streak of rostrum appearances.
The pair were split by George Russell. Although this was his 18th official podium finish, as he noted afterwards, few of those have been for second place. This was only his third, and the first of those came in the non-event that was the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix.
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After introducing a new floor, Ferrari enjoyed their best result of the season so far in a grand prix, including Lewis Hamilton’s first top five finish since joining them.
Despite his relegation to seventh place, Gasly delivered Alpine’s first points of the season with seventh place. All 10 teams have now scored points, and much earlier than last year, when it took Sauber until the penultimate round to get on the board.
Yuki Tsunoda scored his first points as a Red Bull driver with ninth place. This ended Red Bull’s five-race run of only scoring points with one of its cars (specifically, Verstappen’s). This was the longest run in which Red Bull failed to score points with both cars since 2018, when they went six races with only Verstappen or Daniel Ricciardo taking points.
Oliver Bearman climbed 10 places to score points for the third grand prix in a row, which is also his fifth points score of his seven career starts. That plus Esteban Ocon’s eighth place moved Haas up to fifth in the constructors’ championship, the highest position they have ever finished a season, which was also back in 2018.
That 10th place for Bearman came at the expense of his 2024 Prema Formula 2 team mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli, now at Mercedes, who failed to score a point for the first time in his F1 career (including sprint races).
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Four drivers are not yet to score points this year: Jack Doohan, Liam Lawson, Gabriel Bortoleto and Fernando Alonso. This is the first time Alonso’s failed to score in the first four grands prix since 2017.
That, of course, was the last time he raced an F1 car powered by Honda, which will take over as Aston Martin’s power unit supplier next year. To say Alonso will be hoping they do a better job than when they powered his McLarens would be quite an understatement.
Over to you
Have you spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Bahrain Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.
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2025 Bahrain Grand Prix
- Hamilton making “drastic shift” in driving style to master Ferrari’s car
- Leclerc revealed Ferrari strategy details to Gasly before Bahrain Grand Prix
- Lawson made “very significant step forward” in Bahrain – Mekies
- Russell’s transponder was ‘frazzled and charred’ after Bahrain Grand Prix DRS drama
- “Don’t give me too much now”: Hamilton’s search for speed at Ferrari continues
F1statsfan (@f1statsfan)
15th April 2025, 8:59
Piastri has same amount of points that Max had last year after 4 races
Jere (@jerejj)
15th April 2025, 9:40
FP1 was the first official GP weekend session to feature two Japanese drivers driving for the same team since the 2006 Brazilian GP when Takuma Sato & Sakon Yamamoto competed for Super Aguri, & like in Abu Dhabi last season, three were driving in the same session.
The first entirely lapping-free race since last season’s Belgian GP.
The biggest 2025 winning margin so far.
For the first time ever the race-winning timing line crossing was only shown in the small position tower screen form rather than full screen as usual.
Btw, Daniel Ricciardo is Oscar Piastri’s direct McLaren predecessor, & while both current McLaren drivers were unaware of the team’s succesful start to the 1998 season at the time, they probably became aware of it over time.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
15th April 2025, 9:52
Ah, yes, I saw someone who mentioned the small box showing the winner and that he couldn’t remember when was the last time that happened, but as that box is a relatively recent feature (last few years) it makes a lot of sense that this never happened before.
Surprised the winning margin is the biggest of the year, as 15 sec isn’t what I consider huge.
Jere (@jerejj)
15th April 2025, 10:12
Yes, the small live footage box within the position tower is indeed a relatively recent feature, introduced at some point last season or the 2023 season, iirc.
The fact the world feed coverage didn’t fully switch to Piastri for the last few hundred meters or the last corner-timing line interval was nevertheless surprising & totally against the norm despite the simultaneously ongoing P2 battle, which could’ve oppositely remained on screen via the small box or it returned shortly after Piastri’s timing line crossing as sometimes happens with battles further down the field once a winner has crossed the timing line.
The final winning margin is indeed surprising, given the relative closeness in outright performance levels even among the top teams presently.
Of course, Russell’s recurring issues ultimately contributed to the gap increasing from less than a second at the SC restart to 15+ seconds over the last 20 laps.
Jere (@jerejj)
15th April 2025, 10:13
I don’t know how I got ‘it’ between or & returned.
Wer
15th April 2025, 10:12
On the topic of Aston Martin.
Is Adrian Newey involved with the team already? Is he in the paddock for the GPs?
Any news on that?
Looking at the 1998 McLaren I still am disgusted with how a narrow, 180cm wide, F1 car looks today as I was back in 1998 when those atrocities were introduced and the entire 1998-2016 narrow period.
And I will be disgusted again next year, as with the gigantically tall tyres current cars have, the narrower cars of 2026, despite being 190cm – not 180cm – narrow, they will actually have narrower looking proportions.
Kringle
15th April 2025, 12:03
More mp4-13 pics plz k thx bai
Doggy
15th April 2025, 12:56
That 98/99 McLean was an absolute beauty.
Also, Hakkinen, Ricardo Zonta, and Schumacher down that straight..
Christopher Rehn (@chrischrill)
15th April 2025, 13:34
Dino Beganovic drove Leclerc’s Ferrari, marking just the 2nd Swedish Ferrari driver ever and the first since Stefan Johansson drove for Ferrari back in 1986. This also makes Dino Beganovic the first F1 driver of Bosnian descent.
Jere (@jerejj)
15th April 2025, 13:40
Indeed, although to be precise, only the first driver of Bosnian descent to drive in an official session rather than an F1 driver per se since he isn’t a full-time F1 driver nor did he participate competitively.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
15th April 2025, 21:38
40 years to the day after René Arnoux was dropped by Ferrari (what was that all about?) to give Johansson his chance.
anon
16th April 2025, 9:11
@bullfrog well, it depends whom exactly you speak to about that.
At the time, the official explanation given was that Ferrari fired him on medical grounds, as he’d needed surgery to deal with persistent issues with his knee (there are contemporary accounts that do provide confirmation that Arnoux did have long standing issues with his knee and had to have an operation on it during the off season). Arnoux has made some comments in the past indicating that Enzo was concerned that the surgery was a sign that Arnoux’s performances were going to decline due to medical problems, and suggesting that was why Enzo decided to fire him.
There are those who claim much more lurid stories about drugs and affairs, but those are stories that I think are more likely to be urban legends made up afterwards (and perhaps come about because Arnoux did have a reputation for being a bit hot headed and impetuous).
Arnoux is also known to have had a poor relationship with Enzo, particularly as it seems Enzo was disappointed in Arnoux’s performances in 1984 (where Alboreto, despite being less experienced, outperformed Arnoux). Whilst Enzo seems to have decided to give Arnoux a chance for 1985, it seems there were several within Ferrari, such as Forghieri, who thought Enzo made a mistake and that he should have kept Tambay instead (as Tambay was rated as being far better at offering feedback and development work than Arnoux).
Whilst Arnoux did finish 4th in the Brazilian GP, it’s worth remembering that he was 1.8 seconds slower than Alboreto in qualifying and finished two laps behind Alboreto in the race, with Alboreto only narrowly missing out on winning. The less exciting, but probably more realistic, theory is that Enzo believed Arnoux’s performance in Brazil was a sign that Arnoux’s performances were declining and that he’d made a mistake in keeping him on for 1985. It would also tie in with the suggestion from Arnoux that Enzo believed that his performances were going into decline due to medical issues, and the internal criticism that Arnoux faced from the technical department for offering poor feedback and not really offering enough performance to justify putting up with that drawback.
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
15th April 2025, 14:01
It blows my mind that such legendary and evocative names as Bruce McLaren and Dan Gurney only ever achieved 4x F1 wins each.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
16th April 2025, 7:36
Mmm, gurney was actually one of the best drivers of that era to not win a title, in a f1 metrics ranking article he was one of those “what could’ve been” drivers mentioned in the end.
paulgilb (@paulgilb)
15th April 2025, 20:26
Hulkenberg is the 4th driver to have been DSQ’d driving for 3 different teams, after Moss, Watson and Hamilton.
First season since 2020 in which the first 4 races have all been won from pole.
Antonelli’s starting positions have got better with every race (16th, 8th, 6th, 5th), but his results have never improved (4th, 6th, 6th, 11th).
McLaren’s first victory in Bahrain – I believe Russia is now the country where they have raced the most times without winning (8).
Piastri is currently the only driver with 2+ pole positions who has a 100% pole-to-win conversion rate.
Thanks to statsf1 for some of these.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
16th April 2025, 7:43
Interesting about hamilton, guessing australia 2009 must definitely be a dq with mclaren, then there’s been a few with merc, including austin in one of the verstappen dominant seasons where he was at mercedes, and ofc china with ferrari.
The stat about all 4 races being won from pole highlights how difficult overtaking is nowadays, even with drs.
Antonelli’s stat is pretty funny, if that trend continues he’s gonna lose his seat (so I doubt it will)!
It’s impressive that mclaren hadn’t won yet when f1 raced in bahrain since 2004, and as for the russia stat, 2021 was definitely a big occasion, norris was defending fine from hamilton and would’ve won in the dry, but because of the amount of water that came down in the end, the only way to win would’ve been changing to intermediates.
Piastri is proving very different from norris with this pole-to-win conversion rate.
F1statsfan (@f1statsfan)
16th April 2025, 10:17
For Piastri to keep that record of highest pole to win conversion of drivers with more than 1 pole he either needs to avoid getting poles or also win from pole the next 3 poles else he will fall behind Max.
Max has 33 wins from pole = 80.5% – next on the list are couple of drivers with 2 wins from 3 poles = 66.7%