“Game on.”
Welcome back to the first in what will be a huge triple header here on Dre’s Race Review. I mean, thinking about it, with F1, MotoGP, IndyCar, Formula E, IMSA, Super GT, Goodwood Revival and NASCAR all having major events… is this one of the busiest Motorsport weekends ever seen? Seriously, this weekend has been relentless!
Anyway, let’s talk about the Bahrain Grand Prix and what ended up being a dominant win for Oscar Piastri, and electrical chaos behind as George Russell hung on for second in a car that probably felt like it was going to explode (More on that later), with Lando Norris making another horlicks of a race weekend. Let’s break it all down right here.
Great Expectations
Another DRR, another time that McLaren takes up the lead segment. I’m not enjoying this any more than you are, readers.
McLaren had entered its other home weekend having never won in Bahrain, but if testing was anything to go by, they entered as heavy favourites, and it showed. The general sentiment coming out of that test was that McLaren had two to three tenths on the field, and that held up over this weekend. The qualifying I admitted on Instagram (Which you can follow at DreHarrison101 or Motorsport101Pod by the way), was a little eyebrow raising given he was only a tenth and a half in front of George Russell’s Mercedes, but he got it done when it counted. Seriously, check the GPS trails on it. Russell made one mistake at Turn 11, and they were neck and neck elsewhere. Wild, and another seriously impressive showing from the Brit I’ll elaborate on later.
Piastri did exactly what he needed to do. Take control off the line as the others scrapped for the early podium positions behind him, he weathered the storm of George Russell’s aggressive strategy for Mercedes, and Ferrari finding some pace with Charles Leclerc on the medium tyre, and was allowed to push the boat out to 16 seconds by the time Russell limped home. For the second time this season, Piastri never really looked like he was going to lose. Hard to argue he’s not as good as anyone in F1 as a front-runner.
Bahrain is a lot more like most conventional GPs, which is why they test here now. This is quickly becoming a one-team Championship with McLaren now rocking a 58-point lead on Mercedes in the Constructors’ standings, with their drivers 1-2 individually, three points apart. Unless we get any more shockers like Japan (Which quickly looks like a big Red Bull outlier given McLaren was only beaten by a second), this is where your title fight is headed.
Which makes Lando Norris’ weekend all the more frustrating. I spent an entire Bluesky thread defending some of the bigger accusations from his detractors that he’s a bottler like his beloved Tottenham. This was after a botched final lap in Q3, where he started in sixth, four tenths behind his teammate. A shocker already given he had the comfortable measure of Piastri over a lap in 2024. Then as the race starts, it’s more than obvious, he’s rolled too far forward in his box and takes a five-second time penalty, making his life needlessly difficult in having to battle Charles Leclerc and George Russell on track, with him losing the latter to on the final lap. Third is by no means a disaster, but I do not doubt that if he sticks his McLaren on pole, he likely wins it because when it’s a 1-2 team combo, the lead car rightly gets priority. Norris can’t afford to give up that Qualifying advantage. If he does, he’s opening the door to missing out on his best chance at a World Championship.
It’s chum for those who have been early adopters of the Australian across the garage. I’ve said before, ever since my WTF1 days, there have been people who have believed that Piastri was the driver with the greater potential. Gohan during the Cell Saga of Dragon Ball Z, who briefly went Super Saiyan 2 in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, not Goku, who raised him.
This season has been the first sustained glimpse of what that potential could look like. I openly admit, I’m not all the way there yet. I think his severe mistake at the Australian Grand Prix has been glossed over as “gritty” because he recovered back to ninth thanks to the Safety Car, and he could have easily taken Japan with a better qualifying lap, but it’s certainly coming together. I admit, I’ve been a little down on Piastri from the start, and a little higher on Norris than others have gunned him down for, but it’s getting to the point where the lines between them are blurry.
That might just make this an intriguing Championship after all. Good luck, Zak.
Power Rankings
For me, if there were a “Driver of the Year” award right now, I think I’d have Piastri third. Why? Because for me, the two drivers who have maximised the most of the opportunities relative to their machinery have been George Russell and Max Verstappen.
Russell had an exceptional weekend. Front row start, only taken away due to a team error in releasing him in Q2 too early, thanks to a weird new FIA quirk of publishing an “estimated” restart time. Still, he was the only driver who ran Piastri close in Bahrain, put on a sub-optimal strategy by having to go 24 laps at the end of the race on a Soft tyre that faded badly, and had to nurse a car that had significant electronic problems, including a brake-by-wire failure, and a DRS wing that had to be manually opened due to the timing loop error that was an external fault. It’s why he wasn’t punished for his DRS wing opening by accident, because Russell slowed down to compensate on his telemetry, he didn’t gain a sporting advantage.
For me, it’s one of the drives of the season so far.
It sums up his season so far. Fantastic in qualifying, including two front-row GP starts on paper. And he’s quietly gone about his business – Third in Australia, again in China, fifth in Japan, only behind Charles and the big three, and was second here, holding off Norris on the wrong tyre, and a heavily compromised car. For all the talk about Verstappen and the McLarens, Russell is only 14 points off the Championship lead himself, and Mercedes is, for me, the clear #2 car in the field, and that’s with Ferrari and Red Bull having “peaky” moments in between. It’s not sexy, but for me, it’s consistent and superb, and proving Mercedes was right to back him.
Verstappen’s the only other guy for me on that level. Chased Norris home in Australia, came back to 4th in China, won in Japan, and sixth in Bahrain despite more evidence than ever that Red Bull is, on paper, the sport’s fourth-best car. The only reason they’re not sitting there in the Constructors right now is a race win, and Ferrari’s double DSQ in China.
If I was doing a regular Power Rankings system (Sod F1’s official one, it’s hilarious and not in a good way), it’d look like this:
1 – George Russell
2 – Max Verstappen
3 – Oscar Piastri
4 – Charles Leclerc
5 – Lando Norris
Piastri’s been awesome, and has been for me, the better McLaren driver so far. But we all expected McLaren to be the strongest on paper heading into the season. If anything, their advantage has grown since the back end of 2024. So often, F1’s audience tries to take credit away from the drivers in the top team when making “pound-for-pound” arguments, and for me, I think this is a fair ranking. If you think I’m wrong, Bluesky me at DreHarrison or Instagram and tell me why, I’d love to hear it.
PS: Seriously, Charles Leclerc doesn’t get enough due for some of the shit he’s doing in that team. He’s so good.
The Lightning Round
Seriously, Red Bull. Ass-gravy. Verstappen warned the team during the test that they were half a second off where they needed to be, and it showed here. A proper track with actual tyre degradation and the team’s average pace was almost a second behind McLaren. Max’s hard tyre stint was horrific (More on the tyre, it sucked and wore out the fastest, AND it was slow, yeesh). The pitcrew had its yellow light not work, while also botching a front right tyre change. Sixth was the best he could manage, and that was telling given the Safety Car spared his blushes. Red Bull had a panicked meeting after the race was over, and they need to figure something out quickly, because this season will slip away quickly if this keeps up.
Seriously, was that debris yellow the nearest F1 will ever get to a “Competition Caution?”
A broadcast to forget for FOM. The transponder on Russell’s car was not working, which led to the whole timing tower going down for several laps towards the end, and us getting inserted one off graphical updates on gaps lap-by-lap. Add in interviews that were off-sync post-race and a race finish where the winner was off camera, and this was an ugly one. Straight out of FOX Sports.
Alpine from outta nowhere with the RKO from Pierre Gasly. P7 is a mighty effort and a salute to the team for getting that genuinely solid chassis up the field. Gets Alpine off the bottom and ahead of Sauber on countback. Worried for Jack Doohan being unable to follow him, mind.
15 seconds of time penalties for Liam Lawson for causing two collisions. Acts of a desperate man who knows his time is running out. Red Bull might have broken this man in record time…
Lewis Hamilton. At what point do we call this a concern? Beaten by six-tenths in qualifying by Leclerc, and the Safety Car was a mitigation for how far behind he was in the race. I get there’s a degree of adaptation time required, and the team as a whole has been inconsistent, but Leclerc is still getting that car into competitive positions, while Hamilton, outside of the Chinese sprint, just hasn’t. Is it the team? Was the “built different” TIME Magazine interview a bit of an ego trip? Because I ask, beyond Fernando Alonso’s 2023 with Aston Martin, when was the last truly great season from an F1 driver over 40? If he’s the “greatest of all time”, which I think he is… how much is that supposed to cover here? I ask sincerely.
Yuki Tsunoda’s ninth place was the best result by a second Red Bull driver in 175 days. Man. Got lucky he wasn’t dinged for the Sainz sidepod munch, mind.
The Stewards having to apologise to Alex Albon for missing the fact that Nico Hulkenberg broke track limits in Q1 and denying the Thai driver a shot in Q2. Glad they took accountability for it, but it’s not a good look that we got two cases of “Whoops, our bad” from race control this weekend.
I’ll write about this in a bit more detail soon too, but so glad the V10’s have been put on ICE for now. See what I did there?
The Verdict: 7/10 (Good) – I enjoyed this one. A fun race. The battle at the front and Norris having to get his elbows out led to some nice fights during the race, especially as the midfield got very racy in segments too, like with Kimi Antonelli fighting hard with Max and others to make up for that Safety Car. Bahrain is one of the best tracks on the calendar, and it’s delivered another good showing here. See you in…*sighs*… Jeddah.
