Oscar Piastri’s second victory on the bounce in Formula 1 has seen him become the championship leader for the first time in his career. The first time for an Australian since 2010. Amusingly, the last representative from Down Under to lead the standings was Piastri’s current manager, Mark Webber. But with Piastri prevailing as Lando Norris struggled once again in Saudi Arabia, is there a changing of the guard occurring at McLaren?
Norris had to fight back to third in Bahrain after qualifying a lowly sixth, admitting he was “clueless” about why he couldn’t extract the maximum from his McLaren MCL39 in one-lap crunch time moments. Piastri had no such issue, converting pole position to triumph.
The McLaren duo arrived in Jeddah with the status quo already shifting: Norris was in need of a reset, and Piastri was riding high on a wave of confidence. Norris put his best foot forward in practice and the first phases of qualifying, but once again, crunch time arrived, and he crumbled. A crash at Turn 4, pushing too hard on his opening run in Q3, getting caught on the outside kerb and ending up in the barrier, relegated Norris to 10th on the grid.
Piastri, meanwhile, qualified on the front row alongside unlikely pole-sitter Max Verstappen.
This set the stage for the first Piastri/Verstappen confrontation, and guess what, the ice-cool Australian came out on top. The Australian got a stronger launch from second, entered Turn 1 first and was granted the lead after the stewards penalised Verstappen, much to his and Red Bull’s discontent, for escaping to the run-off across Turn 2 to maintain track position.
From there, Piastri controlled the race to take his third win of the season, his second in succession, to open up a 10-point lead over Norris in the Drivers’ Championship, with the second McLaren driver only able to recover to fourth, ending his podium run in 2025.
In just his third season, it’s Piastri who is living up to the mantle of McLaren being the favourites, not Norris, in his seventh campaign.
Norris ‘making life tough’ for himself
Piastri is extracting the maximum potential from the MCL39 as Norris wastes time with the class-leading tools at his disposal, and moreover, the Aussie’s handling of the race start in Saudi Arabia showed a steely resolve that Norris often missed in 2024.
At his first attempt, Piastri played Verstappen’s ruthless wheel-to-wheel game and won.
Several times last year, Norris tried and failed.
“He’s in his third year, and he’s very solid,” said Verstappen post-race. “He’s very calm in his approach, and I like that. It shows on track. He delivers when he has to, barely makes mistakes – and that’s what you need when you want to fight for a championship.”
Norris, meanwhile, admitted he’s making life harder for himself.
“I make life tough for myself, especially when it’s a race like that, it would have been a much easier, a lot more chilled just to drive out the front,” Norris said. “I got to help myself out a little bit and have better Saturdays.”
Norris at risk of succumbing to unflappable Oscar Piastri at McLaren
If Norris doesn’t figure things out on Saturdays, he could easily see the unflappable Piastri eke out a stronger lead in the Drivers’ standings, one that could prove hard to overcome if rivals catch McLaren in the development race with a Technical Directive on the horizon.
Unflappable: That is Piastri in a nutshell. Which is why he isn’t even thinking about the F1 title fight at this early stage in the campaign.
Asked on Sunday if leading the championship changes things, Piastri replied: “No. I still want to go out and try and win every race I can. I was saying before, I’m not that bothered by the fact that I’m leading the championship, but I’m proud of the work and the reasons behind why we’re leading the championship. Melbourne wasn’t a great start to the year in terms of results. But from the moment I’ve hit the track this season, I felt like I’ve been in a good place. Leading the championship is a result of all the hard work we’ve done in the off-season, the hard work I’ve done personally, the hard work the team’s done. I’m more proud of all of those things than I am of the fact that I’m leading the championship because, ultimately, I want to be leading it after round 24, not round five.”
After five rounds, Piastri has three wins to Norris’ one, and the latter comes off of back-to-back disappointments.
If Piastri can maintain McLaren supremacy next time out in Miami, the venue of Norris’ maiden victory in F1, then it might be time to accept a new team leader has emerged in papaya, ready to achieve what Webber couldn’t in 2010, an elusive Drivers’ title.
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