With a dominant win from pole position in Bahrain, Oscar Piastri has thrown down the gauntlet to make it clear that he is not going to play second fiddle to Lando Norris. Capitalizing on the MCL39’s pace advantage—something Norris hasn’t been able to do—Piastri stormed to his second Grand Prix victory of 2025 by a staggering 15.4-second margin over George Russell.
With Norris finishing on the final step of the podium, the Australian has managed to reduce the Briton’s lead to just three points in the standings. Now, the irony of the situation is that Norris had proclaimed 2025 to be ‘his year’ of winning the world championship, heading into the new campaign.
Even F1 community experts like Nico Rosberg and Laura Winter, among others, had predicted Norris to be the title favorite this season. So it’s startling to see how quickly Piastri has smashed this notion and established himself as a supremely strong competitor for the British driver in the 2025 title fight.
Even McLaren CEO Zak Brown thinks so and is keen to witness how the Melbourne-born driver, just in his third F1 season, is going to battle Norris hard but fair, as all Aussies do.
“I’m sure we’re going to have some excitement over the year, but they race very cleanly, and they are free to race, as we’ve discussed. I think we’ve yet to see that epic battle between the two – I think that is a matter of time,” Brown said to Sky Sports F1 after the race in Bahrain.
Oscar’s fourth career win in his 50th race
Piastri was a class apart in Bahrain #F1 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/uq4dd27b82
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 13, 2025
Norris and Piastri battled at several races last year, wherein the #81 driver showed that he could be much better than his teammate in wheel-to-wheel racing. His overtakes on the opening lap in Hungary and Italy would be replaying in Norris’ mind currently, as Piastri has taken his second win of the season already.
Brown, though, has made positive comments about this competitiveness in his driver lineup. “They are pulling the whole team forward. Excited,” he added. Knowing that both drivers have fought for wins and are getting podiums every weekend, Brown would be content with them racing each other as long as their Constructors’ points tally stays intact.
Nevertheless, in the drivers’ title battle, things will get intense, and both Piastri and Norris will look to prioritize their individual results later in the season to gain an upper hand over each other.
Piastri’s title pursuit
While everyone has placed their bets on Norris to dethrone Max Verstappen as the reigning world champion, Piastri seems keen on flipping the script. Despite his heartbreak in Australia—where he lost out on a potential race win to only finish ninth—the #81 driver has recovered superbly in the championship standings.
Heading into the next weekend in Saudi Arabia, the Aussie would definitely look to take the championship lead for the first time in his F1 career. The good thing is that Piastri only has to beat Norris at the front of the field on merit. Red Bull and Ferrari are nowhere as competitive as McLaren, as many had expected them to be.
Verstappen’s Japan win was more of an anomaly due to the lack of overtaking chances and his brilliance in maximizing his result. Meanwhile, Ferrari is just unable to get the SF-25 working well enough to even qualify behind the McLaren drivers, let alone challenge them for the win.
However, Piastri will have to take into account Mercedes and George Russell’s rise. The British driver has got three podiums in the four rounds so far, and is just 14 points behind leader Norris in the standings.
