Piastri wins Bahrain GP in dominant fashion ahead of Russell | Report

Sebastian Alston
Apr 13
5 min read

Updated: Apr 19

Oscar Piastri claimed his second victory of the season with a dominant win ahead of George Russell and Lando Norris.

The Aussie led from start to finish, whilst Russell made up for his grid place penalty to claim his third podium of the season.

Oscar's second victory of the season, sees him close the gap to Lando at the top of the championship to just 3 points.

Speaking of Lando, he made a great move on a charging Charles Leclerc to claim the final spot on the podium and retain the championship lead.

As the lights went out, Oscar had a great start to pull away, whilst Russell and Leclerc battled behind. Lando Norris got a great launch to leapfrog Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc, however was later given a five second penalty for being outside his start box.

Lewis Hamilton won Driver of The Day after his recovery from P9 to P5, which was helped by a good strategy and strong pace from the Ferrari's on the medium tyre.

Pierre Gasly scored Alpine's first points of the season with a P7 finish after starting P4, however, he was disappointed after being overtaken by Max Verstappen on the last lap. His teammate Jack Doohan had looked on course to make it a double points finish for the Enstone side, but fell away on his final stint on the hard tyre. His positive qualifying performance does seem to have convinced those at Alpine to keep him on until at least the summer break if reports are to be believed.

Max experienced issues throughout his opening stint and struggled with the RB21 throughout, however, made a good comeback late on to salvage P6. Having started the day just one point off the championship lead, Max was dealt a big blow in Bahrain however still only trails Lando by 8 points going into Jeddah.

Haas had another brilliant race to claim a double points finish from what looked like an unlikely outcome at the start of the day.

Esteban Ocon's early pit stop saw him undercut a host of cars and he did well to hold on to P8, whilst Ollie Bearman got a great launch off the line and then cut through the field to go from last to P10 to claim the final championship point.

Yuki Tsunoda finished P9 for his first points at Red Bull and managed to show the bosses at Red Bull some of his overtaking skills, with a dive bomb on Jack Doohan standing out.

Kimi Antonelli on the other hand had a day to forget. He had made a good start however some confusing strategy decisions from the Mercedes pit-wall ruined his race. He recovered well but could only manage a P11 finish. It was an incredibly strange three-stop strategy from Mercedes, pitting Kimi twice for soft tyres. The Italian had shown good pace in his opening stint and even pulled off a brilliant overtake manoeuvre on Max Verstappen.

Elsewhere Carlos Sainz had been running well after starting eighth for Williams, however made contact with Liam Lawson and eventually had to retire from the race. It was a disappointing end to the weekend for Carlos who had been running in the top ten for much of the opening half of the race. As for Liam, he picked up his first points of the season, albeit three penalty points.

Quotes:

Oscar Piastri said: "It's great to have this result out here, it’s been an incredible weekend, to start off in qualifying yesterday and to finish off the job today in style was nice.

"I can’t thank the team enough for the car they’ve given us, it’s pretty handy out there. It’s been a great weekend and very proud of what I’ve done as well.

"I’m proud to of done it here in Bahrain as well. It’s obviously a very important race for us given our owners and it’s never been a track that has been kind to us so it’s nice to finally have that first win for the team here.

"I would have preferred to not have had the safety car but I was still pretty confident, the pace was good and I was pretty confident I could get a good restart. I also knew that Lando and I were the only ones with another medium and that was the tyre to be on.

"From that side of things it was relatively straightforward. Obviously, you try and get a good restart and you don’t know how it’s going to go but I was never going to let that one go."

George Russell had a communications issue with his car in the latter half of the race which affected his DRS and also the timings screen.

After the race George said: "It felt under control and then suddenly we had a brake-valve wire failure. Suddenly the pedal was going long, then it was going short, I didn't know what was going on. The steering wheel wasn't working properly so it was hard to keep Lando behind. I think one more lap and he would have got me very comfortably. But nevertheless, really pleased with P2.

"Oscar was in a league of his own, congratulations to him and McLaren, we knew they would be pretty extraordinary around this circuit, I was proven right. For ourselves, it's been four races, three podiums, all on different types of tracks, so it gives us confidence going into the future."

Lando Norris who was evidently disappointed with his performance despite a great start said: "It was a tough race I made too many mistakes with the overtakes and being out of position.

"It was a messy race from me and I’m disappointed not to bring home a one-two for McLaren because that would have been lovely at home, it’s a tough one but still a few positives."

Pierre Gasly who was one of the standout performers all weekend said: "I would like to be able to explain the performance, we saw that in the winter test, we were already very good on this track, so it's good to reconfirm by coming back here for a race weekend.

"I think there's a lot of work to do to try and replicate that kind of performance because it's true that the car was handling very well. I was almost able to keep up with the pace of the cars in front at the start of the race.

"I think we had more degradation, I had to push my tyres a little harder and so the end of the stints were a little complicated, especially on the front-wheel drives. Overall, we're really happy.

"I think it gives a lot of hope for the rest of the season, that we can still perform well on other circuits."