McLaren lauds ‘perfect’ Piastri

McLaren team bosses described Oscar Piastri’s Bahrain Grand Prix victory as “perfection” as they brace themselves for an inevitable intra-team battle.

Having recorded his most comprehensive performance at Shanghai to get his first win of 2025, Piastri made an even bigger statement in Sakhir.

The Aussie dominated from pole position and was never challenged, taking the biggest win of his career by 15s.

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The most impressive thing about the margin of victory was it came in the space of just 22 laps after a mid-race Safety Car for debut.

The faultless fourth career win is the latest development in Piastri’s promising trajectory and proof he is in the thick of the title fight.

The success was also a sweet moment for McLaren given it had never won at Sakhir before, last scoring a podium back in 2010, with the track described as a second home with the team now heavily owned by Bahrainis.

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella lauded Piastri’s perfect performance and his calmness behind the wheel.

“Oscar drove a perfect race, if anything I would say, a perfect weekend,” added Stella.

“If you think of the victory in Baku, for instance, it was a pretty crystalline, clinic victory, that one with Leclerc attacking him every single lap.

“For me, this one is the one in which he’s been just, I think, most robust. No hesitations, no inaccuracies.

“Everything that was available, he capitalised on, so for me, this gives me more the sense of robustness, solid racing.

“I think the Baku one was more on the edge…it was more pressure, this one was more managing gaps, if anything.

“But obviously, being strong at the start, restarts, it shouldn’t be given for granted for somebody who is at the 50th race in F1, which is quite impressive.

“I’ve always said that there’s no noise in Oscar’s head, which is a very useful characteristic in F1, and I think this allows him to progress, to process information, to process what’s available in the situations as a way of improving himself at a very fast rate.

“For being race 50 in F1, certainly what he’s achieving is pretty remarkable.”

Having left Australia 23 points behind teammate Lando Norris following an unlucky mistake, Piastri has slashed the deficit to just three across the following three races with the Brit evidently struggling a lot.

As a result, McLaren is bracing itself for the race when Piastri and Norris go head-to-head for glory.

The only occasions when the teammates have come close, circumstances have got in the way.

In Australia it was team orders and in Japan every driver found it close to impossible to consider overtaking.

“They race hard,” said CEO Zak Brown.

“I’m sure we’re going to have some excitement over the year, but you know, they race very cleanly and they’re free to race, as we’ve discussed.

“I think we’ve yet to see that epic battle between the two, I just think that’s a matter of time.”

The momentum is well and truly behind Piastri ahead of this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Photo by Sam Bagnall/Sutton Images/Getty

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