Oscar Piastri fired another warning shot at team-mate Lando Norris by taking pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix. The Aussie’s result means he is ideally placed ahead of his McLaren team-mate for Sunday’s race with both chasing a second victory of the season.
But it will be tough for Norris after a big mistake on his final flying lap. It was good enough for only sixth place on the grid, with Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton faring even worse than the Brit who threw away another chance to start on pole.
It was still a history-making result for McLaren despite Norris’ struggles. Piastri is the first driver representing the team to qualify in the top six in Bahrain since Daniel Ricciardo in 2021 and is now primed to potentially to finally secure that elusive first ever win at this venue for McLaren.
George Russell was very quick throughout the session and converted that into a front-row star alongside Piastri. Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli will share the second row while Pierre Gasly was arguably the start of qualifying by driving his Alpine fifth fastest in Q3.
Behind Norris was Verstappen who complained about his car throughout and had to settle for seventh on the grid. Carlos Sainz managed to pip Hamilton who was only ninth quickest, just ahead of Yuki Tsunoda who rounded off the top 10.
There was plenty of worry in both sides of the Red Bull garage when both drivers failed to set a time with their first runs in Q1. Tsunoda had his time deleted for a track limits violation while Verstappen aborted his attempt when he went wide and reported over the radio: “There’s something really wrong with the car.”
Whatever it was, it didn’t prevent him from comfortably booking his place in the second part of the session with a much better final lap of Q1. Tsunoda also progressed, though he was only 14th fastest which did not bode well in his quest to make that second Red Bull car qualify in the top 10 for the first time this year.
Formula 1 fans can watch every practice, qualifying and race live with Sky’s new Essential TV and Sky Sports bundle in a new deal that saves £192.
As well as Sky Sports access, this includes more than 100 TV channels and free subscriptions to Netflix and Discovery+.
Oliver Bearman has qualified well on several occasions in this rookie season but had a lap to forget here which condemned him to 20th and last place on the grid. Lance Stroll, Gabriel Bortoleto and Liam Lawson joined him in the bottom five, as did Alex Albon who thought for a second he was through before he was pipped by Nico Hulkenberg at the very end.
Esteban Ocon suffered a crash on his first run of Q2 which meant he would be condemned to 15th place. That shunt was the session briefly red-flagged while his stricken Haas was recovered but, fortunately, the Frenchman was uninjured after losing control on the exit of turn two.
Fernando Alonso was 14th and slowest of everyone still driving in F1 but still thanked his Aston Martin team over the radio, admitting it was the most the car was capable of. Hulkenberg was one place higher while rookies Jack Doohan and Isack Hadjar were the others who missed out on a place in the top 10.
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.
