The Saturday in F1 Bahrain GP saw a divide between two McLaren cars, as Mercedes kept itself in the game amid a midfield battle led by Pierre Gasly.
The divide at McLaren could be seen on Saturday in F1 Bahrain GP as Oscar Piastri took centerstage to continue his fine run in the grand prix weekend so far. While teammate Lando Norris struggled to stitch a good lap, the Australian kept the papaya flag afloat amid intense competition.
Norris was subdued as things didn’t go his way. He was fighting the car all-through as he lamented that the things that worked in one session, didn’t in the other. The low talk was seen from Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton as well. He didn’t have words after the poor performance, especially with the other car in P2.
It was the first glimpse of a low Hamilton at Ferrari. His teammate, Charles Leclerc, was surprised by his own lap. He felt good in the car, but didn’t think it was Top 3 to cut the two Mercedes cars. He gained one place to start from the front row after one place drop for George Russell.
The Brit continued his fine run and recovered when it mattered in Q3. He hopes to take on Piastri, but the larger fight will be to keep Leclerc and Norris behind. Teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli backed Russell by finishing inside the Top 5, even though he lost a place as well.
Nothing worked for the Red Bull pair, though. The only positive was that both Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda made it inside the Top 10, even though the Japanese driver didn’t feel 100%. The Dutchman conceded that the car didn’t work in any condition, backed by his F1 teammate.
Piastri: “Very happy. I think the car all weekend has been in a good place. Maybe not in FP1, but I don’t think anyone’s car was very good in FP1. Since then I felt very comfortable all weekend. This morning, given the track conditions, it was a pretty solid performance and the car was very similar this afternoon, so I’m very, very happy with the job we’ve done. I’m proud of the job that I’ve done. I feel like I’ve put in a lot of good laps when I needed to and to come away with pole is obviously very nice. A little bit everywhere I think. I honestly can’t remember exactly where, but just little bits around the lap. The first set I had in Q3 had done kind of an out lap on the red flag in Q2 and I don’t know if that made a difference or not, but when you leave the garage and they’re not nice and shiny like they normally are, maybe there’s a psychological thing as well. So yeah, just found a little bit of time everywhere and it was a very solid lap.
“Maybe a little bit wide in 13, but the rest of the lap was pretty solid. So I’m very happy. Everyone’s got very different tyres up and down the grid. George has only got one hard and one medium. Charles and I have got two mediums. Max has got two hards, so it’s a bit of a mix. We’ll see what everyone goes for tomorrow because I think it’s a bit of a lottery at the moment. I think it will definitely be more exciting from a strategic point of view, but for my sake, I hope not too exciting. From my side, I’m certainly not shying away from the fact we have the best car at the moment. I think to say otherwise is not correct. But it is difficult and the margins are still pretty tight. It doesn’t take much of a mistake to lose one or two tenths, and that’s been the gap more or less.
“At times we have looked very, very strong — like this morning, for example — but I think when everyone turns up for qualifying, we know that we still have to put our best foot forward. Like we saw in Japan, we didn’t quite get the most out of the car, got pipped by Max. And today, Lando’s not on the front row, so it’s difficult, definitely. I certainly don’t think we’re fast enough to do whatever we want, but we do have a nice advantage at the moment that we’re trying our best to make sure we continue to use week in, week out.”
Norris: “I mean, it was just every lap, honestly. I’ve been off every lap this weekend, just not comfortable. No big complaints. The car’s amazing. The car’s as good as it has been the whole season, which is strong. I’ve been off it all weekend. Don’t know why, just clueless on track at the minute. So, I don’t know. I just need a big reset or something. Just not quick enough at the moment. Oscar’s doing a great job, so I can’t complain. I’m not going to have the excuse that I can’t drive my car. It’s my job to drive whatever car I’ve got, whether it’s easy or hard. And I’m not doing a good enough job, so the team are doing an amazing job. I’m not going to complain about the car not suiting my needs. Yeah, I’m not comfortable. It doesn’t drive the way I like, but that’s not an excuse. The driver’s job is to drive whatever car they’re given, and I can’t drive this car quick enough. I just don’t know how to approach it. I can’t figure it out.
“Every time I try something, it’s good for one session, and then it’s the wrong thing for the next session, because the wind has changed. I just can’t flow with the car, and when I can’t flow, I’m not very quick. I’ve just got to work on myself. I can’t follow the team, and the car is the best by a long way. But clearly, I’m just not clicking at the minute. I’m not concerned [about Oscar’s performance]. I’m just concerned about me. Couldn’t care less [about the championship]. Like I said, I don’t care about myself. I don’t care about what the others do. I’ve always known Oscar’s good, and he’s quick, and he’s doing the job I know he can achieve with the car that we’ve got. So, yeah, well done to him. But I’m more worried about my own performance than others. So, yeah, I don’t care about the rest of it.”
Russell: “It was a really strong Q3. To be honest, I wasn’t really feeling it throughout qualifying and didn’t have the confidence in myself, which was quite a surprise. I don’t know why that was. Q1 and Q2 were a real challenge. But in Q3 I just got back into my normal rhythm and put in some strong laps. Really surprised to be a tenth and a half off pole and ahead of one of the McLarens and also Charles up there as well. We were talking before — I think we were both shocked to be this close. So yeah, definitely a strong one. I think unlike the first three races of the season, this isn’t going to be necessarily a qualifying race.
“I think this is going to be the race which is most biased to the lap times you do in the race. Obviously I hope to make a good start. I’ve been on the front row here before and got into the lead at Turn 1, so hopefully I can repeat that. But I think they’re so far ahead of everybody. They can pit early, pit late — they’ll probably potentially overtake us on track. But as I said, today we’re on the front row and nobody expected anyone but Lando and Oscar to be on the front row. So maybe another surprise tomorrow.”
Verstappen: “All weekend struggling a bit on brake feeling and stopping power, besides that just also just very difficult grip. We tried a lot on the set-up but it didn’t work. It didn’t give us clear direction to work in. Yeah, it has just been overall difficult weekend so far. In Japan, it wasn’t good as well. But here, you just get punished a bit harder when you have bigger balance issues because the tarmac is so aggressive, the wind is also quite high, and the track has quite low grip. So everything is highlighted more. It is sensitive in general. But here, of course, because of the tarmac and general grip, it’s more difficult.
“I’ll try to do the best I can. I hope that I can stay a bit with the Mercedes and the Ferraris. Naturally, I think the McLarens will pull away. But, yeah, we’ll try our best. See what happens. It depends if you have the pace. I don’t think we have. So the positive is that we have two cars in Q3. The negative is that we struggle for pace. So it’s nice to have two cars in there, but when you are too slow then it doesn’t matter.”
Leclerc: “It was really good, but I don’t think today’s performance relies on my record on this track. I think it’s the result of a lot of work. At the beginning of the season, we obviously weren’t where we wanted to be and since two or three races I’ve gone in an interesting direction setup-wise, which seems to help me to extract a bit more out of the car. That’s what I’m trying to do every weekend. For now, it seems to be better and better, which is a good sign for the future. I’m happy with the lap. It was very tricky to put everything together, but I think I did so. There wasn’t much more inside the car. Again, I think as George mentioned, I did not expect to be so close to pole position — just like him.
“But tomorrow is going to be a bit more of a challenge. Honestly, McLaren seems to be extremely good with tyre management and more specifically the overheating of the tyres. We’ve seen it in FP3 — I think everybody was struggling a lot — but Oscar put a lap in that was very impressive. I think tomorrow in the race there will be lots of that, so I don’t think we expect to challenge the McLarens, but we might be pretty close with the Mercedes, also with the Red Bulls. So it’s going to be an interesting race. We all have different tyres. A good start will obviously be essential, especially with high temperatures like this, to have clean air plays a big role.”
Hamilton: “It was pretty straightforward. Yeah, really not much to say. It [Q3 lap deletion] didn’t help, but it wasn’t the worst-case scenario. I’m just not doing a good enough job on my side, so I just got to keep improving it. The car is good enough [seeing Charles’ finish], which is good. It definitely not a good feeling [to be where I am right now]. In the race, hopefully top five. I’ll try and see if I can get it to top 5, we’ll see. I really don’t know… I really don’t know. I don’t have a lot of answers for you guys.”
The Top 10 had just one big jump from Q2. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly made it in the Top 5 and eventually gained a place to be fourth. He was behind Jack Doohan in Q1 and part of Q2, but came alive to get into Q3 and stitch a superb lap. He managed to put the car in the working window.
Doohan, meanwhile, got a bit greedy to miss out Q3 by few tenths in the end, but it was a positive show from his end still. Williams were in a extreme after Carlos Sainz made it in the Top 10, but Alexander Albon was knocked out in Q1 after not getting their outlap strategy right.
The Spaniard felt better in the car after his recent struggles. The downer was also for Visa Cash App RB’s Isack Hadjar, who was knocked out in Q2. He felt the balance was lost in qualifying, as teammate Liam Lawson was out in Q1 when his DRS didn’t work properly on his fast lap.
Haas’ good fortune of Esteban Ocon making it in Q2 didn’t last long after his mistake. The Frenchman accepted his mistake of getting greedy to push on that lap. He felt Q3 was possible after the tyre strategy they had. Teammate Oliver Bearman ended up last after a mess on his final push lap.
Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg made it in Q2, but the FIA stewards accepted their mistake that his Q1 lap exceeded track limits and that he shouldn’t have been in Q2 in first place. Teammate Gabriel Bortoleto did not enjoy his run at all, much like the Aston Martin pair where ride height adjustment was wrong on Lance Stroll, while three soft tyre strategy for Fernando Alonso didn’t work.
Gasly: “It was good work from everyone in the team, it was a very strong lap in Q2 and Q3 was very strong like I knew straightaway after my last corner, that this put me in a very good place but nowhere near closing thinking that it was going to put us like four hundreds from the Top 3 and only three-tenths from pole position, so I am just very happy for the whole team. It was good improvement, even in Q1, I was feeling horrible in the car, just sliding and had snaps in mini places, we changed few things on the outlaps, some settings that I could do inside the car and I managed to improve run by run, so I am extremely happy and yeah, we need this.
“We still haven’t scored points this year, we have been more on the backfoot and at the back of the midfield, really this weekend we have managed to put a strong performance together so far. If Lando and Max battle it out in the first few laps, that would be great – jokes apart – we know these guys have quite a lot of pace in the race, so yeah, we expected to be around ninth or 10th in quali, we did better than that and in the race, we will try to make the best of the track position at the start, and we expect a very different race than Suzuka, so I don’t know where that will put us in the end, we are clearly fight for the points. It is important for the team to get points in the race.”
Albon: “I was looking for explanation [on the radio], was not trying to make any excuses. We were supposed to go with the train as you can see, we ended up having to let everyone pass and waiting for those minutes, the tyres jumped about to 25 to 30 degrees. We passed 3 or 4 cars on the outlap to try and make it up, trying to get a lap on the board, it was tight to the finish and then in Turn 1-2-3, the tyres were very cold, so unfortunate and tricky honestly, not comfortable after we made changes in the car, but definitely not Q1 out pace. We have some of the strongest race pace in the midfield and at least you can overtake on this track! It’s going to be tricky to score points, but it is possible and I will give it everything to recover from what happened.”
Hadjar: “It wasn’t a great Qualifying for us, reaching Q3 was the goal today. We got really close and I feel like we could have gotten through, but I didn’t do a good enough lap. I had a tricky session out there and after the wind changed direction, I felt like the balance of the car went the wrong way and therefore struggled with it. I think I had a strong start in my last attempt and thought that was enough, but unfortunately, I was a bit too conservative towards the end of that lap. Tomorrow is going to be interesting, as it will be a two-stop race due to the high tyre degradation. A lot will happen, and if the pace is there, we can fight to get points.”
Ocon: “I am okay. I am just really sorry for the team. I messed up, I didn’t mistakes that I don’t normally do in qualifying, I pushed too early into Turn 2. I went on the kerb, obviously that made the car bounce and I just lost control of it, so it is my fault. We have worked super hard in the last weeks to improve the car and we were going for a decent qualifying. We saved the tyres, not going with three sets in Q1, we did what was needed and looking at how tight it was all to play and we would have a shot at Q3, we had a new set. I am disappointed with my performance, I need to do better, yeah, it is not finished in a misery, you can fight in the race, you can overtake in the race, we have seen in FP2 that we are quick, and we are not starting last so far – depending on the repair – we should not be far off points.”
Hulkenberg: “Looking at our performance on track, before the call by the stewards, I think we had made the best of today’s conditions, and therefore I’m quite happy with the performance we put in. Going into qualifying, we knew our day could be tricky, because we had a less-than-ideal FP2 yesterday and our FP3 was cut short with a technical issue this morning. The conditions, with a strong breeze and changing grip levels, made the car challenging to drive at the limit: still, we had extracted the most out of the car, so it’s a pity to start from P16 after the Q2 efforts were deleted. It’ll be a big challenge to get into the fight for the points: we will need a good start and a good strategy, of course, and I have full confidence in everyone in the team that we’ll give it our best shot.”
Stroll: “The set-up didn’t feel quite right today, the ride height was way too high as it turned out, so it was difficult to turn the car around the corners. We always knew coming to Bahrain this wasn’t going to be an easy weekend for us, so now we need to do some work and see if there’s anything we can change ahead of tomorrow.”
Here’s Esteban Ocon’s crash: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-bahrain-gp-qualifying-ocon-crashes-out-of-q2-and-triggers-red-flags.1829216718677706535
Here’s how F1 Bahrain GP qualifying panned out
