Bahrain GP conclusions: Lando’s familiar frailties and why Verstappen’s breaking point is bad news for Russell

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri claimed his second victory of the F1 2025 season in the Bahrain Grand Prix at Sakhir.

Piastri dominated from pole position to become the first repeat winner of F1 2025, with Mercedes’ George Russell second and Lando Norris recovering to third after a disappointing qualifying performance. Here are our conclusions from Bahrain…

Lando Norris’s temperament will end up costing him the F1 2025 title

The immediacy of post-session interviews, held moments after the drivers climb out of the car, are a window into a man’s soul.

And the look on Lando Norris’s face at the end of qualifying in Bahrain on Saturday, when thrust in front of media including PlanetF1.com, was worryingly familiar.

It was the very same expression – wide-eyed, flustered – he had in the immediate aftermath of the Qatar Grand Prix sprint race in 2023 when Oscar Piastri, coming towards the end of his debut season, managed to sneak a rare win for McLaren.

Norris took that one personally. He was hurt by it.

Overcome, you suspect, by a deep sense of injustice that after being at the heart of everything good about McLaren over the last few years, once again someone else, as with Daniel Ricciardo at Monza 2021, had come along to snatch a victory – any victory – before he did.

Even more annoying? That win in Qatar, his first win in F1, would have been his for the taking if only – if only – he hadn’t made a mistake on his final lap of sprint qualifying to giftwrap pole position for Piastri.

Oscar has developed massively since then, finally mastering the demands of the Pirelli tyres as his experience has grown to gradually eradicate the inconsistencies that stalked him until the middle of last year and make his performance peaks – Baku 2024, China 2025 – more regularly accessible.

Can the same really be said of Lando?

For all the talk of Lando 2.0 after his victory in Australia, the same vulnerabilities – that same old susceptibility to pressure, those big emotional swings – that first surfaced as long ago as Sochi 2021 are still there.

And perhaps they always will be.

Maybe all he can really do – like Sebastian Vettel, another one who crumbled more often than you would expect of a driver of his calibre – is try to mask them as best he can.

Maybe this is simply, for better or for worse, who Lando Norris is.

Yet in the white-hot heat of a title fight with his team-mate, an even greater examination of a driver’s credentials than that he experienced against Max Verstappen last year, it is highly likely to cost him.

Compare and contrast Norris’s outlook to the psychological stillness of Piastri, often described in this column as a Max clone since his rookie season and who treats those great imposters of triumph and defeat – see how easily he brushed off his spin at his home race in Melbourne a few weeks ago – just the same.

If there is a season in which he will benefit most from having a former F1 driver by his side, putting into practice with his prodigy the harsh lessons of his own career – Mark Webber, his manager, has instilled the same qualities in Piastri that Jos did in Max – it is surely this one.

Listen to Lando talk for any length of time, and it is striking how often he will refer to what he refers to as the “people on the outside.”

It seems to matter to him more than most, what the People On The Outside say and what the People On The Outside post on the internet.

He was very conscious, for instance, of the ‘Lando No Wins’ nickname that followed him around until his maiden victory finally came in Miami last year, even to the extent that he launched a clothing range bearing that very slogan in the days after the race.

The perception that he had some sort of fundamental weakness with race starts appeared to irritate him as 2024 unfolded too.

As did the feeling that he was cracking under the weight of expectation as he sought to erode Verstappen’s points lead.

Indeed, it is not so hard to picture a fretful Norris biting his nails and thumbing through his social media feed not long after qualifying on Saturday night – and the many mistakes on race day too – to read exactly what the People On The Outside were saying about him.

How to break out of this funk he finds himself in? Only one thing for it.

Now is the time for him to take a leaf out of Nico Rosberg’s book, live like a saint and shut out everything that is not conducive to being crowned World Champion at the end of 2025.

Delete the apps. Drop the clothing stuff. Avoid distraction and stop wasting energy.

Stop being the boy-next-door social media darling praised for his preparedness to ‘be vulnerable’ and start making every effort to become a tough, resilient, successful racing driver ready to exploit every last ounce of your potential.

There is little to separate the McLaren drivers in terms of talent, equally gifted and yet, thrillingly, with scope to get even better still.

Yet that, for Norris, is part of the problem as it means that this year’s title will be won and lost in the mind.

In that crucial area, Piastri is a cold-blooded predator.

Lando?

When he’s in this mood, he makes himself easy prey.

As Max Verstappen reaches breaking point, George Russell’s best might not be good enough for Mercedes

The first rule of Formula 1? Beat your team-mate.

Do that and the rest – contracts, finances, all the marginal stuff – normally takes care of itself.

Yet despite enjoying his best-ever start to a season, collecting his third podium finish in four races in Bahrain, there is no guarantee that will be the case for George Russell in 2025.

Not with Andrea Kimi Antonelli making such an impressive start to his debut season. Not amid the ever-growing uncertainty surrounding the future of Max Verstappen.

It is scarcely believable after a start like this, yet it is quite possible that in the background of these podiums a perfect storm is brewing that could see Russell dropped by Mercedes when his current contract expires at the end of this season.

He would never admit it, of course, but the ideal scenario for Russell this season would have been for the boy wonder to crash and burn, for Mercedes’ decision to sign a teenager as Lewis Hamilton’s successor backfiring spectacularly.

The great Antonelli gamble ending in an embarrassing climbdown, forcing Mercedes to demote him for his own protection Liam Lawson-style, would have represented Russell’s best chance of earning a new contract for 2026 and beyond.

In reality, as impressive as Russell has been so far this year in leading Mercedes through the first steps of life after Lewis, Antonelli has been too close for comfort.

Close enough – just two-tenths slower than his established team-mate in qualifying at two very different circuits over the last seven days – to suggest that Russell may soon start struggling to contain him as Antonelli’s experience grows and his data banks expand.

And as this column noted when Slideshow George picked a fight with Verstappen at the end of last year, if Max does leave Red Bull for Mercedes at the end of this year it won’t be Antonelli forced to make way.

Russell almost certainly knows it too.

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Hence why he has been spotted having conversations with rival teams – a very public meeting with McLaren’s Zak Brown and Andrea Stella in the paddock in Australia was followed by an embrace with Alpine adviser Flavio Briatore in China – in the early weeks of this season.

Even if his performance at Suzuka last weekend strongly suggested otherwise, Verstappen is not a magician and he alone cannot overcome the current deficiencies over the Red Bull RB21.

His victory in Japan, in addition to his podium in Australia, has merely bought Red Bull time.

Time to improve the car sufficiently enough to keep him in contention for a fifth straight title, yes, but also time to help Red Bull ward off the looming threat of Max being free to leave at the end of this year.

Christian Horner confirmed to media including PlanetF1.com at last year’s Dutch Grand Prix that Verstappen’s contract – officially due to expire at the end of 2028 – contains a “performance element” with rumours over recent months indicating that Max can activate an exit clause if he is lower than third in the Drivers’ standings after a significant portion of this season.

Helmut Marko, the Red Bull adviser, recently admitted that the summer break will be the decisive “period” when the subject of Verstappen’s clause will come to the fore.

Red Bull’s limp performances at the two most conventional circuits so far this season suggest that even meeting the minimum requirement to guarantee Max stays put could prove difficult.

And if Russell maintains his strong start to the season to emerge as the best of the rest behind the McLarens, could it be that keeping Verstappen out of the top three in the Championship might actually trigger the very chain of events that would result in Max replacing him for 2026?

Now that, after all that’s happened between those two, would be some irony.

Verstappen’s camp do not seem to take kindly to the suggestion that he will start next season as a Mercedes driver, yet as Red Bull’s woes persist the subject of his departure is becoming more a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.

And with rumours persisting for some time that Mercedes’ preparations for F1’s new rules are more advanced than most – a report over the Bahrain GP weekend claimed that only one engine manufacturer is ‘in good shape’ for 2026 as it stands, with the remaining four all struggling to varying degrees – increasingly it seems there is a deal just waiting to be done.

If there is, even Russell’s best won’t be good enough to stop it.

Ferrari’s big mistake? Changing a winning team

It hurt Carlos Sainz to be replaced by Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari for 2025. Really hurt.

And it was inconvenient – annoying, even – that the announcement was made so early last year, casting a shadow over his entire final season with the team.

Yet what really agonised him, what really caused him some pain, was the timing. Why now?

He could not escape the feeling that his dream job was being snatched away from him just as Ferrari were on the brink of something special, that he was being denied the rewards he deserved for the work he had put in over four years to help bring the team back to the front.

“I have a feeling that Ferrari now is ready to fight for the World Championship next year,” Sainz told media, including PlanetF1.com after his last race in a red car had been run in Abu Dhabi last December.

“I honestly believe they have a very good chance and they are, for me, one of the favourites for next year.”

His logic could not be faulted.

Ferrari, after all, had just finished 14 points short of McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship, coming closer to landing a title than at any stage since their last triumph in 2008.

The 2024 Ferrari was, on balance, the strongest car over the season as a whole, lacking the fluctuations of McLaren at the start of the year and Red Bull at the end.

Were it not for those lost midsummer races as the team battled to control bouncing following an botched upgrade, there is every chance that Ferrari, not McLaren, would have won their first World Championship in an age last year.

So what happened? Where has it all gone wrong?

Why are they still without a podium after four races of the new season? Why do Ferrari trail McLaren by almost 100 points already in 2025, having pushed them so hard in 2024?

Ferrari happened.

For all the good he has done since his appointment at the end of 2022, Fred Vasseur broke the golden rule of never changing a winning team.

There is a reason why teams elect for evolution, not revolution, with their cars for the final year of a rules cycle.

It stems back to the experience of McLaren, who were too ambitious for their own good when developing the fastest car of 2012 into one that failed to even win a race the following season, marking the start of the team’s wilderness years.

Change was forced onto Ferrari to some degree following the departure of technical director Enrico Cardile midway through 2024.

It was likely no surprise, for instance, that the whispers of Ferrari’s switch to a pullrod front suspension for 2025 emerged not long after Cardile’s switch to Aston Martin was announced last July.

New regime, new ideas, new ways of working. People keen to put their own stamp on things.

Encouraging risk taking has been a central theme of Vasseur’s modus operandi since the moment he arrived, yet here surely was a moment to stick, to build on 2024’s encouraging base, rather than twist with what he described over the winter as a “completely new” car.

Any call to willingly take a step back at the start of 2025, with the hope of making a great leap forward with development as the season developed, was always going to carry the risk of their rivals being out of sight by the time Ferrari fully understood the SF-25.

And, yes, the mistake of changing a winning team could also just as easily apply to the driver lineup.

For all the sympathy for Sainz last year, there was much excitement in the air when Hamilton posed outside the house used as an office by the late Enzo Ferrari, looking like a million dollars and costing so much more, on his first day at Maranello back in January.

Hamilton will never regret his move to Ferrari – he simply could not bring himself to walk away from F1 without first taking a glorious bite of the sport’s most sacred team – yet the hierarchy would not be human if they were not silently questioning whether all this was really worth it.

Certainly, Hamilton’s insinuation in Japan last week that his car is not the same as Leclerc’s was straight out of the playbook of his highly undignified final season with Mercedes.

And even if his sixth place in Bahrain was one of the brighter moments of his Ferrari career to date, albeit after another qualifying underachievement that left him apologising profusely over team radio, that he was so convincingly left behind by Leclerc on an identical tyre in the final stint was not such a good look either.

Would I have done any worse this year, Carlos might ask as he watches on from his seat at Williams. Few would blame him.

The most surprising thing about all this?

Vasseur, we are led to believe, knows more than most about what it takes to construct a winning team.

He doesn’t need telling that it is about such basic fundamentals as clear and calm decision making, creating a culture of openness and transparency, empowering the workforce and ensuring performance remains the all-encompassing priority.

In other words, it would be so unlike him to be lured into making emotional spasms for decisions.

Or, regardless of his pre-existing relationship with Hamilton, indulging in the sort of Galactico-style, corporate-driven vanity project that the signing of Lewis, without the results to justify it, currently appears.

Has the madness of Maranello finally got hold of Fred too, just when it seemed he could do no wrong?

If Ferrari’s season does not improve soon, the blowback will be on him for upsetting the balance of a team who were getting on just fine.

Alpine will win races in F1 2026

Flavio Briatore has his detractors, and many of them, but it cannot be denied that the man has a brain.

Thinks differently from most, sees things from another perspective. Probably because his background is not rooted in motor racing, that crucial detachment gives him greater scope to think outside the box.

It’s landed him in trouble once or twice – you may have heard about that thing at that race in Singapore a few years ago – but it has also seen him build some quite formidable teams over the last three decades or so too.

His return to the paddock as Alpine’s executive adviser was not welcomed with joy when it was announced last year, nor was the decision – said to be driven by him – to repurpose Renault’s historic F1 engine facility in Viry-Chatilon.

Yet this – someone brave enough to cut the fat, make the tough calls and stand by them no matter how unpopular they might be – is what the Enstone team have been crying out for a decade or more.

Briatore’s boldness will probably result in Alpine – now with Oliver Oakes, one of the brightest young leaders in motor racing, in charge of a talented race team – winning races again as soon as 2026.

At a circuit where the team hit rock bottom in 2024, Pierre Gasly’s performance in Bahrain – fifth in qualifying and the only midfield runner to remain within touching distance of the leaders in the sprint to the finish – was a measure of Alpine’s progress over the last 12 months.

So impressive was the Alpine that it even caught the eye of Carlos Sainz, the one who got away, who in an alternative universe could have been lining up as Gasly’s team-mate in Bahrain.

“Have you seen how quick that Alpine is in Turns 6 and 11?” Sainz said after qualifying. “It’s as quick as a McLaren through those corners.

“They say they are 0.3s down on engine. With a Mercedes engine, it would be on the front row!”

Guess which engine Alpine will have next year?

If there is a way for F1 to bring back V10 engines, it should be seized

The greatest achievement by Liberty Media?

Making a commercial success out of this era of Formula 1 and those engines.

If the sport’s popularity has surged to unprecedented levels over recent years, in spite of today’s technology, imagine how much more popular it would be if the V10s of two decades ago were still around.

Oof! That noise shaking its way through your body. That rumble of the ground beneath your feet.

Watch Lewis Hamilton’s reaction to the sound of Fernando Alonso taking his 2005 Renault for a spin around Abu Dhabi a few years ago and you will soon realise that F1 was never more lovable than in the era of V10s.

The recent and long overdue discussion over the potential reintroduction of V10s has been encouraging yet few seriously believe, in the face of fierce opposition from F1’s power-unit manufacturers, that the retro engines will figure much in Formula 1’s future.

Too many, it seems, are too far gone.

Somewhere along the way the important people lost sight of the fact that Formula 1, first and foremost, is in the entertainment business.

It is a shame, not least as Sebastian Vettel – whose last memorable contribution as an F1 driver was a call to “bring back the f**king V12s” over team radio as he pulled up to retire his Ferrari at the 2019 Russian Grand Prix – has already shown that there is a different way.

A way to preserve all that is good about motor racing while still adhering to the green-dream demands of the modern world.

Since his retirement from F1 at the end of 2022, the only real pleasure Vettel seems to have got from life has come whenever he has publicly demonstrated historic F1 cars – Nigel Mansell’s title-winning Williams FW14B of 1992, Ayrton Senna’s McLaren MP4/8 – on sustainable fuels.

Each run has had the air of a personal plea from Vettel, right under the noses of F1’s management, to show that it can indeed be done.

And if it can be done, it should.

It will never happen, of course, but one can only dream of the day Formula 1 and the FIA align on the issue, flex their combined muscle and act firm with the engine manufacturers.

Listen up, we’re bringing back V10s. Sustainable fuel (alright, alright, a KERS hybrid system hooked up to it if we must).

Interested? Sign here.

If not, off you pop to Formula E, where you can all feel very pleased with yourselves – but where nobody will be watching and all your sponsors will run for the hills.

Deal? Deal.

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