Before the third session of qualifying, Lando Norris was the fastest man at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Other drivers beat him on one-off occasions—Max Verstappen in Q1, and, somehow, Pierre Gasly in FP1—but notably and most importantly, neither of those drivers were his teammate and championship rival Oscar Piastri. The Saudi Arabian GP was shaping up to be a bounce-back race for Norris across Formula 1’s midseason oil-money double-header, after his comparatively disastrous P3 finish at Bahrain.
Then Norris clipped a curb on a flying lap, unsettled his car, and crashed into the left-side wall, red-flagging the session. Norris let his race engineer know that he was fine, before following up with a characteristically self-critical, “Idiot.” As much as McLaren professes its car the best on the grid, it doesn’t have quite the pace of the early hybrid-era Mercedes or rocket Red Bull, where, with the right driver at the wheel and right teammate up ahead, a P10 in qualifying could easily convert to a race win. And with that one mistake, Norris’s race goal shifted from a win, cementing his Drivers’ Championship lead, to a decent recovery drive.
While Norris was doing damage control in the midfield, Piastri was taking on the arguably more difficult task of trying to safely overtake Max Verstappen—who stole yet another pole position with a one hundredth of a second gap over Piastri—in a wheel-to-wheel race. Piastri had an incredible start and, by virtue of starting second, the inside line going into the first turn. He parked his car on the apex. Verstappen responded by going for his default wheel-to-wheel strategy of “send it, and see if the stewards give a penalty,” propelling his car around the outside of Piastri, then off the track into the next right-hander, and then back ahead of Piastri, in a move egregious enough that it limited even David Coulthard’s waffling about whether or not Verstappen deserved a penalty for overtaking off track and not giving the place back.
The stewards decided that Verstappen deserved a penalty, though just five seconds rather than the traditional ten, presumably with some leniency for race start. (Verstappen’s teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, had an unfortunate race-ending collision with Gasly that served as perfect demonstration of a racing incident on the opening lap.) Verstappen’s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, broke the news to him, and his “please don’t get mad” qualifier of “head down” at the end of his message proved unfortunately ineffective, as Verstappen immediately described the penalty as “fucking lovely.”
Still, by not swapping the cars around, Verstappen maintained the all-important track position at a race where—and you can imagine Oscar Piastri saying this, in that way of his—clean air is king. While the DRS zones made for easier overtaking conditions than, say, Suzuka, being in the hot, dirty air of another car ate away at tire life. Later on in the race, drivers who ran longer stints, like Charles Leclerc and Norris, were able to put in some of their best lap times while temporarily leading, no matter the age of their tires. And early on, with the benefit of that same clean air, Verstappen was able to coast comfortably two seconds ahead of Piastri, though that comes with the caveat that Piastri didn’t need to risk another overtake on Verstappen due to the penalty; he just had to stay comfortably within five seconds. After McLaren called for a proactive (proactivity! From McLaren!) pit stop before Verstappen, Piastri had all but secured his race, and with it, a Drivers’ Championship lead.
For those keeping score at home: Piastri eventually won the race, with Verstappen and Leclerc rounding out the podium. Norris, who was easily the fastest driver on track in the closing laps of the race, had a stellar recovery drive to fourth, and Russell, whose strategy of “do nothing post-qualifying; get podium” finally faltered, closed out the top five. With his win, Piastri now leads Norris by 10 points in the Drivers’ Championship, the first Australian driver since Mark Webber, Piastri’s manager, to lead a Championship. There are 19 more races to go.
It is easy to root for Oscar Piastri, whose bland, dry stoicism is several orders of magnitude more compelling than it has any right to be. Even pleasant drivers rarely sound pleasant over the radio, but while other drivers can sound yell-y or whiny, the flatness of Piastri’s delivery makes him sound, at worst, tepidly annoyed through everything: radioing for a Verstappen penalty, pointing out a flashing red light on a balcony, engaging in the age-old ritual of complaining about backmarkers. Combine that demeanor with some clever, brave racecraft—Piastri is no chump who’ll wait for a DRS zone to pass a slower car, as evidenced by this week’s overtake on Lewis Hamilton—and you have a winning combination to root for.
He serves as a counterpoint to Lando Norris, who started out as a very young driver on a midfield team with an impishness that was easy for fans to like; none of these features quite lasted when he started winning. Since then, Norris has displayed a competitive fierceness common to championship-caliber drivers, a tendency for self-criticism that is extraordinarily rare in that same cohort, and no Bottas- or Perez-tier second driver to bully. The pendulum of popular opinion swung away from him. In the eyes of the average spectator, Norris has become, paradoxically, both too arrogant and too sniveling. So far this season, he has yet to show the same flashiness that Piastri seems good for every other week; his own attempt to overtake Hamilton took three laps to stick, due to some clever DRS gamesmanship expected from a seven-time World Champion who was probably having the most fun this season since his Chinese Grand Prix sprint race win.
Speaking of World Champions, Sebastian Vettel, who was present during the weekend thanks to a karting race he helped organize for young women in Saudi Arabia, came to Norris’s defense. “I don’t think it’s a sign of weakness. It might be criticized by some people, but if you look at the broader picture, I think it’s just progress,” Vettel said, referring to Norris as a real role model. Norris later mentioned that he and Vettel occasionally talk, with Vettel often offering support and advice.
The structure of F1 makes it very prone to overreaction. Driver and car performances often vary wildly from track to track, upgrade package to upgrade package, and yet it’s easier to draw conclusions based purely week to week. Just look at the Red Bull car, which was apparently fixed in Suzuka, and then dead again in Bahrain, and then miraculously rejuvenated again in Saudi Arabia. In the same interview, Vettel maintained that he still thought Norris had the edge, but nobody should finish the season surprised if either McLaren driver wins the Championship.
If one wants to look for true teamwork, it’d have to be in the midfield, where Carlos Sainz Jr. spent the entire final stretch of the race keeping Alex Albon within DRS range in order to keep Isack Hadjar, on fresh mediums, from easily passing both of their cars. (Sainz is, after all, an expert on giving the car behind a tow.) But Vettel and Webber’s partial involvement in this championship provides a clunky opportunity to resuscitate old history, in a sport where the most fun teammates are often rival teammates: Vettel and Norris on one side, Webber and Piastri on the other. Vettel doubted that the McLaren duo could ever result in the same disastrous results that previous teams had, simply due to changing times, but there’s no need to hope for an ancient grudge. Two cars, both alike in machinery, in fair Formula 1, contending for a championship would be more than enough.
