Oscar Piastri finished sixth at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sepang, Malaysia, as McLaren conceded a significant pace deficit to Red Bull following Max Verstappen’s race victory at the Sepang circuit.
Piastri crossed the line in P6 after a stop-start race that was delayed by heavy rain and interrupted by two Safety Car periods. Teammate Lando Norris finished ninth, with McLaren unable to challenge the frontrunners throughout the afternoon.
Despite the team’s overall struggles, Piastri drew satisfaction from his own strategic recovery. Starting on Medium tyres, he pitted at the end of Lap 1 to switch to Intermediates on a damp track, dropping to P10 before working his way back through the field. He moved to Hard tyres on Lap 9 following a Safety Car triggered by a Valtteri Bottas spin into the gravel, and repeated that tyre choice on Lap 33. A second Safety Car, caused by Alex Albon’s retirement, brought him to P8, and he subsequently gained a further place when George Russell retired on track. A final switch to Medium tyres for the closing laps allowed him to battle past Liam Lawson and secure sixth.
“Overall, I am reasonably happy,” Piastri said. “I think it went pretty well on a personal note, I felt like I did a good job today, which is good. Unfortunately, we weren’t quick enough to really do that much. The last Safety Car was a bit of a shame because I was catching Charles pretty quick, but apart from that, it was a tricky afternoon.”
Piastri was direct in assessing Red Bull’s resurgent form, pointing to upgrades introduced at the previous round in Baku as a turning point. “Red Bull have been incredibly fast here, it is the strongest they have been,” he said. “Whatever they put on the car in Baku has really worked for them. Last weekend, they had a bad qualifying, but Max almost won the race, and here he did win the race. Us and Ferrari are in a similar ballpark, but that isn’t fighting for race wins at the moment. We need to improve, we know that and we will try our best to make sure we do that.”
Norris had a more difficult afternoon. Starting from P5 after benefiting from Isack Hadjar’s grid penalty, he remained on Medium tyres through the opening stint and lost ground on the wet track. He recovered to P9 before the second Safety Car cost him two additional positions when he was forced to take avoiding action and ran into the gravel at Turn 1 as Russell stopped on track. He fought back during the final five racing laps to secure two championship points.
“We didn’t do a very good job today. We made some wrong decisions, which can happen,” Norris said. “It happens in racing, so we’ll learn from it, and we’ll see what we can do better. We go back to a track I enjoy driving next weekend in Singapore, so we’ll review, learn and improve. That’s our goal for next weekend.”
The Singapore Grand Prix will be the final round of a triple-header for McLaren, who head there needing to close the gap to Red Bull after a weekend that exposed clear limitations in the MCL40’s current specification.