‘Confident’ Piastri spies title lead as Norris seeks reset: F1 Burning Questions

Saudi Arabia hosts the fifth grand prix in six weekends to open the 2025 season, and Oscar Piastri has the momentum.

After winning last weekend in Bahrain while teammate and title leader Lando Norris scrapped to third, the Australian has given himself a chance to take the championship lead this weekend if he can repeat his race-winning feat.

Norris, however, has used his three-day break to reset his mindset after his morale-sapping defeat, and beating Piastri at one of the Australian’s favourite circuits would be a statement to end this first chapter of the campaign.

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But the unique Jeddah Corniche Circuit, with its alarmingly high-speed blind bends and high-grip surface, could shake up the field to give McLaren more competition at the front.

CAN PIASTRI SCORE FIRST BACK-TO-BACK VICTORIES?

Piastri cut a confident figure presenting for pre-weekend interviews in Jeddah.

“How it looks is how I feel,” he said. “It’s been a great start to the season.”

The Australian made himself the season’s first multiple pole-getter and race-winner with a slick performance in Bahrain, mastering a McLaren car with which teammate Norris struggled all weekend.

It puts him just three points off Norris’s title lead.

“Obviously Melbourne the result wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but apart from that everything has been going how I want it to,” he said. “Last weekend was really how I wanted that weekend to go.

“I feel like I’ve got good momentum behind me, good confidence.

“It’s nice to just be more comfortable knowing I can qualify on pole, win races and have weekends like Bahrain. I feel like I’m in a good place at the moment.”

And so he should. Not only is he clearly in good form, but the Jeddah Corniche Circuit is one at which he’s always excelled.

His first visit to the track came in his title-winning Formula 2 campaign, when he took pole and won the second sprint and the feature race.

Piastri’s first visit in Formula 1 was just the second race of his career. He outqualified Norris by 0.741 seconds and finished two places ahead of the more experience Briton.

His return last season was a similar story, beating Norris by 0.043 seconds in qualifying and four places in the race.

The 24-year-old’s third attempt at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is with the most competitive car he’s driven in his career.

Though he cautioned there were reasons to think the fight at the front will be closer this weekend than in Bahrain, victory remained the aim.

“I’m still expecting us to be quick,” he said. The last couple of years this has been a good circuit for us — even in 2023 when there weren’t many circuits at the beginning of the year that were good for us, this was one of them.

“I’m confident that we’ll be quick gain.

“I think with the tarmac being so high grip, so smooth, I think that will help out some other teams.

“I think the competition will probably be the tightest it’s been, but I’m confident we’ll still be towards the front and have good car.”

If he can win this weekend, it will be the first time the Aussie has gone back to back since winning the sprint and feature races at — you guessed it — the Saudi Arabian Formula 2 round in 2021.

It would also guarantee that he becomes the first Australian to lead the championship since 2010.

And it would be a mighty statement to conclude the season-opening five-round dash.

PIT TALK PODCAST: Michael Lamonato and Matt Clayton dissect Oscar Piastri’s pole-to-flag masterclass in Bahrain and what that means for teammate Lando Norris as another huge week of motorsport is in the books. Listen below of watch on YouTube.

CAN NORRIS GET HIS CONFIDENCE BACK?

Piastri’s Bahrain brilliance was only half of the story of the week. The necessary other half was Norris’s struggles.

The Briton qualified a despondent sixth and almost a half a second off his pole-getting teammate. He recovered to third, but his race was scrappy, afflicted by a penalty for a false start and an occasional lack of decisiveness in battle.

As is his way, Norris was extremely self-critical all weekend, variously describing himself as “clueless” and of having forgotten how to drive a Formula 1 car as his teammate began shifting the title narrative.

“I needed a couple of days off,” Norris admitted in Jeddah, per Autosport. “But at the same time I think with every athlete’s mind and every driver’s mind, as much as you try and get away, you’re still thinking of a lot of things.”

Norris has been open about his struggles taking the MCL39 to its limit. While this year’s car is faster than the 2024 model, it’s had to trade off some of its driveability to get there, and last year’s title runner-up is still grappling with adapting to the change.

“I’ve been trying to figure out the issues, the struggles, the reasoning behind it all, which is the most difficult thing, trying to find the answers to things,” he said.

“I’m trying to improve in some of those areas. I want to come into this weekend full of confidence and know that things are going to turn around. [But] I still think there are things I’m going to be struggling with because certain things you cannot change at the minute.

“I know I can be so much better and perform at a much higher level than what I’m doing now. My level of confidence was very high at the end of last season not for any other reason than I just understood the car, I understood how to drive it and I could go out and execute things perfectly.

“Now I cannot just because my feelings are not there, and my way of driving is not suited at all. I just hate not being able to know how I’m going to go out and perform in a qualifying lap.

“Last year if you asked me if I was confident going into qualifying, I would have been much more likely to say yes than now, and that’s just because of how I feel in the car itself.”

Compare that to Piastri’s review of the car and you begin to understand Norris’s problem.

“The pace of the car has been everything I could ask for,” said the Australian. “I’ve been very proud of the whole job that we’ve done on firstly giving us a great car but also helping me get the most out of it.

“I think that’s been a real strength so far this year. I feel like I’m in a very good place on and off the track.”

Norris still leads the championship and there are still 20 rounds remaining, but if his struggles become prolonged and Piastri is allowed to get on a roll, this confidence blip could become very damaging to his title prospects very quickly.

IS FERRARI POISED TO TAKE A STEP FORWARD?

Ferrari had explained away its difficult start to the season by pointing to extensive upgrades due at the Bahrain Grand Prix. They arrived on time last weekend and still neither scarlet car finished on the podium.

But the review of the new floor was generally positive. Gone were some of the handling quirks that had dogged Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in the first three races. In its place, however, was the realisation that the car simply lacked the downforce to be a victory contender.

Bahrain, however, is a particular track. It’s extremely abrasive, which highlights even minor handling or tyre issues. It also comprises almost exclusively slow corners, meaning the new package got only a partial workout.

Leclerc thinks the updated car will give a much better account of itself at the high-speed, high-grip and low-degradation Jeddah track.

“For the layout of the track, I think we should be doing a bit of a step forward — a bit more of a step forward than we did in Bahrain — which is positive,” he said, per Racer. “We obviously still have to confirm that, but I think the numbers that we were expecting from this upgrade in Bahrain were the ones that we saw, and considering that is the case, I think we’ll benefit a little bit more from a track like this.

“Overall grip has been a big improvement, and in specific corners, corner phases especially, which we should gain from a bit more on a track like this.”

While Leclerc isn’t ambitious enough to target victories, he thinks the podium is within reach, with the updates Ferrari in the same ballpark as Mercedes.

“I think we are doing steps in the right direction,” he said. “Whether the podium is going to be this weekend or later on, I don’t know, but I think we’ve got our chances.”

How Hamiton fares in Jeddah will be of considerable interest as the Briton’s adjustment to Ferrari continues its uncertain trajectory.

The seven-time champion was on a rollercoaster of emotions in Bahrain. He was chastened after qualifying more than half a second and six places behind Leclerc, but in the race he was considerably more competitive, finishing only one place and eight seconds adrift of his teammate.

His second stint was particularly impressive, passing six cars and closing the gap to the front.

Hamilton has repeatedly said that seat time is critical to his acclimatisation, and he feels like that stint was a breakthrough.

“I think it was a real positive to have had that stint and had that experience with the car,” he said, per ESPN. “Some changes I made in my driving style during the race.

“Now [it’s about] implementing that, putting that there every time I go out in the car. It’s easy to automatically go back to your old driving style. So that’s something I need to make sure I continue to practice. But I feel positive about it.

“Naturally, when the pressure builds up and you need to really pull out that extra bit of time, you can easily fall to your old ways. I’ve seen glimpses of this through testing, but to actually adapt to it and actually utilise it every single time is something I want to work on.”

A good result this weekend would help to reset the narrative ahead of the Miami Grand Prix and the sport’s return to Europe.

CAN JACK DOOHAN SCORE HIS FIRST POINTS?

Rumours at the start of the year suggested this would be Jack Doohan’s final grand prix.

You would’ve heard them at some point — that reserve river Franco Colapinto was all but guaranteed to get a mid-year promotion to the team, bringing with him to the cockpit many Argentine pesos through his various sponsorship deals.

Alpine has regularly passed up opportunities to deny the rumours, saying only that Doohan would get a chance to perform in this early stage of the season.

Doohan, to his credit, has copped the speculation on the chin and held his head high.

What he’s shown so far has been strong.

Anyone who followed Doohan’s junior knows that the Australian lacks nothing over a single lap, and the 22-year-old has had no real trouble carrying that into Formula 1.

His average qualifying deficit to Gasly is an unflattering 0.345 seconds, but that gap isn’t representative.

Over the first two races the difference was just 0.044 seconds.

Doohan was then 0.691 seconds off in Japan, but that was after missing essentially all of Friday practice and even having Saturday practice disrupted by a pair of red flags. He was strong in the race, however, recovering an equal-best four places on an afternoon overtaking was almost impossible.

He was a similarly chunky 0.602 seconds off in Bahrain, but he qualified a career-best 11th on one of those special Gasly weekends on which the Frenchman is practically untouchable.

The Queenslander should have scored his maiden points last weekend, but a strategy gamble at the safety car left him unable to hold onto a position in the top 10.

Combined it appears to have been enough to earn himself a stay of execution. The Australian is now tipped to race on.

“I know the raw pace has been there since the start,” he said. “That inner confidence I can take with me to know that as much as there’s always going to be pressure present, it wasn’t getting to me.”

So Doohan is in understatedly good form. It’s not surely just a matter of time until he can drag himself into the points.

Could it be this weekend?

He scored points on his maiden F2 weekend at this circuit in late 2021. In 2022 he was stripped of third on the grid after having too little fuel after qualifying, leaving him 20th on the grid, but he put in a barnstorming performance in the feature race to finish ninth.

In 2023, despite racing with a cracked chassis, he finished second on Sunday.

Clearly he has form in Jeddah.

That said, however, while Alpine’s car appears to be a good step forward on last year’s machine, it’s hampered by an asthmatic engine that can’t keep up on high-speed circuits.

Saudi Arabia is an engine-sensitive track, with 76 per cent of the 6.174-kilometre layout taken at full throttle. There are also few big braking zones the replenish the battery.

“I think on paper we know this track is quite sensitive to it [the limitation on electrical deployment],” Gasly said, per Autosport. “But now it’s up to us to try to be as competitive as we can and, hopefully, we can still make something out of this weekend.”