Oscar Piastri: a favourite for the title

We’ve had four different winners across the first five races – including the sprint in China – but as I write this on the flight home from Bahrain, I wonder if one driver has delivered a decisive blow to mark himself as the new favourite. Oscar Piastri had his most dominant performance yet in Formula 1 with pole position, a win and fastest lap and delivered it with apparent ease.

When looking back at the early races, if not for getting caught out on slick tyres in the rain at one corner in Melbourne and one tiny error in qualifying in Japan that cost him pole position, Piastri could have won all four grands prix. ‘Shoulda, woulda, coulda’, of course, but the fact is that he has taken two dominant wins and is growing in confidence. It wasn’t just the results but the manner in which he just metronomically went about the weekend at a track where he really struggled against Lando Norris last year.

Throughout 2024, we never really saw a true Oscar vs Lando battle apart from one little snapshot at the start of the Italian Grand Prix when the Aussie surprised his team-mate by going around the outside – successfully – at the second chicane. Despite Max Verstappen being outstanding in Japan, Lewis Hamilton showing a flash of hope in the sprint in China and George Russell delivering some superb performances, unless the other three top teams take a reasonable step forward, it’s starting to feel like the title run could be an intra-McLaren battle.

“Lando is a very fast racing driver and has been a loyal servant to McLaren”

Neither Piastri or Norris have won an F1 World Championship before, of course, and despite Lando being loosely in contention last year, we haven’t seen them take a title fight down to the wire. The mental contest between them will be fascinating and already it’s interesting to see just how different their two characters are when things go wrong. Piastri seems to be extremely level emotionally, almost like a Scandinavian. You don’t see the big highs after a victory, nor the lows of a poor day. In contrast, Norris wears his heart on his sleeve and his body language after Bahrain was of an athlete who has had a bad weekend without any real answers of how to fix it.

Lando is a very fast racing driver, an excellent qualifier and has been a loyal servant to McLaren. The team will repay that faith in going the extra mile to try and help him rebuild from the difficult days but with his younger, less-experienced team-mate getting stronger, the British driver will have to dig deep to deliver the brilliant race-winning performances that he can be capable of.

How McLaren handle this team battle is going to be fascinating to see. Last year the team was openly chasing the constructors’ title while considering Lando’s chase of the drivers’ title to be a bonus if it got it. This time around its two drivers are the firm favourites for the title and the current regime in charge of McLaren hasn’t had to deal with this scenario before. The last time McLaren truly had two drivers in title contention was 2010 with Jenson Button and Lewis, when Andrea Stella was still at Ferrari and Zak Brown was the sponsorship mastermind of the paddock.

I was disappointed with McLaren’s race in Japan as I felt they accepted their positions behind Max Verstappen too easily. Ferrari and Mercedes were reasonably far behind and with two cars in the fight against Max I would have liked to see more aggressive undercuts in terms of the strategy to try and outfox Red Bull. Sure, it may have meant upsetting one of its drivers with a less preferred strategy but by keeping the peace between them, did it compromise on a chance to win?

We saw last year that Max wasn’t shy with bullying Lando on the track in wheel-to-wheel combat. If Red Bull is able to solve its current performance issues – no easy task based on what we saw in Bahrain – then I wonder if Oscar will handle the battle differently. The Aussie is unflappable and a bit of a silent assassin when it comes to overtaking. The bookies seem to think that Piastri is now the favourite for the title and I have to say that, based on the first four weekends, I would have to agree with them.