Five winners and five losers from the F1 Bahrain Grand Prix

One driver signalled his arrival as an F1 world championship contender by becoming 2025’s first repeat winner at the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Following Suzuka’s snoozefest last time out, F1 sparked back into life with a far more entertaining race under the lights in Bahrain.

A mixed grid, different tyre strategies, and a mid-race Safety Car resulted in intrigue from start to finish, but there were mixed fortunes up and down the grid…

Winner - Oscar Piastri

A flawless drive from Oscar Piastri as he took a controlled victory to hand McLaren their first win at the home race of their Bahraini main shareholders.

Piastri dominated throughout with a typically calm approach and excellently managed a race restart despite being at a tyre disadvantage to Mercedes’ George Russell behind.

The win was never in doubt for Piastri who has closed in on teammate Lando Norris in the world championship.

Loser - Lando Norris

He may have come away from Bahrain having extended his championship lead, but Norris has lost significant momentum to his McLaren teammate.

Norris recovered well from a shocking qualifying to salvage third, but it was a far from convincing display from a driver who has aspirations of winning his maiden world title this year.

A mistake-ridden, scrappy race featured some uncharacteristically sloppy racecraft from Norris, who blew his chance of overtaking Russell for what should have been a minimum target of P2 given McLaren’s current pace advantage.

Perhaps more worrying was Norris’s post-race admission that he is “not comfortable” and “not happy” in McLaren’s MCL39.

Winner - George Russell

Despite his Mercedes suffering from a plethora of electrical gremlins, Russell produced another superb drive to finish second and split the McLarens.

Russell was concerned he would not be able to make his soft tyres last to the end following a strategy gamble that he felt was “audacious”, but the Briton remarkably nursed his tyres for 23 laps, as well as brilliantly resisting late pressure from Norris’s faster McLaren.

Loser - Red Bull

Max Verstappen has lost ground and now slipped behind Piastri in the championship following an incredibly tough weekend for Red Bull.

The four-time world champion at one point ran dead last and was unhappy throughout Sunday's race as he complained about his RB21 car and a general lack of performance.

Red Bull’s pit stop problems - which included a malfunctioning exit light which hampered both drivers and a slow second stop for Verstappen - capped off what was a far from acceptable weekend by the team’s high standards.

Winner - Pierre Gasly

If there was a ‘driver of the weekend’ vote it would surely go to Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.

The Frenchman converted his stunning qualifying lap into a strong seventh, having only lost P6 to Verstappen on the final lap after holding the Red Bull driver at bay for much of the latter stages. 

Otherwise it was a faultless performance all weekend from Gasly, who extracted the maximum from his car to finally get Alpine off the mark in 2025.

Loser - Kimi Antonelli

Kimi Antonelli once again demonstrated some strong racecraft but is ultimately a loser due to his slide out of the points, having started Sunday’s grand grand prix in fifth.

The Italian teenager lost out due to the Safety Car timing which ruined what was looking like being a three-stop strategy for Antonelli, and left him stuck in a long DRS train outside of the points in 11th. 

A messy race overall from Antonelli’s side of the Mercedes garage.

Winner - Yuki Tsunoda

While it was a pretty torrid weekend for Red Bull, Yuki Tsunoda could at least claim some personal satisfaction from making an encouraging step forward in his adaptation to the RB21.

After being thrown in at the deep end by Red Bull at Suzuka, Tsunoda fared much better in Bahrain, bagging both his first Q3 appearance (while getting within respectable range of Verstappen) and points for the team since his shock promotion just three races into the season.

Loser - Liam Lawson

In contrast, the man Tsunoda replaced at Red Bull, Liam Lawson, had a shocker.

While it was bad luck that a malfunctioning DRS led to Lawson's Q1 elimination, he had a race to forget and was comprehensively outperformed by teammate Isack Hadjar all weekend.

Getting a combined 15-second time penalty for causing two separate collisions compounded a terrible race for Lawson, who was classified 16th after a rival was disqualified.

Winner - Haas

Haas would not have been expecting to score points with one car after a dreadful qualifying, so to end up with both cars inside the top 10 was a real shock.

Esteban Ocon worked his way up to eighth, while Oliver Bearman’s storming fightback from the very back of the grid to P10 demonstrated some impressive race pace from Haas, who leapfrog Williams into fifth in the constructors’ standings.

Loser - Aston Martin

Alarm bells should be ringing at Aston Martin after a truly miserable weekend in Bahrain.

Aston Martin’s pace was woeful in qualifying and things were even worse in the race, with a pitiful 16th and 18th on the road the best Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll could muster.