Oscar Piastri is delivering on what McLaren thought was his biggest weakness against Lando Norris

Oscar Piastri reached a career milestone when he crossed the line to win the Bahrain Grand Prix for McLaren.

It was a special victory for McLaren because they finally won in Bahrain, a circuit that is considered their second home race because of its ownership from Mumtalakat, the sovereign wealth fund of Bahrain.

Piastri also completed his 50th race in Formula 1, winning his fourth race just a couple of weeks into his third season in the championship.

The Australian came into F1 with an impressive junior formula record having won the Eurocup, Formula 3 and Formula 2 titles, so was always expected to adapt quickly to the tendencies of the current generation of F1 cars.

Piastri was far from the finished article when he joined McLaren in 2023, but there were encouraging signs from the Australian, particularly with his Sprint race win and second place at the Qatar Grand Prix.

He’s learned a lot during his time at McLaren and the evidence of that performance curve has been on full display with his results in 2025.

Oscar Piastri delivers crucial improvement after McLaren identified qualifying as weakness

Based on his performances in 2024, qualifying was one area which Piastri’s engineer Tom Stallard felt Lando Norris had the edge.

In their first season together, Piastri fell behind in qualifying after being beaten 14-4 by the Briton. Things did not improve for 2024, with that going even higher to 20-4 in favour of Norris.

Part of this can be attributed to the fact that Piastri would recieve parts a few races after Norris, as he was the lead driver. Once they got themselves into championship contention, Piastri started to receive the upgrades a the same pace.

With the first four races of the 2025 season all seeing the polesitter going on to win the race, qualifying has never been so important. Instead of Piastri making the mistakes, it has been Norris fumbling under the pressure of delivering the one important lap.

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Will Lando Norris be able to improve qualifying?

The MCL39 is a difficult car to drive when it is on a knife edge. That has been the rhetoric from Norris since pre-season testing, after McLaren admitted they did things that made it harder for him to drive.

The team will be working on upgrades based on his feedback from the first races of 2025, as they will want to unleash the full potential of their car during the crucial mid-season races.

For Norris, this means getting a car that he is more comfortable to push without it impacting his lap time. His downbeat nature after each of the races has not been a reflection of his individual performance, but because he knows that it will be difficult to sustain a title lead with how he currently feels in the car.

Norris has been vocal about tyre degradation problems at McLaren since last season, which is now impacting him even more with the MCL39. If they can rectify these problems, expect him to be closer to Piastri in what is fast becoming a title battle that puts heavy emphasis on qualifying performances.