'Professor' Piastri closes in on Norris at the top for McLaren

Flawless was the assessment of Oscar Piastri's race engineer after the Australian delivered a consummate victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix.

- Giles Richards

Flawless was the assessment of Oscar Piastri's race engineer after the Australian delivered a consummate victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix. Calm and controlled throughout, this was a champion's drive from Piastri that has made it abundantly clear he is in contention to return the championship this season.

Tom Stallard, a 2008 Olympic rowing silver medallist for Great Britain, is Piastri's engineer but the Australian, unflappable, barely needed so much as a gentle nudge from him all race, such was the ease with which he drove from pole to flag to take McLaren's first victory at Sakhir.

His lead when the flag fell was 15 and a half seconds from Mercedes's George Russell, who was followed home in a fight to the last by Piastri's McLaren teammate, Lando Norris. The Australian and the McLaren had been in a class of their own throughout, but behind him his rivals dashed hither and thither in what at times was an enthralling scrap that ebbed and flowed. One enlivened not least by the magnificent drive by Russell and a feisty comeback by Norris, for whom it was a rollercoaster that had begun before the lights had even gone out and was the least he needed to cling on to his title lead.