Max Verstappen was clearly riled after he was beaten in the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix by McLaren's Oscar Piastri, and you can't blame him for that.
Verstappen is never a happy bunny when he loses, but one couldn't help but feel that his latest defeat at the hands of Piastri had a stronger impact on him, and it was not because he couldn't convert pole to a win.
We will delve later into this point, but in general, the race in Jeddah last weekend was a great spectacle. The track is fast and dangerous and punishes the slightest of mistakes, and with several rookies on the 2025 Formula 1 grid, plenty of crashes were expected.
However, the rookies kept it clean, and it was the experienced drivers that ended up in the barriers. Yuki Tsunoda crashed in practice and then into Pierre Gasly on the opening lap of the race, while Lando Norris chose the worst time to crash—in Q3 of qualifying.
Other than that, it was a race with overtakes aplenty, which saw some teams and drivers overachieve, while others flopped.
We head into a two-week break now, as the race in Jeddah last Sunday was the final race of the first tripleheader this season, so here come our takeaways from the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Verstappen's conundrum: Piastri isn't Norris
Verstappen tried his usual trick while trying to fend off the fast-starting Piastri on Lap 1 of the Saudi Arabian GP and almost ended up in the Red Sea before deciding to brake to make sure he was "ahead" of the McLaren at the apex.
But Piastri was ready for that and held his position while making the corner without exceeding track limits, which made the penalty for Verstappen a "slam dunk", as Christian Horner understood after speaking to the stewards after the race.
But I do not believe Verstappen was upset about getting the penalty. Well, he was, but he has been around enough to know that you win some and you lose some.
What went down in that first corner battle in Jeddah showed Verstappen that fighting with Piastri is not going to be like fighting with Norris.
There is no hiding that Verstappen owned Norris during their battles in 2024, but Piastri has proven so far that he is a different beast than his teammate, and with the run of form he is currently on, he will be the one fighting Verstappen.
And the Dutchman doesn't like that. He tried to break Piastri, but that didn't work out as he planned, so now he has to find another way.
What is sure is that this battle will get more interesting as the season progresses.
Red Bull's handling of the incident
Red Bull decided against instructing Verstappen to hand the position over to Piastri after their incident on the opening lap of the Saudi Arabian GP.
Horner told the media in Jeddah: “We didn’t concede the position because we didn’t believe that he’d done anything wrong. You can quite clearly see at the apex of the corner, we believe that Max is clearly ahead."
Whether Red Bull actually believed that or they were just backing their star driver is something we can never actually find out, but then Horner added something that gave some clarity regarding why they decided to keep the Dutchman ahead.
The Red Bull boss said: “If we’d have given it [the position] up, the problem is you then run in the dirty air as well. Dropping back behind, you’re then at risk with George [Russell]. The best thing to do at that point was get your head down, keep going."
And that gives us an idea behind Red Bull's logic behind their decision: Clean air is king!
While the current ground effect cars have been conceived with the aim of improving the racing and cars following each other, as they do not generate as much wake (dirty air) behind them like the previous generation, F1 engineers—as they chased more performance—have managed to neutralize the rules, and now cars generate enough dirty air to make the chasing cars and their tyres suffer from overheating.
Piastri admitted in Jeddah that he had to back off after chasing Verstappen on the first stint as his tyres suffered.
Red Bull were hoping that Verstappen—with the advantage of clean air up front—would build a gap big enough to negate the penalty he received or at least not drop far behind Piastri after he served it in the pit stops.
But the RB21, while arguably being the fastest car on Sunday in Jeddah, did not have an advantage enough to help Verstappen pull that off so he dropped behind Piastri and could not close the gap in the second sting ending up around three seconds short.
Now some may suggest that Red Bull should have asked Verstappen to drop behind Piastri after their Lap 1 incident and then back on the four-time F1 champion chasing the McLaren down; a valid argument especially as the restart after the Safety Car presented a chance for the #1 RB21 to pounce, but then there was no guarantee that would have worked as well.
Such in the uncertainty in motorsport.
Norris: Sunday doesn't cancel Saturday
After his dismal race in Bahrain, crashing in Q3 of qualifying wasn't the manner in which Norris should've responded.
Whether you are a Lando fan or not, it was painful to see that MCL39 in the wall, but McLaren did well to calm him down and shift his focus to the race on Sunday.
With the car Norris had under him, a podium was the least expected from him, but he did not achieve that, as his progress up the order, while clean, was far from convincing.
An example was his struggle to pass a Lewis Hamilton struggling to get his head around his Ferrari SF-25. The seven-time F1 champion, however, had not lost any of his racing skills and ended up playing with his younger compatriot for a couple of laps or so, using DRS tricks to put his Ferrari ahead every time the McLaren passed.
That, once again, highlighted how much Norris lacks in terms of race-craft.
At the moment, Piastri is calmly solidifying his position within McLaren as team leader and their favorite driver to fight for the F1 drivers' title, while Norris has yet to respond to that.
After the two-week break, F1 heads to Miami, the scene of Norris' maiden F1 win back in 2024. That would be the perfect place for Lando to bounce back.
He should use this break to do some reflection and refocus on the target.
Saudi Arabia GP Quick hits
- It was a race of contrasts for Ferrari, with Charles Leclerc qualifying fourth and finishing on the podium, while Hamilton had an anonymous Sunday night in Jeddah, starting and finishing in seventh.
Ferrari have made progress with their SF-25, but it is only Leclerc who is managing to extract performance from it.
Hamilton, on the other hand, and despite claiming a breakthrough in the understanding of his SF-25 following the race in Bahrain, showed that was not the case. - It is beyond me why the "Tsunoda is improving" narrative is being pushed. It is understandable that Red Bull do that as they are trying to avoid a PR disaster should the Japanese driver bomb as his predecessors.
But it is baffling when some of the media promotes such a narrative. F1 TV's Alex Brundle—a pundit I enjoy and respect—ran a feature before qualifying comparing Tsunoda's pace to Verstappen's. For a moment there I thought Yuki would outqualify Max, but he ended up being almost one second slower.
Granted, Red Bull used Tsunoda to give Verstappen a tow in Q3, but that doesn't explain the one-second gap. - Carlos Sainz is finally starting to show why James Vowles moved heaven and earth to sign him after Ferrari let him go.
In Jeddah he outqualified Alex Albon once again and kept his nose clean—unlike Bahrain—while also playing the team game, giving his teammate DRS to defend from Racing Bulls' Isack Hadjar.
Williams have shown they have a decent car in 2025 that has the potential to score points in every race, and the team have shown their confidence with the DRS tactic they applied with Sainz and Albon in Jeddah.
Vowles can take a bow... - Mercedes suffered with their tyres in Jeddah, and while Russell qualified third, he could not make the podium this time, as his W16—much like its predecessors—does not enjoy hot race conditions.
- After scoring points with both cars in Bahrain, Haas came tumbling down in Jeddah. Not the end of the tripleheader Ayao Komatsu would've hoped for.
- Too bad Gasly could not score points after qualifying in the top ten, and he can thank the "improving" Tsunoda for that.
loading
Latest News
Loading
