Mercedes driver George Russell of Britain celebrates second place at the the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix, in Sakhir, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Fireworks lit up the sky for several minutes after McLaren’s Oscar Piastri won the Formula 1 (F1) Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday with his teammate Lando Norris managing to come from sixth on the grid to finish in third. Unlike last week’s race, there were fireworks on the track throughout the 57 laps with passes happening constantly up and down the order.

F1 has just one tire provider, Pirelli, which all teams must use. Each race weekend, Pirelli brings a total of five tire options. One is a full wet tire with deep treads to facilitate removing water from the track so the cars have less chance of aquaplaning. These are actually mildly similar to tires we have on our “regular” cars. They also have an intermediate wet tire which has less drastic grooves, but is still designed for use in damp conditions only.

Beyond those special case tires, they have three types of slick tires with no grooves at all. What distinguishes the tires is how hard they are (they actually have a spectrum of five hardnesses and select three to bring to a track based on how much the track will wear out a tire). They have a soft (shown with a red outline on the tire), medium (shown with a yellow outline), and hard (shown with a white outline).

The softer tire will have more grip but won’t last as long, and the harder tire should last a driver a longer period of time, but they won’t adhere to the racetrack in the same way as the other options. Weight from fuel loads also plays a part in how long a tire will last. There are a number of factors to weigh to choose the right tire at the right time.

Normally, pundits will talk before a race weekend about all the possible strategies teams might employ for the race, but the cars will invariably end up on nearly identical strategies. Sure, some teams might try to undercut other drivers by pitting earlier, but on the whole, they’ll have similar tire choices throughout the race.

That’s where Bahrain was a surprise for me. I was actually really interested in which tires driver’s chose because there were so many different choices for once. Out of twenty drivers, only Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Liam Lawson and Gabriel Bortoleto started the race on medium tires while everyone else chose soft tires. Doesn’t sound too compelling, but what happened from there was anything but formulaic.

Drivers are required not only to have at least one pit stop, but must also use at least two different types of tires (between soft, medium, and hard). This all goes out the window if it rains, but otherwise, those are the requirements. Some of those who were on soft tires went to medium, others went too hard, and a similar split was true for the five drivers on the medium tires.

Normally, information is utilized at lightning speed in an F1 race. When teams see a certain tire isn’t working very well for the first driver trying it, they might change their entire strategy and use a different tire. Not this weekend. Even though Max Verstappen was openly lamenting the hard tire choice on the radio, other teams still put the tires on their cars and similarly struggled.

When a safety car wreaked havoc with everyone’s strategy on lap 30, teams dove into pit lane and the cars came out on a smorgasbord of tire choices with the McLarens both on mediums, George Russell’s Mercedes with an “audacious” (his word) choice of soft tires they’d need to make last 27 laps, and both Ferrari’s oddly opting for hard tires.

I can’t remember another race in the past two decades where I was actually so interested in tire choices for the drivers, aside from the disaster of the 2005 United States F1 race which saw only six cars compete because the other tire supplier (there were two that season) recommended pulling their drivers over concerns their tires would explode under the stress of driving on the banked corners.

Even better then staring at the colors on the tire sidewalls was witnessing the drivers who seemed to be feeling racier and seeing them able to pass one another frequently. There was action on track all the way up to the end of the race as Norris was quickly catching up to Russell’s ailing Mercedes in the final few laps. Aside from my general enjoyment of the race, here were a few of my important takeaways:

1. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly simply loves the Bahrain circuit, starting in fourth place and managing to get his car across the finish line in seventh place, scoring 6 points. Considering how uncompetitive their car has looked in the first three races, this was a stellar achievement by the Frenchman.

More important to F1 overall, Alpine was the only team without points this season, so now all ten teams are on the scoreboard with only four races completed. In comparison, Kick Sauber couldn’t score points until December last year, managing points only once in the penultimate race of the season.

2. Even on his worst days, Verstappen finds his way to points as long as his car still runs. A complaining Verstappen lamented, “Everything is overheating,” and later, “I can’t even brake anymore.” Only qualifying in seventh position, he found himself in sixteenth position after his first pit stop and dead last after his second pit stop. Choosing not to pit again under the safety car, Verstappen gained several positions and crucially kept drivers behind him, despite having older tires, to finish in sixth place.

On the flip side of things, Russell with Mercedes managed to qualify in third and finish second, but that sugar coats his race. His car’s transponder seemed to be having problems meaning timing and scoring was having trouble locating his car. Later in the race, his brake-by-wire system was giving out, he was warned by his pit crew that his steering wheel might go completely blank but he shouldn’t worry and just “drive like normal.” He quipped back, “as long as the steering wheel doesn’t come off,” he’d be fine, but since that very thing happened to Alonso in a practice session the same weekend, maybe he shouldn’t have joked like that!

Most importantly, one time when Russell pushed his radio button to talk to his crew, his DRS (drag reduction system) flap on his rear wing bizarrely came open. Those are only to be used in designated areas and only when you’re within one second of the car ahead of you, and neither applied to George. He quickly got it shut again and slowed his car down to make sure he didn’t get an unfair advantage, level headed thinking that saved him from a penalty after the race.

3. Much has been made of comparing whoever is in the sister Red Bull car to Verstappen’s performance over the years. It’s been a focal point even in my writing this year, but Tsunoda managed to score the first points for Red Bull (that weren’t from Verstappen) this season, finishing in 9th place.

I’d rather compare McLaren teammates and championship leaders Norris and Piastri. Many people lauded Norris and said this would be his chance for a championship year. Despite winning the first race of the season, Norris has been having a heck of a time getting everything together.

This weekend, while Piastri got pole position, Norris could only manage sixth after messing up his laps in the final stage of qualifying, a worrying trend for him this season. Norris didn’t handle it well either, going to the press and saying, “I feel like I’ve never driven an F1 car.”

Then, when the cars lined up to start the race, Norris managed to roll ahead of his allotted space costing him a five second penalty. The fact Norris could overcome that and still nearly be second on the track shows the pace that McLaren car has.

Despite Piastri finishing the race 15 seconds clear of second place Russell, Norris couldn’t manage to get past the Ferraris for several laps and never made it past Russell at all. Several times, Norris nearly crashed when he was attempting a pass. When he was challenging Lewis Hamilton, Norris ended up passing outside the track limits and needed to give the place back to Hamilton again. In short, it was not Norris’ finest outing.

So, compare that to Piastri. He luckily hasn’t faced too much adversity and is handling qualifying pressure amazingly well, getting his first two pole positions of his career this season. Back in the first race, Piastri spun off the track in wet conditions when he was in second place. He put his head down, got his rain tires on, and managed to drive his way back into scoring points.

Sure, Norris is still leading the championship by three points right now, but the momentum is Piastri’s.

The next race takes place in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday, April 20, at 1 p.m. local time.