F1 Bahrain GP 2025 LIVE: Race start time, grid and qualifying results

McLaren’s rivals believed that this would be the weekend which would show the advantage of the papaya cars and they duly topped all practice sessions to suggest a two-way battle for pole.

Piastri shone brightest under the lights at the Sakhir circuit to clinch pole but as rival cars ramped up the times at the end of the session, Norris could not find the answer.

“There’s no doubt the McLaren is the fastest car, probably a tenth of a second a lap compared to the rest,” Brundle told Sky Sports F1.

“It’s a different race here, you can build a tyre advantage. Should they have tried to destabilise Red Bull? I think so yes. It’s very easy to sit on the sofa and say ‘do that, do this’, you can look quite foolish.”

Speaking to Prime Casino, who offer the latest casino gamesHopkins said: “Yes, it’s early. Too early? Maybe. Poor lad, to an extent.

“But he’s operating at the very top. If he wasn’t good enough for that level, then the mistake was putting him there in the first place.

“It’s a shame, but at least he wasn’t sidelined completely and he’s still got another drive.”

“We’ve got an upgrade this weekend, I’m excited,” he said on media day in Bahrain.

“We should hopefully have a bit more downforce. I’m not feeling a huge amount of issues, we lack overall performance at the moment pace-wise.

“Hopefully we take a step this weekend. From my side, it’s rear-end – and that’s it.”

“Of course we were not happy after last weekend – we were happy because we had second and third, a great result as a team still,” Norris said.

“But could it have been better and could we have potentially taken more risks and been a bit more attacking as a team? Yes. So it’s a review into these weekends to maybe be a bit more attacking at times.

“I am here to win races and not settle for second, so definitely from my side, I would love to kind of kind of go back and redo things with a slightly more aggressive approach.

“I do know deep down that it’s a long season and sometimes points on the board is better than taking unnecessary risks.”

“I take it. As a driver, you want more. Considering what I had in practice and second race, I take it to get through to Q3.

“It’s difficult, not easy to be in the window which this car operates which is quite narrow. It’s natural that it’s up and down.”

George Russell says that the drivers’ actions are having little impact with the FIA and believes that the governing body continues to head in an unstable direction.

Russell, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, was reacting after Robert Reid resigned from his role as deputy president for sport at the FIA and accused the governing body of a “breakdown in governance standards”.

“Unfortunately, every time we hear some news from that side of the sport it is not really a big surprise,” Russell said.

“Clearly a real shame to see somebody who’s very well respected within the sport and has been there for so long… as we keep saying it’s like ‘what’s next?’. Ultimately it is getting to a point now where these things are happening so often.

“Things seem to be continuously going in an unstable direction. I’ve got to be honest, we are getting to a point now where our actions are having little impact with those guys.”