Oscar Piastri: The only driver to win all the Qatar GP Sprint races (F1 Twitter)
I’ll be honest— I don’t have much to say about this one. Aside from McLaren’s Oscar Piastri finally winning again for the first time since Zandvoort, putting him three points ahead of Max Verstappen in the World Drivers’ Championship, the sprint was just… flat. Lifeless. Dull. Several on social media compared it to “a meeting that should’ve been an email”, and I completely agree. It was a sprint-tastic waste of time.
This sprint race could’ve been an email
Regardless, I should briefly summarize the sprint for the not-so-unlucky folks who got to skip it. So here goes:
Oscar Piastri converted his pole position into a solid victory, his third consecutive in this specific sprint and, as I mentioned, his first win since the Dutch Grand Prix. George Russell spent some laps trying to see if there was anything he could do to gain a position, but to no avail. Piastri’s teammate and WDC leader Lando Norris managed a clean third-place finish (or, as clean as you can get considering last week’s controversy). And reigning Drivers’ Champion Max Verstappen finished fourth after a P6 start, behind both McLarens, after his teammate Yuki Tsunoda ceded his position.
Those are the only parts that matter, really.
Look who’s back, back again, Oscar’s back, tell a friend! (F1 Twitter)
What’s more exciting to me is how the sprint points distribution, as well as the qualifying session for the Grand Prix proper, has set the stage for anything to happen tomorrow. Oscar’s win cuts Lando’s lead to 22 points, and Lando’s P3 finish puts Max just one Grand Prix win away from directly challenging the championship lead. Max could even draw level with Lando if the latter walks away empty-handed, like in Vegas.
Tomorrow’s starting grid promises a matchup as intense as the final rounds of the 2016 F1 season, with Oscar in pole position, Lando in P2, and Max in P3. And it can go in so many ways. If Lando finishes one position ahead of Max and two ahead of Oscar, he’ll win the championship outright. If Oscar wins tomorrow and Lando fails to score, Oscar walks into Abu Dhabi as the new championship leader by three points. If Max wins with Lando outside the points, Max hauls himself level with Lando for points, turning the finale into a straight one-race shootout.
Our top three for tomorrow’s race (F1 Twitter)
On top of all that, tomorrow’s race won’t utilize normal strategies. Pirelli and the FIA are enforcing a 25-lap limit on every tire set for safety reasons. For a 57-lap race, that makes at least two pit stops non-negotiable… and it turns the whole thing into three stitched together sprints instead of one long game of tire nursing. A single slow stop or miscounted stint length could be enough to flip not just the race win, but the entire championship table.
And I can’t wait to see what happens.
Miscellaneous Notes
And as always, here are some notes that don’t fit into the main article:
Solid scoring for Yuki Tsunoda. Max’s teammate finished P5 in the sprint race, even after a five-second penalty for repeated track limits violations. It’s now the Japanese man’s best finish of the entire season, and the one time this year where the “second Red Bull seat” label actually feels like a compliment
Sky Sports Italia jumps the gun again. The sports outlet announced Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso is expecting a child with his longtime partner Melissa Jimenez… before either of them revealed as such. Apparently, they have learned nothing from the “Max to Mercedes” snafu earlier this year. What a joke.
That’s all for now. I’ll see you at the race tomorrow. Hopefully, it’ll be more exciting than the sprint.
-F