JEDDAH: Oscar Piastri won the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on Sunday to seize the lead in the Formula One world championship from McLaren team-mate Lando Norris with his third win.

Red Bull’s four-times champion Max Verstappen was, 2.843 seconds behind the Australian, after starting from pole at Jeddah’s Corniche circuit but collecting a five-second penalty for a first corner clash with Piastri.

Charles Leclerc was third for Ferrari’s first podium of the campaign and Norris clawed his way from 10th on the grid to fourth.

Win made Piastri, triumphant in Bahrain last weekend and China last month, the first Australian to lead the championship since his manager Mark Webber in 2010 and also the first back-to-back winner this season.

He now leads Norris, whose race was heavily compromised by a crash in qualifying, by 10 points.

Piastri has 99 points to Norris’s 89 and Versta­ppen’s 87. Champions McL­a­­ren stretched their lead over Mercedes in the constructors’ standings to 77 points.

George Russell was fifth for Mercedes with Italian team-mate Kimi Antonelli sixth and seven-times world champion Lewis Hami­lton seventh for Ferrari.

Williams had Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon eighth and ninth with Racing Bulls’ French rookie Isack Hadjar the final points scorer in 10th.

There was immediate controversy at the start as Verstappen and Piastri went side-by-side into the first corner, with the Red Bull emerging ahead after cutting across the runoff.

“He needs to give that back, I was ahead,” Piastri told McLaren over the team radio. “He was never going to make that corner regardless of whether he was there or not.”

Verstappen gave his version in similar fashion to Red Bull: “He just forced me off, there was no intention of him to make that corner.”

Stewards decided the champion was at fault and handed him the penalty, with Verstappen reacting by saying sarcastically “Oh, that is lovely’.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2025