Bahrain Grand Prix talking points: Piastri's perfect chance to end 45-year drought - and why Aussie has an open road

If you’re an Aussie F1 fan, then the 2025 Bahrain Grand Prix might just be the race to make you believe that a 45 year wait for an Australian World Champion is about to come to an end.

Oscar Piastri dominated the entire weekend, cementing himself as the new Championship favourite as seemingly the pack behind him gets further away.

It’s one of many things to emerge from another interesting race in the 2025 season, as we bring you the latest edition of F1 talking points!

Piastri perfect as 45-year drought get closer to ending

If it wasn’t for one patch of grass in Melbourne, Oscar Piastri would be leading the 2025 Driver’s Championship.

Yes, it’s only four races into the season, and there is still a long way to go for the rest of the year, but that could be an important thing to note as the season progresses.

Right now, there is no doubting that the form driver of the year is Oscar. He is the only driver to score multiple poles and wins, and his form in Bahrain was almost untouchable as he claimed the first hat-trick of his 50-race F1 career.

There were always high hopes around the Melbourne driver that he could become the first Australian to win the F1 World Championship since Alan Jones in 1980. With a few glimmers across his first two seasons, those hopes looked like coming to reality at some point in his career.

That point could be as soon as this year, with Piastri right now easily the driver to beat in these early stages.

Perhaps a couple of bottles of champagne should be kept at the ready for a December party 45-years in the making? Watch this space.

(Photo by Getty Images)

When will the fight from behind come?

This season was meant to be the closest season we had ever had in F1. Right now though, it doesn’t seem to be following those pre-season predictions.

Yes, we’ve had some very tight fights going on through the field (more on that soon), and the gaps between pole position and those behind in qualifying have been incredibly tight.

Yet barring one incredible driver from one incredible driver in Japan, every race this year has been won by the same team. And no other team (with the exception of the one being hauled up the field by previously mentioned incredible driver) has even remotely come close to winning a race, sprint races excluded.

McLaren have got their act together big time and right now look impossible to beat. This is even more of a glaring factor given that Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull just can’t get anywhere near them in a race.

Max Verstappen’s drive in Japan just over a week ago is looking even more mega now given the dominance of the Papaya team, and it could be a worrying trend as we go on in 2025 given how far he fell back over the Bahrain weekend.

If no team can get close to McLaren, it may be shades of what we thought we were getting rid of just a few seasons ago.

We need to talk about the Driver of the Day award

I’ve been critical about this award in the past, but right now it is bordering on farcical.

The Driver of the Day award, a fan voted award that is meant to go to the driver who has performed better than everybody else on the day.

This of course is always subjective, because how do you define this? Oscar Piastri dominated the entire race and never remotely looked like being challenged for the win. Does that make his drive automatically better then say Ollie Bearman, who stormed through the field from last on the grid to secure a point by finishing in tenth place?

That is the subjective part, and both would’ve been a worthy winner, among several other candidates, after the Bahrain Grand Prix.

The driver who won it? Lewis Hamilton, who, okay, did decent enough to go from ninth to fifth to take his highest main race finish for Ferrari, but that was the drive that warranted the award over at least five other drivers who unquestionably drove a better overall race?

This just adds insult to injury on the already questionable choices from this award in 2025, which has seen the likes of Yuki Tsunoda and Kimi Antonelli randomly take out the award in races in which they really had no place winning it.

Yes, it’s not a legit award and just a fun fan voted addition to each race. But if you’re going to call it something like ‘driver of the day’ which sounds as important as say ‘man of the match’ in a cricket match, then surely there should be a bit more weight around it?

How about a 50/50 split between fans and an expert panel? Or even a pre-determined list arranged by an expert panel that is the only one able to be voted on? This would prevent the awards always being bombarded by fan favourites, and allow others to have a shot when they legit drive a barnstorming race that would then get ignored by the masses.

Whatever the case, something needs to be done about it and fast.

The midfield battle is a joy to watch

While I have a little bit of a concern about the front of the field and the lack of competitiveness going on in 2025, the midfield battle is once again absolute box office.

This week it came in the form of Alpine looking likely to be the main challenger to the top four, with a great weekend by Pierre Gasly added to by some brief flashes of form by Jack Doohan.

Added to this some moments from Williams and Haas, and you have some incredibly intriguing battles going on in the lower ranks of the field.

And even at the back of the field there is some entertainment, with the likes of Kick Sauber and Aston Martin having some pretty tense battles to ensure they aren’t the worst green car in the field.

If this is going to be a one horse race all year, then our fictional World Championship might need to come back again to see how things would look. That would at least bring one tense Championship featuring more than one team to pay attention to.

Jackie Stewart and the helmet every F1 fan wants

A quick final note on the legend that is Sir Jackie Stewart.

Over the weekend in Bahrain, the 85-year-old took the Sakhir circuit in his 1973 title-winning Tyrell 006 wearing a helmet signed by every single living F1 World Champion.

For those counting that is 20 drivers, and it even included a signature from Michael Schumacher, who with this assistance of his wife Corinna had managed to pen his initials on the helmet, his first public act of any kind since his accident in 2013.

The helmet is being auctioned off for charity to raise money for dementia, and with that amount of star power on one lid, it’s safe to say you can expect it go for a very large sum.

Anybody out there want to chip in some coin for this author to get his hands on it?

This article was originally written for The Roar. You can read the published version here