Saudi Arabian Grand Prix talking points: Piastri's moment of history, childish Red Bull and Stroll's mic drop reply to criticism

Our first triple header of 2025 is over with, and for Australia it continued to be an exciting F1 season with Oscar Piastri claiming his third victory of the season and vaulting to the top of the Championship standings.

It’s all here to unpack in the latest edition of F1 talking points.

Piastri claims another scalp as he adds to his championship credentials

Five races into the 2025 season, and Oscar Piastri is right now shining brightest above everyone else.

Three wins out of those five races, a podium and points in the other two, and he now finds himself rightfully atop of the Championship standings, becoming the first Aussie since his manager Mark Webber at the 2010 Japanese Grand Prix to lead the F1 Driver’s Championship.

But in taking the win in Saudi and the lead in the Championship, he perhaps shone brightest in claiming his latest scalp of going wheel to wheel with Max Verstappen and beating the triple World Champion.

We haven’t seen a lot of wheel to wheel racing by the Aussie in his career, and the fact he held his ground firmly into turn one to put it up to the Dutchman was testament to his skill on the track. And the way he calmly held his nerve throughout the race to maintain a gap of less than five seconds before the first pit stops, and then to hold his lead throughout the remainder of the race, was another notch on his belt when it comes to a full tilt at the 2025 title.

I said it a week ago that we could be popping some celebratory champagne in December to celebrate the end of one of Australia’s biggest sporting droughts. A race like this only serves to prove my prediction even further.

Red Bull’s complaining can only go so far

Red Bull have a lot of fans around the world. They also have a lot of haters. And a lot of those haters stem from their perceived ‘whinging’ that comes whenever something doesn’t go their way.

Now of course every team is entitled to an opinion when something goes against them. That is just normal in sport. And I’m one who likes to try and sit on the fence, hear both sides, and then try and remained balanced when it comes to forming an opinion.

But it is very hard to form any other opinion of Red Bull, and Max Verstappen, clearly being in the wrong after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen’s five second penalty for gaining a position by cutting the first corner was as clear as day. There was absolutely no way he was making that corner, and he gained a clear advantage in missing it. The fact that he escaped with such a minor slap on the wrist was more of the joke when it came to that decision, as was the decision by Red Bull not to just let Piastri through and enable a clean fight after doing so.

Again, you can be angry at a decision. But then there is just being a sore loser.

Verstappen’s reaction in the post-race interview was perhaps a smart idea, given we know how likely he could’ve been to slip up in anger and land himself in further hot water. The reaction by Christian Horner bringing photographic ‘evidence’ that Verstappen was ‘ahead’ going into the first corner to the press after the race? Well that was borderline childish.

Sometimes you just need to accept you’re wrong and accept the punishment and move on. Throwing your toys out the pram and carrying on about it to that extent does your team’s reputation no favours moving forward.

With all the respect in the world to both Verstappen and Red Bull, it’s time to put Saudi Arabia behind them and focus on the rest of 2025.

(Photo by Getty Images)

The Norris cracks that continue to show

Lando Norris was the popular choice for World Champion in 2025 amongst pre-season predictions. Many saw that prediction as justified after the Australian Grand Prix. Since then though, those similar Lando cracks have slowly found their way out again.

Last year it was a common theme that under certain amounts of pressure, Lando seemingly couldn’t string together moments when it counted. Saudi Arabia showcased that once again, with his crash on Saturday in qualifying putting him well down the order for the race, and as it turned out, with too much work to do in order to close the gap to his teammate.

Piastri’s win on the weekend gave him his fifth victory in the sport, the same amount as Norris has achieved during his career. The key difference though is that Piastri has done so after only 51 races, while Norris has achieved the same feat in 133.

There is no questioning Norris is a future World Champion. However, he needs to find the same level of calmness and togetherness his teammate has managed to find this season if he wants it to be in 2025.

Two Saudi GPs? Listen to the fans when we say no

Plans for the new Saudi Arabian Grand Prix circuit at Qiddiya were revealed over the weekend, with the expected switch to the custom made circuit expected sometime before the end of this decade.

It was always planned for the race at Jeddah to be somewhat temporary, and once the new Qiddiya circuit was ready that the race would switch to the new circuit with Jeddah no longer being used.

However, reports on the weekend seem to hint at the prospect of Jeddah remaining on the calendar alongside Qiddiya, giving us two races in Saudi Arabia.

Really? Is that what we need?

In a world where sporting fans are continuing to get frustrated at the country just buying up every major event under the sun, do we really need to add more races in a country that nobody really cares to be racing in at all?

Especially when such a choice would come at the expense of other more established and loved circuits such as Imola or Spa, with the former already being talked about being cut in the not too distant future.

It would also come at the expense of future projects in places like South Africa or Thailand, new markets in which F1 fans would be way more excited to see conquered ahead of another chance of Saudi billions to go on show.

Hopefully it’s just an idea that goes away as fast as it came about.

Stroll’s new record brings drop mic moment

It’s been a couple of races since I brought up my man Lance Stroll, but it’s hard not to bring him up after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

By failing to make it out of Q1 in Jeddah, Stroll set a new unwanted record of the most Q1 eliminations in F1 history with 75, overtaking the previous record of 74 held by Kevin Magnussen.

When this was brought up to the Canadian after qualifying on Saturday, he delivered a drop mic moment in response.

“Put the McLaren drivers in the Sauber for 10 years and they will have the most Q1 exits,” he quipped.

Of course it’s fair to raise questions around a stat like this, and of course a driver is more than capable of pushing a slow car up the grid on their day.

But it’s also fair for Stroll to respond in kind, given that the same type of press wasn’t given to Magnussen when he broke the record previously. In fact, did anybody even know that he held that record or broke it at the time? Of course not. Because he wasn’t derided like Stroll is.

So while it’s not a record to be celebrated, his rare response in defence of his critics is.

Bravo Lance. Bravo.

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