SAUDI ARABIA: Not wild but still happened.

NUMBER FIVE

*Promise I’ll be less late with these at some point*

Last of the triple header and it wasn’t overly eventful but hey ho.

He’s only gone and done it again. Piastri is our new Championship leader.

The podium is a colourful one; with a McLaren P1, Red Bull P2, and Ferrari P3. Piastri plays it cool, calm and collected as per, but spices it up with possibly the overtake of the season as he swoops past Hamilton through Turn 22 on his journey back up the grid post pit. Verstappen is more scrappy, with a slightly dodgy overtake of Piastri into Turn 1 awarding him a 5 second penalty and a P2 finish. Leclerc shows some impressive pace for Ferrari and takes the final podium spot – his first of the season.

Now we turn to their teammates. Norris doesn’t have the best start to the weekend. With a crash in qualifying, he lines up at P10 on the grid. However, with a long first stint on hard tyres he climbs up the grid, and then puts in some electric laps with fresh tyres in the closing laps, hunting down Russell to take P4 – and just 1 second behind Leclerc. Tsunoda has a shocker, colliding with Gasly in the first lap and having to retire his Red Bull. Hamilton puts a few points on the board at P7 which is sort of average – 5 races in and should we be seeing more from the Hamilton Ferrari combo?

We also see a pretty average finish from the Mercedes pair as they come in P5 and P6. Antonelli makes an improvement from last week’s P11 finish, but Russell slips down from his 3 podium finishes. Their performances aren’t bad, they just don’t seem to have the pace – coming in 30 seconds behind Piastri’s pole finish, and 20 seconds behind Norris at P4.

It's a great day for Williams. With Sainz qualifying P6 and Albon P11, they close up their gap and both manage a points finish at P8 and P9 respectively. Crucially, those 6 points put them ahead of their closest rivals - Haas. The Haas boys do not have such a good day. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not disastrous – they come home in P13 and P14, but it’s not a solid points finish like the week before. It seems the 2 teams are very much on par with one another, but both lacking consistency.

RB put in a much better performance this week. Hadjar nabs the last points spot at P10, having qualified P14 – solid. Lawson misses out at P12 but this is his best result of the season so well done him.

The rest: Gasly – rubbish, writes his Alpine off in Lap 1. Alonso – P11 not terrible and better than his teammate at P16. Doohan takes P17 in his Alpine. Hulkenberg takes P15 and Bortoleto P18 having very nearly rammed Alonso’s Aston Martin into a wall, yikes.

Let us hope for some excitement in Miami.