Max Verstappen comparisons drawn with Oscar Piastri's win in Bahrain as paddock veteran dismisses 'dominance' claims

McLaren boss, Andrea Stella, drew direct comparisons between Max Verstappen's win in Bahrain last season and Oscar Piastri's win this season in order to dismiss claims of dominance. The Woking-based squad has entered the 2025 F1 season with a potent car that tends to have the ability to preserve its rear tires better than the rivals.

This was one of the reasons why the team appeared to have an advantage over the rest of the field and win the race in Bahrain comfortably. With the race being pushed from March to April this season, the temperatures were higher this race weekend, and that aided the already abrasive surface in increasing the level of tire degradation.

One team that has appeared to have nailed tire management in 2025 is McLaren, as the car continues to keep its rears in the working range and hence is able to extract a lot more out of them compared to the other teams. This was used to great effect by Oscar Piastri this past weekend as he cruised to a win in Bahrain.

There were even suggestions this weekend that McLaren had a dominant car over the rest of the field, and hence things were much easier for Oscar Piastri. Andrea Stella has quashed those suggestions by drawing a direct comparison to Max Verstappen's win on the same track in 2024. The team boss pointed out how the driver could easily go a second per lap quicker than the rivals without having to even push.

He compared Max Verstappen's win in 2024 with Oscar Piastri's win this past weekend, as he talked about how the McLaren driver was trying to push for a gap throughout the race, while that was never the case with the Red Bull driver last season. He told media, including Sportskeeda,

In relation to the fact that we exploited a point of strength of the car, like a gentle interaction with the rear tyres, in fairness, hearing from our competitors, it looks like we have a completely different category, which is not the case. Because as long as we were on the same tyres, Russell was keeping the pressure on and it’s not like Oscar was managing very much. Oscar was trying to open a gap."

He added,

“You know, last year [with Max] Verstappen, if you look at the race trace of last year, it just opened one second a lap, basically. That’s dominance, that’s good interaction with tyres. Our gap is nothing that makes us sleep very quietly, in fairness. I think if the race was hotter, we could have seen this a little bit more, but at this temperature, it was small margins.”

Oscar Piastri's boss on McLaren's advantage going into other races

McLaren seems to have an edge when it comes to keeping the tires working for longer and not letting them get overheated. This worked to their advantage on a track like Bahrain and helped Oscar Piastri to cruise to a win. Talking about the team's prospects, Stella does not think that the same advantage is replicable at every track and condition. He said,

“I think this factor will not be as important at some other circuits as it was here, because this is one of the highest degradation of the season. And I think we saw this in Japan, when as soon as you had the low degradation, basically, we didn’t have any kind of advantage.”

He added,

“I don’t think this is only related to downforce; we made some technical investments in improving the design of the car in relation to the interaction with tires, so I really want to pay credit to the technical group that worked around this area of car development, because clearly they’ve done a good job,”

Oscar Piastri is now second in the championship behind McLaren teammate Lando Norris and would be hoping to usurp him in the next race.