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Oscar Piastri’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix win puts him into the Formula 1 world championship lead for the first time at McLaren team-mate Lando Norris’s expense, but would Max Verstappen have beaten both – and now lead the points – if he hadn’t got his five-second penalty and was that penalty justified?

Here’s our team’s verdict on the events of Jeddah.

Moments of weakness from all three contenders

Scott Mitchell-Malm

I wonder if we saw a hint of weakness from all three title contenders this weekend: Norris’s errors, Verstappen’s tendency to overstep, and Piastri lacking a tiny bit of pace.

These have probably been the main question marks over the three of them, if not so far this year, then historically. There will be moments through the season where they all lose a little bit and it was Norris who lost out most here.

I can see what Verstappen was doing at the start, we know he plays the rules, the opponent, the track layout to the maximum. If he was on the inside, he’d have done what Piastri did – and expected a penalty for the other driver.

Did it cost him a win? Maybe. Track position ended up more crucial here than perhaps expected given McLaren didn’t have a big tyre advantage.

So in the end Piastri has scored a big victory, even if it was one that came a little harder than he’d like as he was chasing a little bit of pace in qualifying and didn’t seem super comfortable in the race either. 

Red Bull can’t be angry 

Josh Suttill

As we saw with 2024’s most controversial McLaren-Red Bull run-ins, both sides disagreed with the outcome. 

And with many of the clashes, you could understand why. It was often in murky areas where each team could argue their case. 

But this one? Cut and dry for me. Piastri had the corner, made the apex without going off the track, and Verstappen simply released the brake, cut the corner and took the race lead that he had no right to. 

I had sympathy that Red Bull couldn’t really have swapped the positions, given the penalty was issued under the safety car. But the penalty itself was more than justified; you simply can’t take the race lead like that. 

Piastri simply out Verstappen’d Verstappen and Red Bull has to accept that. 

Verstappen was right to be annoyed

Gary Anderson

Still very early days with regard to who is going to come out on top at the end of the season. However if Norris is going to have a chance he needs to stop making mistakes, playing catch-up is never a good thing, and he has been doing that too often.

As for the controversy at the first corner, I am with Verstappen on this. We need to allow some level of racing, especially at the first corner and even through the first lap. If Max had held his position instead of going off the track, we would have lost at least the two frontrunning cars, if not more after they would have been caught up in the melee. What’s the point in that?

We want to see racing so if it is deemed to be an off track overtake, giving up the position is the maximum penalty that should be handed out and not a seemingly new-for-this-race five-second time penalty out of the blue.

Verstappen and Norris let the slower driver win

Ben Anderson

It’s far too early to say if this will be a definitive result in the title race, but it was certainly a smash and grab grand prix for Piastri – who I think was only the third quickest driver in Jeddah.

He drove superbly, don’t get me wrong, but owed victory to Norris crashing away his intra-McLaren pace advantage around this track in qualifying, then Verstappen (whose pole lap was another heroic Saturday special) botching his start and then trying to game the racing rules.

Had Verstappen had a totally clean race in his Red Bull I suspect Piastri would have finished second here – but we can’t know how that alternate reality race plays out and how McLaren’s tyre management advantage might have made the difference anyway had Piastri needed to work harder.

That 5s penalty for Max was justified, I think – as Martin Brundle said on Sky Sports F1, Verstappen realised the corner was lost and so tried to put his car in a place it had no business being. The stewards saw through the tactic this time.

I fully believe Piastri has the right mentality to win this championship, but I’m not sure he’s flat-out the faster of the two McLaren drivers. That may not matter in the end if Norris continues to throw potential wins away like he did here.