Oscar Piastri won the Bahrain Grand Prix to give McLaren its maiden victory in a what could be considered its second home race. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers teams' and drivers' reaction after the 57 laps of nail-biting action in Sakhir.

McLaren

“It's been an incredible weekend, starting off with Qualifying yesterday and it was nice to finish the job in style today. I can't thank the team enough for the car they've given us – it was pretty handy out there!

“I’m very proud of what I've done this weekend and proud to do it here in Bahrain as well. It's obviously a very important race for us, given our ownership. It’s never been a track that’s been kind to us, so it’s great to finally get the first win for the team in Bahrain.”

“An up and down race today. Some frustrating mistakes but still plenty of positives to take away with a strong points finish for the team in Bahrain. It was a really good race throughout, everyone pushing hard, right on the limit, which is always fun to be part of. Congratulations to Oscar and the whole team for today’s result. I’ll now keep my head down and work hard as we head to Saudi Arabia next weekend.”

Mercedes

George Russell, 2nd
"That was a really challenging race. We had some problems in the last 12 laps including a brake-by-wire failure. When I was hitting the brakes, the pedal was inconsistent, and I had to do some resets for it to work properly again. For 10 laps in a row, going into every corner, I didn’t know whether it would be giving me the same feeling or not. It definitely compromised the race, but at the end of the day, bringing the car home in P2 is mega.

"The brake-by-wire failure wasn’t the only technical challenge we were dealing with either! There were all sorts of issues going on with the transponder and the signals going to the car. That meant that we had to manually override the DRS. At one point, I hit the radio button and saw that the DRS was open.

"I closed it immediately and lifted off the throttle, so we actually gave up time. Happily, the stewards agreed that no sporting advantage was gained. All of those issues compromised that last stint but the main thing is we leave here with another podium and more solid points scored."

Kimi Antonelli, 11th
"That was a difficult race for me today. Being stuck in the dirty air behind several cars played a major role in stalling any progress I was able to make. I pushed hard on my out laps to try and regain track position but then I likely took a little too much out of the tyres. We tried to do something different by switching to the three-stop strategy, but the Safety Car came out shortly after and that took the opportunity away.

"We will review the whole race and see if there are things we could have done differently, but there are definitely still positives we can take away. Qualifying was another good step forwards for me and I felt more and more comfortable racing wheel-to-wheel with others today. Of course, P11 is never the result we are hoping for, but we will have a couple of days off and come back stronger in Jeddah next weekend."

Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton, 5th
"Overall, it was a solid race. I got a decent start, made some progress early on and felt strong in the middle stint on the medium tyre and was able to make some overtakes. The car had good pace, and I was able to push while mantaining a performance window I hadn’t been able to reach in previous races.

"The balance faded a little on the hard compound, but I’m pleased, Grazie to the team - the strategy and pit stops were really well executed and made a real difference to the race. We’ve taken some good learnings from this weekend and we’ll carry that momentum into Jeddah. A big thank you as well to all the tifosi for the continuous support, it truly means a lot."

"There are no regrets after a race like this, we just need to find some more pace. We pushed a bit on the first stint and the second was even faster, but once the Safety Car reset things, our pace just wasn’t good enough to fight the McLarens and George (Russell) in the Mercedes.

"In general, there is not a particular type of corner where we are lacking, we just need more grip all round. We will understand our upgrade better in Jeddah next week, I look forward to finding out what we will learn about it there."

Red Bull

Max Verstappen, 6th
“P6 was at least a positive result considering all the things that went wrong today. The start was not good, we struggled with tyre management all race, and I had no grip or pace on the hard tyres. During our pit-stops there was a problem with the lights which cost us a lot of time in the pits and put us back in to traffic.

"Unfortunately our second pitstop was worse than the first and at one point I was in last place. I enjoyed the fight at the end with Pierre and the overtake on the last lap, I tried to maximise our points until the very end. To finish P6 at the end was the best that we could do, this was not the weekend that we wanted but we have to keep on trying to improve. We are working on finding solutions and solving the issues we have at the moment to hopefully be more competitive in Jeddah."

Yuki Tsunoda, 9th
“Today is another learning curve, I feel like I could have done better, there are still a lot of things we could have done better together and the pit-stop issues lost us position. The pace was good, but I am not fully happy because I still think we could have made up a couple of more positions. It’s only my second race and things come up that you haven’t experienced before, so it’s good a lot of new things are happening in this early phase, so I can maximise things in the future. Overall, it’s my first points with the Team, so it has to be a positive day.

"I feel like we took a step forward from Suzuka, so I appreciate how the Team have supported me and how we have been able to progress in a good way so quickly. I am not setting a specific goal for Jeddah yet, it’s just about keeping doing what I am doing, I hope to do slightly better in Qualifying and that should make my life easier."

Alpine

Pierre Gasly, 7th
“I am very happy for the entire team that we scored our first points of the season in seventh place. We lost a position on the last lap to Max [Verstappen] so that is a little disappointing but he won last week so we can really only take the positives from that effort. It was a good start from fourth on the grid and we stayed in the front pack on the first stint. We were a little unfortunate with the timing of the Safety Car after our second stop for Hard tyres.

"From there it was flat out to the end, just trying to keep Max behind, and we just ran out of tyres to lose the position. Now we focus straight on Jeddah where hopefully we can be competitive. The car feels good in high-speed corners, I was impressed with how it performed here, so hopefully the same again in Saudi Arabia next weekend and we can repeat our level of competitiveness.”

Jack Doohan, 14th
“The result today is disappointing but I am happy that we opened our points tally with Pierre finishing in seventh place. The Soft and Medium tyres felt strong in the race and we were up to ninth place after the first two stints on those compounds and it looked positive for us. We boxed for the Hard to cover some other cars but the Safety Car was deployed at an unfortunate time, which gave some other cars the chance to change to fresher, softer tyres.

"It was very difficult to keep them behind, we struggled with the rear a bit on that compound, and then we had a time penalty at the end for track limits. We will now continue to keep on building on the progress the team has made this weekend and we have the next race coming up in Jeddah to look forward to in a few days’ time.”

Haas

Esteban Ocon, 8th
“I’m super happy for the team because I let them down yesterday making that mistake when there was more potential in the car. Today, everything worked out as planned; we got a mega start and managed to get an aggressive strategy to straight away be fighting in the points.

"From there, it was the maximum we could’ve done as the safety car put us in a bad position, as we were about to get overtaken by Tsunoda, and Ollie benefited as well. It was a great drive from him coming from P20 – a double-points finish for the team. We’re delighted as it’s the maximum we could’ve done and I’m proud of what we’ve achieved.”

Oliver Bearman, 10th
“I feel good, it was a great race. It flew by and those last 20 laps after the safety car I was under pressure trying to hold position with the Mercedes behind, and trying to fight ahead as well – so it was a tough one. I’m so happy to bring a point home for the team after a really tough qualifying yesterday.

"Of course, it was a bit lucky to get the Safety Car, but I felt really strong in the first stint, the second stint on the hard was a bit tricky, but we caught the safety car which was lucky. Then to hold my position is easier said than done with faster cars around you. I’m proud of how I performed today, and the team did a fantastic job as well.”

Williams

Alex Albon, 12th
"We were unfortunate today. Points were on the cards, our race pace was really strong, and we had really good first and second stints. Then we got a bit unlucky with the safety car and had to double stack, so we lost a couple of places. I’m generally still happy though; a lot of lessons have been learned that we can carry forward to the rest of the year."

Carlos Sainz, DNF
"A frustrating end to a promising race. After a nice start, I used up my Soft tyres battling hard and trying to keep within DRS of the faster cars around me. Once the Soft compound was done, we stopped and went back at it gaining positions with good overtakes. Unfortunately, the incident with Yuki cost us the race.

"The impact on my right hand sidepod caused major damage and that was it for me. Despite the end result, there are a lot of positives to take. We had good pace all weekend and could have been in the points today, so we’ll take it as it is and look at how we can come back stronger next week in Saudi."

Kick Sauber

Nico Hulkenberg, DSQ
"It has been a difficult weekend, overall, and tonight was not different. The start wasn't the best – I was on the inside for turn one but then got pushed wide in turn two and lost all my drive heading down to turn four. I ended up last by the time we arrived there, which obviously made things not easier, especially as we were starting on the soft tyre.

"We pitted early and aggressively, which meant running two very long stints: getting something out of this race was always going to be a long shot after that. This track really exposed some of our car’s weaknesses, so there are important lessons to learn. Over one lap, I think we’re pretty decent if we get everything together, but our long-run pace needs improvement.”

Gabriel Bortoleto, 18th

"It's been a tough afternoon, but we did see some improvements in pace at times. Overtaking was definitely a challenge – as soon as I got close to the car ahead, I just couldn’t find the grip to make a move, especially through the corners. It's obviously frustrating, especially after the Safety Car restart when I was on mediums against the hard tyres of the car in front but still couldn’t find a way through.

"Overall, it’s crucial to take time to analyse everything and understand how we can improve our performance. In the short term, the goal is to move on from a challenging weekend, take the learnings with us, and focus on Jeddah to finish off this triple header."

Racing Bulls

Isack Hadjar, 13th
"The start of the race wasn’t good as I lost four places, and I felt like I wasn’t moving from the grid spot. I didn’t really understand why, so we’ll need to review what happened. I think procedure-wise was okay, but I was wheel spinning, and this put us in the wrong momentum throughout the first lap.

"A better Qualifying might have changed our race, but overall, our pace and strategy were aggressive today, and I think this was the right way to do it. Unfortunately, though, after the start, we were just too far away, and this didn’t help us; the same with the Safety Car, which didn’t allow us to have an easy restart on used hard tyres. We’ll focus on the bits we missed here in Bahrain to look at adjusting them for the future.”

Liam Lawson, 16th

“The race was action packed. We had good speed but just couldn't really use it and the only way I could overtake was lunging quite late. I wasn't intentionally touching others, but obviously the stewards made their decision with the penalties, so we'll have to review the incidents.

"It's a shame we don't have the results to show us pushing forwards as a team, as the car was really fast in Qualifying and we didn't get to show it. The car was also fast in the race, but there's obviously only so much you can do starting from the back. It was just a race that just didn't quite come together."

Aston Martin

"We didn't have the pace all weekend and especially tonight. I was extending my stint on the Medium tyres, but then the Safety Car balanced everything again and we didn't really benefit from it. We expected it to be a difficult track for us and we need to try improve the car for future races. It's a different challenge in Jeddah, so let's see if we can be any better next week."

"There's not much to say about today; it's been a really tough weekend for us. We are not where we want to be at the moment and we are pushing hard to change that. Let's see what learnings we can take from this race and how we do next week. The track characteristics in Jeddah are quite different so let's see how we do there, although we are not expecting any big jumps."