McLaren’s Oscar Piastri leads the 2025 drivers’ championship after victory in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
After the first triple header of the season, there is a week’s break before Formula 1 heads to Miami from 2-4 May.
Before that, BBC Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions following the race in Jeddah.
Will Max Verstappen modify his driving as a result of the decision to give him a five-second penalty in Saudi Arabia? – Kate
Max Verstappen was given a five-second penalty in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix because the stewards adjudged him to have gained an advantage by leaving the track while contesting the lead with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri at the first corner.
The stewards pointed to the driving standards guidelines in making their decision, reporting that “Car 81 (Piastri) had its front axle at least alongside the mirror of Car One (Verstappen) prior to and at the apex of corner one when trying to overtake Car One on the inside.
“In fact, Car 81 was alongside Car One at the apex. Based on the drivers’ standards guidelines, it was therefore Car 81’s corner and he was entitled to be given room.”
Verstappen chose not to give his opinion of the incident or the decision after the race, pointing to the risk he would be censured by governing body the FIA.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said the penalty was “very harsh” because “Max can’t just disappear”.
The guidelines don’t dictate what a driver in his situation should do, but taking the lead back by going off track is not an option.
But Verstappen races hard, and pushes the limit of the rules. In critical situations such as this, he will do everything he can to keep position, and then force the stewards to make a decision.
This is understandable on two levels: first, the advantage of being in front and running in clean air is significant, as the race subsequently showed, and if he ends up being allowed to keep the position, it can win him the race; second, in the past, the stewards have often chosen not to punish him.
However, the guidelines have changed this year, after significant pressure from the other drivers, exactly because of the way Verstappen races.
This was the first time the new rules have been tested with Verstappen, and this time his approach did not work. But he has had a lifetime of racing this way, so it would be quite a switch for him to change his approach.
Having said that, he is smart as well as tough. It would be a surprise if he did not learn from this incident in some ways for next time.
From Piastri’s side, he has now laid down a marker to Verstappen. He is a decisive, clinical racer who is not to be intimidated.
Does Lando Norris need to go sit down with Nico Rosberg to understand how he changed his mentality in his championship year? – Gary
In 2016, Nico Rosberg won the championship by pushing himself to the limit to be able to compete with an essentially faster team-mate in Lewis Hamilton, ensuring he was his best self all the time and hoping that would be enough.
Rosberg was handed a significant advantage with the comparative reliability of the two Mercedes at the start of the season, and even then Hamilton would have clawed the advantage back had he not had an engine failure while leading in Malaysia late in the season.
The situation at McLaren this year feels different. In 2024, Norris was decisively the faster and more convincing McLaren driver over the season. In 2025 so far, that has been Piastri.
Norris is struggling to adapt to certain characteristics of the McLaren – particularly its lack of front grip at certain phases of the corner with his driving style.
But he is aware of what he needs to do. As he put it in Jeddah on Sunday: “It’s my qualifying, my Saturdays, which are not good enough at the minute. That’s because I am struggling a little bit with the car.
“Yesterday was not the car, it was just me trying to take too many risks.
“So I just have to peg it back. I’ve got the pace. It’s all in there. It’s just sometimes I ask for a bit too much and sometimes I get a bit too ‘ego’ probably and try to put the perfect lap together. I just need to chill out a little bit.”
Of course when the margins are so tight – pole is being decided by hundredths of a second at each race – it’s one thing to say that, and another to do it without coming off second best.