Formula 1 has a new grand prix winner for the second time this year as Oscar Piastri followed his team mate Lando Norris, who scored his breakthrough triumph two months ago in Miami.
Piastri hasn’t had to wait anything like as long as his team mate did. Norris had to wait 110 grands prix to get his first win; Piastri just 35. Four drivers on the grid today had shorter waits for their first wins: Charles Leclerc (34), Fernando Alonso (30), Max Verstappen (24) and Lewis Hamilton (six).
The last time two team mates scored their first grand prix wins in the same season was all the way back in 2001. Alonso made his debut that year and fellow rookie Juan Pablo Montoya scored his first win for Williams, while his team mate Ralf Schumacher did the same.
The result means both McLaren drivers are one-time grand prix winners, which is also the case for Alpine duo Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly.
Piastri is the 115th driver to win a round of the world championship and the fifth to come from Australia, joining world champions Jack Brabham and Alan Jones, his manager Mark Webber and rival Daniel Ricciardo.
With Piastri’s win, McLaren’s five most recent victories were all scored by different drivers, including Lewis Hamilton who joined his successors at his original team on the podium:
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Max Verstappen failed to win for the third race in a row. This is the first time he’s gone three races without winning since Hamilton’s trio across the Brazil, Qatar and Saudi Arabia rounds late in 2021.
Piastri is the seventh different winner this year, the most since 2012, when there were eight. The only driver from the four race-winning teams yet to win a race is Sergio Perez.
Four different drivers have won the last four races, the most since 2021. That year Ricciardo, Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Verstappen won at Monza, Sochi, Istanbul and the Circuit of the Americas respectively.
Lando Norris claimed pole position for the third time in a grand prix and fifth time in total including sprint races. However, he once again failed to lead at the end of lap one, as Piastri beat him to the first corner. His tally of three grand prix pole positions puts him level with Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo, as well as Jose Froilan Gonzalez, Tony Brooks, Dan Gurney, Jean-Pierre Jarier, Jody Scheckter, Elio de Angelis and Teo Fabi.
Norris led McLaren in their first front row lock-out…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…