Oscar Piastri retains F1 lead after third-placed finish at Emilia Romagna Grand Prix

A split-second mistake cost Oscar Piastri, who was also left to rue an ill-advised pit stop strategy — but the Australian star still held on for a podium finish on a “tough day” at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Australia’s Oscar Piastri recovered from a botched start and an ill-advised pit-stop strategy from his McLaren team engineers to finish third in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and retain his lead in the world drivers’ championship.

After starting from pole position, Piastri applied the brakes a fraction too early heading into the first chicane, a split-second mistake which allowed Max Verstappen to swoop past in his Red Bull, effectively ruining the Aussie’s chances of winning the race as soon as it began.

With clean air in front of him, Verstappen was able to control the pace and lead the rest of the way to claim his second victory of the year and the 65th of his stellar career at the famed Imola circuit in northern Italy where Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger were killed in 1994.

To add to Piastri’s frustration, his McLaren teammate Lando Norris overtook him near the end of the race to claim second place after getting the full benefit of fresher tyres when a late safety car turned the 63-lap race into a nine-lap sprint to the chequered flag.

“Obviously, slight disappointment,” Piastri said.

“It’s never a great day when you start first and finish third.

“The race was very tough from very early on. Honestly, given people had fresher tyres at the end, hanging on to a podium is not a bad result.”

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Oscar Piastri finished third at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix to retain his lead in the world championship.

Despite hoping for a better outcome, Piastri’s sixth podium from the first seven races this season was still a good result for the rising star’s ultimate goal of winning the championship.

By avoiding any calamities, the 24-year-old still banked another valuable 15 points to take his season total to 146, 13 clear of Norris (133) and 22 ahead of Verstappen (124).

With 17 rounds to go, no-one else is considered a serious threat to the top three in the year-long race for the drivers’ title with the series now in Europe and on older, narrower tracks where overtaking is harder.

“You’re going to have tough days in the championship, and this is clearly one of them,” Piastri said.

“So as long as we learn the lessons, then that’s all I can ask.”

While critical of himself for braking too soon, Piastri was also a little unlucky to lose the lead at the beginning of the Grand Prix.

While he got away cleanly when the lights went out, George Russell made a lightning fast start in his Mercedes from third place on the grid, forcing the Australian to defend the inside line, which gave Verstappen the tiny bit of extra room he needed on the outside to make the pass stick.

While he successfully avoided making contact with the ultra aggressive Verstappen, any chance Piastri had of regaining the lead from the Dutch master vanished shortly after when he was called into the pits early to swap his deteriorating medium tyres for a harder compound.

But the attempted undercut backfired when he returned to the track in 12th position and in heavy traffic, eroding any potential short-term advantage he might have got from having new rubber.

Max Verstappen overtook Oscar Piastri on the first lap with a daring move

Verstappen and Norris both made the right call to stay on the circuit and retain track position and were then able to make a cheap second stop when Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes broke down and needed a tractor to remove it from the grassy run off where it conked out.

Norris immediately followed Verstappen into the pits and while he returned to the track just behind Piastri, he had the advantage of brand new tyres so was relatively untroubled in getting past and back into second.

“It was tricky, the virtual safety car was perfectly timed for Verstappen and Lando and I used both my hard tyres at that point,” Piastri said.
“I tried my best to hang on, but just didn’t have the grip. It was inevitable that he was going to get past, but I wasn’t going to give up without a fight. I had nowhere near enough grip, so third it is.”

Max Verstappen was all smiles after posting his 65th career win

Lando Norris and his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri on the podium.

Norris, who has had four second-place finishes, a third and a fourth since winning the season-opening race in Melbourne, was unable to make up any ground on Verstappen after being briefly held up getting past Piastri but the Englishman said it was only fair the two McLarens drivers were allowed to race each other without team orders.

“I was on better tyres, but I didn’t expect anything,” Norris said.

“It was still a tough fight. It was close in to turn one.

“It’s the way it should be. I lose time through that, and then he loses time, but it’s what we have to do in order to battle for a championship.

“If you try and make someone happy, the other one’s going to be unhappy, so it’s the way it is. I think we handled it well, and it was a good job by the team.”

Oscar Piastri has finished on the podium in six of the first seven Grands Prix races in 2025

Verstappen, who posted his fourth successive win at Imola, said he was surprised to get ahead of Piastri on the first lap but knew once he did he would be hard to beat even without the luck of the yellow flags.

“The start itself wasn’t particularly great but I was still on the normal line and I thought I would try and send it round the outside and it worked really well,” the defending four-time world champion said.

“That then unleashed our pace because once we were in the lead, the car was good and I could look after my tyres, we had very good pace today.

“That virtual safety car was quite handy to pit, even on the hard compound our pace was very strong, but then there was a safety car so the field was back together. Even on the restart we managed it really well and brought it home.”

The next round on the Formula calendar is the Monaco Grand Prix in a week’s time, where Verstappen won in 2021 and 2023 but could only manage sixth last year while Piastri finished a close runner-up to Charles Leclerc on the glitzy street circuit where he now lives.

“Monaco is, of course, very, very different so let’s see how we are going to perform there,” Verstappen said.

“Last year was very difficult for us and I don’t expect it to be a lot easier this time around because there’s, of course, a lot of low speed, but we’ll see.”

Originally published as Oscar Piastri retains F1 lead after third-placed finish at Emilia Romagna Grand Prix