Piastri Defeats Verstappen, Norris To Win Chinese Grand Prix

Oscar Piastri produced a dominant performance to defeat Lando Norris, Max Verstappen to win the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix in style.

Piastri led the race from start to finish to earn an impressive one-two finish for McLaren for his third Formula one win.

Norris finished second despite facing a late brake problem, Martin Russell came third but it was a frustrating outing for Max Verstappen, who finished fourth in the race.

Charles Leclerc, and Lewis Hamilton finished fifth and sixth respectively, but were both disqualified for illegal cars.

Hamilton was disqualified for excessive plank wear underneath his Ferrari, while Leclerc, and Pierre Gasly were punished because of underweight cars. Both drivers were found to be 1kg under the 800kg weight limit.

McLaren’s one-two puts them 25 points ahead of Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship ahead of Suzuka April, with Red Bull 42 points adrift and Ferrari already 61 points behind.

Piastri was delighted to earn his third win of the season, describing it as an incredible weekend from start to finish.

He said: “It’s been an incredible weekend from start to finish. The car’s been pretty mega the whole time. I think today was a bit of a surprise with how differently the tyres behaved.

“I’m just so proud of the whole weekend. This is what I feel like I deserved last week. The team did a mega job with the one-two. I’m very happy.

“On the medium it was still a bit tricky but much better than yesterday, and then the hard was a much better tyre than everyone expected, or certainly than we expected.

“To go all the way to the end like that was a bit of a surprise, but a happy surprise.”

Meanwhile, Ferrari revealed that their drivers will learn from their mistakes after Lewis Hamilton, and Charles Leclerc were disqualified from the race.

The Statement Reads: “Charles was on a one-stop strategy today and this meant his tyre wear was very high, causing the car to be underweight.

“With regard to Lewis’ skid wear, we misjudged the consumption by a small margin. There was no intention to gain any advantage.

“We will learn from what happened today and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again. Clearly it’s not the way we wanted to end our Chinese GP weekend, neither for ourselves, nor for our fans whose support for us is unwavering.”

Lewis Hamilton blamed the setup for his struggles in the race which made him finish sixth before his expulsion.

He said: “Balance-wise, from the sprint race we made these changes and the car was terrible after that. So I really struggled from then on.

“I think it’s good learning and hopefully won’t do that again as I continue to learn this car.”

After a week off, Formula 1 will resume with the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka from April 4-6.

Piastri Defeats Verstappen, Norris To Win Chinese Grand Prix is first published on The Whistler Newspaper