Piastri Wins Qatar Sprint and Closes Gap on Norris; Bortoleto Finishes 11th

Oscar Piastri from McLaren won the sprint from start to finish and remained in the championship battle in Formula 1. The Australian controlled the distance to George Russell from Mercedes, while the current leader on the table, Lando Norris, also from McLaren, finished third. Also in contention for the title, Max Verstappen started in sixth, gained two positions in the first corners, and attempted to put pressure on Norris, but couldn’t keep up with McLaren. The Dutchman finished fourth, complaining that the car was bouncing a lot. The championship could still be decided on Sunday: Piastri is now 22 points behind Norris, who needs to open up a four-point gap to his teammate to clinch the title in Qatar. That means a win will secure the championship. Verstappen is 25 points behind the leader and needs to finish ahead of Norris to stay in the fight for the final race in Abu Dhabi. Gabriel Bortoleto once again had a good start, gaining two positions to finish in 11th place, just outside the points zone. The drivers will be back on track on Saturday (29) to compete in the qualifying session for the main race in Qatar, starting at 3 PM Brasília time. Bortoleto knows he will drop five positions due to the accident caused in the first corner of the Las Vegas GP. Piastri led the only free practice session, set the fastest time in sprint qualifying, and won the short race. He emphasized that “everyone improves significantly over the sprint race weekends and that finding more performance in the car is essential. In my case, I’ll focus more on fine-tuning rather than making big changes.” Norris remained calm, mentioning he didn’t even notice Verstappen during the sprint as he was focused on Russell ahead of him and wants to maintain the same approach for the main race. It was a less aggressive sprint than usual, with drivers seemingly needing to conserve tires even in a 19-lap race. Until the qualifying session, teams can analyze data and optimize the car setup. The drivers are dealing with a limit of 25 laps on each set of tires, established by Pirelli for safety reasons, as well as high minimum tire pressure limits. One negative element of the sprint was Charles Leclerc: the Ferrari driver struggled to keep the car on track, going off at least four times during the race while fighting for mid-pack positions against teams like Racing Bulls and Haas. In the other Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton changed suspension settings and the rear wing for the race after qualifying only 18th, but the car didn’t show significant improvement. The goal was to provide more data for the team to fine-tune the setup for qualifying, but this circuit with long corners isn’t the best for the Ferrari car. Yuki Tsunoda went off track four times in just 14 laps and received a 5-second penalty. He didn’t lose positions because Kimi Antonelli did the same and was also penalized after the race, finishing sixth. The Japanese driver ended up in fifth place.