BREAKING: Oscar Piastri wins Bahrain Grand Prix as labouring Lando Norris sees championship lead cut

Oscar Piastri took a chunk out of championship advantage with a dominant win at the . While the Australian barely had to break sweat to secure a pole-to-flag victory, his team-mate in the other struggled for pace in traffic having started down in sixth.

McLaren, which is owned by the Bahraini sovereign wealth fund, had never won in the Gulf state before. But that changed on Sunday when Piastri showed his calm temperament to fully control the race.

The story was different for Norris who was handed a penalty early on and spent much of the rest of the night struggling to make progress up the order. But he eventually did late on after finally dispatching the stubborn and before turning his attention to .

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The driver worked hard to keep his fellow Brit behind and got the job done with some sterling defending on the final lap. But Russell may have more misery to come amid an investigation over whether he used his DRS system at a point that it was not allowed.

The start saw a nervy moment for Piastri as Russell locked up heading into the first corner and almost collided with the McLaren. Contact was narrowly avoided and the Mercedes driver duly took his place in second behind Piastri who, from that moment, was free to speed off into the distance.

Initially, there was more joy for McLaren with Norris lightning quick off the line to make up three places from sixth on the grid. But it soon became clear that he had not been fully in his grid box at the start and .

After he served it, and everyone else had stopped, he emerged one place lower in fourth with Leclerc benefitting from his extra time stuck in the pit box. And from there the Brit struggled to find the pace he needed to reel in the Ferrari.

But the complexion changed when debris was spilled across the track from contact between Yuki Tsunoda and Carlos Sainz. Some of it came to rest on the racing line, presenting a potential hazard and, eventually, forcing race control into ordering an appearance from the safety car.

Most cars piled into the pit lane for a change of tyres and all the gaps that had appeared were closed up. That included the one at the front that the leader Piastri was enjoying and, when the race restarted with a little over 20 laps to go, he had Russell in the Mercedes on soft tyres firmly in his wing mirrors.

But Russell wasn't able to make the most of that advantage and the real battle was behind them. Norris was trying to slide past Leclerc but ended up losing a place instead to Hamilton who then complained that his fellow Brit had gone off track when he overtook him again a few corners later.

McLaren were clearly worried that Norris was going to get another penalty for the way he overtook and so soon the order came to give the place back to Hamilton. With 19 laps to go, Norris found himself marooned in fifth place and in danger of losing his championship lead to team-mate Piastri.

Not long after he got past Hamilton, this time legally, as the Brit responded by telling his team over the radio that the hard tyres he was on "sucked". Another concerned about his tyres was Russell, who was on the softs and clearly worried that they might not get to the end, telling Mercedes that he felt their plan was "audacious".