The flashpoint was brief but important for Piastri. The Australian is a clear title protagonist, and Verstappen is a perpetual frontrunner.

Lando Norris took too long last year to keep his elbows out and stand his ground in his battles with the uncompromising Dutchman.

Piastri laid down a small but important marker that he won’t be pushed around in pursuit of the title — a title he now leads.

PIASTRI TAKES THE TITLE LEAD IN BIG TICK FOR 2025 GAINS

For the first time in 5293 days an Australian leads the Formula 1 world championship, with Piastri holding a 10-point advantage over teammate Norris.

The last Australian to sit at the top the title standings was Mark Webber, Piastri’s now manager, on 24 October 2010. Webber took the lead in that year’s Italian grand prix and led through Singapore and Japan before losing top spot in Korea.

Piastri’s broken that 15-year drought with the first set of back-to-back victories by an Australian in more than a decade, dating back to Daniel Ricciardo’s wins at the Hungarian and Belgian grands prix on either side of the mid-season break in 2014.

Three victories from four grands prix makes for the best run of form by an Australian since Alan Jones claimed a second place and three wins across the 1980 and 1981 seasons.

“I’m happy, but I think I’m more proud of the reasons I’m leading the championship rather than the fact I am leading the championship,” Piastri said. “It’s been a great start to the year.

“I worked on the things I wanted to work on from last season, and it’s paying off. That’s what’s given me the most satisfaction at the moment.

“Obviously winning races is fun too, but the fact that I feel like I’ve really taken a step up and scoring the most amount of points when we can is the biggest thing.

“It’s still super early in the championship — I want to be leading it after round 24, not round 5 — but it’s a good start.”

After five rounds Piastri has totally flipped the ledger against Norris, the only driver to whom he can be accurately compared. He’s ahead in the championship and has reversed his qualifying deficit into an advantage.

The fact this has come at the opening five rounds of the season is significant. Over the past two seasons his lowest points have come inevitably at the non-European races, held at tracks where his experience gap is largest because most junior formulae race almost exclusively in Europe.

But with two seasons of F1 under his belt, that experience deficit appears to have vanished.

And having been the highest scoring driver through the European leg of last season, to lead the way after the opening five flyaway rounds of this season makes Piastri look much closer to the finished article and like a formidable title contender.

MISERABLE MAX IN PENALTY PROTEST

It didn’t take Max Verstappen long to get the metaphorical bottom lip out after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

“I’m going to keep it quite short,” he said when asked about his race in the pre-podium trackside interview. “I just want to say a big thankyou to the fans in Jeddah. It’s been a great weekend. I love the track.

“The rest is what it is. I’m looking forward to Miami, so I’ll see you there.”

He was hardly verbose speaking to F1 TV about the issue subsequently.

“I think it’s better we don’t talk about it, because we are anyway not allowed to express our opinions on that,” he said.

And to Sky Sports: “To be honest, I think any words towards that is just a waste of time for everyone … the only thing that’s in my interests is looking forward to going home.”

You didn’t have to be an expert in body language to know Verstappen wasn’t happy.

The source of his frustration was the five-second penalty of passing Piastri off track at the first turn.

Pole in Jeddah is on the racing line — that is, on the outside line on the right-hand side heading into the left-hander that enters the chicane.

It means the driver starting second on the grid has a clear view of the apex if they can get a better start than the pole-getter.

That’s exactly what Piastri did, nosing ahead of Verstappen as they reached the first turn.

But then Verstappen pulled out an old trick of his, releasing the brakes to appear ahead as they reached the apex and then cutting the corner under the pretext of being pushed off the road.

It’s a technique that’s worked several times for the Dutchman, but after several run-ins last year, particularly with Norris, and after 19 of 20 drivers lobbied the FIA to reconsider how they policed racing, such a gaming of the rules is now effectively outlawed.

For what it’s worth, Piastri wasn’t particularly aggrieved to be on the receiving end of some Verstappen gamesmanship.

“I knew it was going to be a difficult fight given it’s Max, but I think I did everything I needed to,” he said. “If the shoe was on the other foot, it would have looked identical probably.

“It was good racing and I think it was the right call.”

Red Bull Racing principal Christian Horner unsurprisingly had a different view.

“We have this notion of ‘let them race’,” he said. “I don’t know where Max was supposed to go at that first corner.”

‘Let them race’ was an approach taken by race control circa 2021, when the sport allowed some borderline and occasionally outright objectionable racing in an attempt to improve the spectacle.

It’s been gradually wound back ever since in part because of the liberties taken by Verstappen.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway from the incident was that Red Bull Racing and Verstappen opted against taking up the opportunity to give the place back — notwithstanding they had only around half a lap before the safety car was called.

Had Verstappen let Piastri into the lead, then he would’ve had the chance to roll the dice on strategy rather than playing the unsuccessful defensive game that eventually left him locked into second.

“It probably would’ve been better for everyone if they’d swapped positions, but I’m not going to complain; we finished first and fourth,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown smiled to Sky Sports.

BUT RED BULL RACING HAS MADE GENUINE PROGRESS

The idea that Verstappen could have won with strategy isn’t so farfetched given how much closer Red Bull Racing looked to McLaren on race pace this weekend.

Verstappen obviously had the pace to take pole, but the Dutchman didn’t think much of his victory odds on Saturday night given the poor pace in race simulation during Friday relative to the MCL39.

But rather than the obliteration some had expected, the advantage swung from Piastri to Verstappen during the first stint, and in the second stint the gap remained steady at less than five seconds.

Piastri won the race, but there was no real knockout punch.

“I had to work for that one pretty hard,” Piastri said. “Essentially holding my ground [at the first corner] is what won me the race.

“Trying to stay in the dirty air was pretty much impossible today. I wouldn’t have had enough to go and overtake Max. I was struggling at the end of the medium stint.

“Once I had some clean air I could manage the gap a little bit, but I didn’t have too much more left. I certainly wasn’t trying to disappear up the road in case we had a safety car or something, but I couldn’t have just pulled out a bunch of lap time if I wanted.

“At the end of the first stint Max was quicker. That’s obviously not how we want things to look. I think we’ve got some things to work on after this weekend, because the competition is tight and I think they’re getting closer.”

Brown told Sky Sports that he expected competition to remain close.

“That was a very competitive race,” he said. “[Max] has been competitive all weekend. He’s won this year.

“I think this idea we were going to make it a bit boring — I don’t think we’ve really had a boring race yet.”

For Christian Horner it’s even clearer.

“We’ve lost the race by 2.6 seconds [after serving a five-second penalty],” he told Sky Sports. “I think the most positive thing for us was the pace was there — it was a very positive race.”

Verstappen wasn’t willing to buy into the idea that McLaren was truly within reach but did sound optimistic that the team had made some big gains in its understanding of the troubled RB21.

“The positives are that in the race I think we had quite good pace compared to Friday,” Verstappen said. “We improved a lot.”

“I do think we found a really good set-up on the car, but I think this track suits our car a bit better, plus the degradation is quite low.

“I think we know that we still have things to improve on the car. we just need to get a few updates the car to help that.

“I think what we need to try and work on is just being a little bit more consistent overall.”

NORRIS COMEBACK STIFLED BY FERRARI IN SINGLE HAMILTON BRIGHT SPOT

How you judge Norris’s comeback from 10th to fourth depends on your perspective.

You could argue he had the car in qualifying to start from the front row and probably pole. No comeback should have been required.

Alternatively you might put that he gained six places on an afternoon overtaking wasn’t easy.

“I think I’m pleased on the whole,” he told Sky Sports. “I just make life tough for myself, especially when it’s a race like that.

“It would’ve been much easier, a lot more chilled, to just drive up the front, so I’ve got to help myself out a little bit and have better Saturdays.”

But you could also say that a podium should have been comfortably within his reach in a car that was much faster than Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. Instead he fell just over a second short of the Monegasque, having run out of laps to catch and challenge him for a trophy.

The reason for this marginal underperformance, his first non-podium finish of the year, was twofold.

The first was a superb race from Leclerc — who after a slightly shaky start to the season seems to be back in the groove he enjoyed for much of last year — and excellent execution from the team.

Leclerc ran long on a set of medium tyres — much longer than expected — to give himself a better hit at the hard tyres at the end.

It effectively neutralised Norris’s strategy — similar but switching from hard to medium — and gave him a fighting chance of keeping his nose ahead.

“I think we did the perfect race,” Leclerc said. “Today I don’t feel like there was anything more on the table.

“There were no mistakes. Strategy perfect. Pit stops again perfect.

“Overall it’s been the perfect race, and today I couldn’t do anymore more than P3.”

But Lewis Hamilton in the second Ferrari also played a role in preventing Norris from finishing higher than fourth — somewhat ironic given he was never in contention to get anywhere near the podium.

Hamilton’s big impact came between laps 12 and 15, when Norris was attempting to pass him in his gradual slog up the order before the pit stops.

The Ferrari driver defended relentlessly and cleverly, playing with the positioning of the DRS detection point before the final corner to let Norris through early only to blast back past him into the first turn with his rear wing open.

It took Norris three laps to understand the game and get through, costing him around four seconds.

He finished just one second behind Leclerc at the flag.

It was the single bright spot in Hamilton’s otherwise miserable weekend, the seven-time champion finishing 39 seconds off the lead and 31 seconds behind Leclerc.

“There wasn’t one second [when I felt comfortable in the car],” he told Sky Sports. “Clearly the car is capable of being P3. Charles did a great job today. I can’t blame the car.”

He was even more downcast speaking to F1 TV when asked whether the weekend off before the upcoming Miami Grand Prix would give him a chance to digest the lessons of his opening stanza of races and bounce back.

“If you want to look at it positively, yes, but I mean, honestly, I don’t’ think so,” he said. “It’s not going to make any difference.”

Reality is hitting hard in Hamilton’s Ferrari switch.