Max Verstappen won the Bahrain Grand Prix in emphatic fashion on Sunday with a performance that should really scare the rest of the F1 grid. Once he navigated the first couple of corners without incident he just disappeared into the distance. Even Charles Leclerc on fresh soft tyres couldn’t get anywhere near him.
It was an opening race performance that reminded me of Sebastian Vettel in his prime Red Bull years but this time, Verstappen had the reliability to finish the job. His teammate would recover from losing positions at the start to take an easy 2nd place as well. Both Red Bull’s finished 26 seconds ahead of anyone else despite turning their engines down for the last 10 laps. Max must have wondered where everyone else was at points as he sauntered around the Sakhir International Circuit.
Behind the two Red Bull’s this race was all about tyre management as Ferrari, Aston Martin and Mercedes traded superiority throughout their stints. All three ran pretty close to each other throughout the race which bodes well for future races to see who will get that final podium place behind Red Bull. Ferrari are the second fastest car on pure speed but have much more tyre wear than both Aston and Mercedes. Mercedes really just lack overall downforce to maintain the pace of Ferrari and Aston. On a highly abrasive track surface like in Bahrain they were always going to use more of their tyres to keep up. This showed as Alonso was able to stay out a couple of laps more in both stints to create a tyre delta to attack Hamilton and Sainz late on after losing places at the start. It would have been really interesting to see what Alonso could do against the Red Bulls if he gained positions at the start rather than losing them. He would have at least been able to mix it with Leclerc before he retired with engine issues.
This really was the worst start for Leclerc’s season. Ferrari had to replace his energy story component before the race as a precaution but it was the replacement part that failed which caused him to retire. This means Charles has already used his whole allotment for that part for the season, without completing a race distance. The Ferrari is quick but seems to have a very tight window when it’s able to deploy that performance. They will hope the next race in Jeddah doesn’t highlight their tyre wear issues as much as Bahrain.
Behind the ‘Top 4’ fight there were some performances that went under the radar. Pierre Gasly climbed from the back of the grid to take a comfortable 9th on his Alpine debut, just behind Bottas who used the undercut to great effect to jump from 12th to 8th by the flag. The midfield does look very close and I would imagine that the balance of power will shift race to race as it doesn’t seem like there are any ‘backmarkers’ this year. The whole grid can arguably fight for points.
This is because Williams have made great strides, in Bahrain at least, to join the fight and Alex Albon even got points in 10th place. His teammate Logan Sargent had the best debut out of all the rookies in 12th and finished under 10 seconds behind his much more experienced teammate. That is a great performance and one that should give him and the team great confidence.
But Bahrain wasn’t rainbows and smiles for all the competitors. McLaren had one of the worst opening races that I can remember. Norris qualified 11th which was much higher than the team expected with his teammate being knocked out in Q1. But that was where the ‘positives’ ended really. Piastri did make up some places from 18th but was forced to retire after 13 laps as an electrical issue in the steering column meant his steering wheel shut down and Norris had to pit 6 times after his car developed a pneumatic pressure leak so had to come in every 10 laps to get its air topped up. He finished 2 laps down in the end. The only sliver of good news is that the car did show more pace than the team was expecting before retiring. They must do better so let’s hope the major upgrade planned for Baku really works.
But at least the race went better for McLaren than it did for Esteban Ocon. He was penalised three times that all stemmed from one issue. He was initially penalised 5 seconds for being incorrectly positioned on the starting grid: he rolled a little too far into his slot and was JUST in front of his grid box. He was able to take this time penalty at his first stop BUT Alpine started working on his car before the 5 second penalty had been served, so he got another time penalty – 10 seconds this time. When he came in to serve the 10 second penalty at his next stop, he approached a bit too quickly and sped in the pitlane by 0.1 mph, receiving another 5 second penalty. Alpine ended his nightmare on Lap 41 when they retired the car. So McLaren, it could be worse!
Overall, it was an interesting first race of the season, mainly because of Aston Martin’s jump into the fight at the front. But it is worrying to see that Red Bull have only extended their advantage over their traditional rivals but only time will tell how close Aston Martin really are in a straight fight.
23 to go but at this rate, it will be Max Verstappen 3 time World Champion by the summer break. Happy New Year!
The Perfect Formula 