Round 1/24: Review of the Bahrain Grand Prix Race

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Image Credits: @VerstappenCOM twitter

Max Verstappen began the 2024 Formula 1 season with a dominating performance to secure his 55th overall and 8th consecutive Grand Prix victory. Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull finished second over 22 seconds behind his teammate and Carlos Sainz in the Ferrari produced another impressive performance that rounded up the top three. Charles Leclerc in the second Ferrari finished P4 as he struggled throughout the race with a front imbalance that caused several lockups ahead of George Russell in the Mercedes in P5.

At the start of the race, the strategies available were clear with two stoppers being the fastest with soft, hard, and soft combinations. However, Red Bull was the only top team that could utilize the optimal strategy as they had two new sets of softs with most of the other teams going with soft, hard, and hard combinations. Ferrari estimated that around lap 45, the hards would be quicker than the softs and with only 3 seconds separating Perez and Sainz, they expected him to overtake in the next few laps. However, the tire degradation on the Red Bull never arrived as predicted, and Perez could finish P2 comfortably.

The race started with Verstappen getting a good start alongside Leclerc who tried a move through the outside of turn 1 but couldn’t pull it off. Russell, Perez, and Sainz held their positions going into turn 1 whereas Nico Hulkenberg after an impressive performance yesterday in qualifying, hit Lance Stroll and both of them ended up at the back of the grid after turn 1. Valtteri Bottas got caught up in the collision between the two drivers and lost places. With DRS being enabled at the end of lap 1 from this season instead of lap 2, only Verstappen managed to get out of the DRS range at the end of lap 1 and after that, there was no catching the Red Bull driver.

For most of the race, P2 was up for the grabs with Perez starting in P4 and matching pace with Leclerc, Russell, and Sainz around him. Leclerc lost his P2 in lap 3 and after that, he had numerous instances of locking up bringing in Perez and his teammate Sainz into play. Both the drivers managed to overtake Leclerc with Sainz pulling an impressive overtake not once but twice as he had to overtake him again after the pitstops. In the later stage of the race, Leclerc managed to gain control over his car as he overtook Russell for P4.

Further down the line, Lewis Hamilton managed to split the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri as he finished P7 after struggling behind the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso for the first half of the race and later behind Piastri. Alonso and Lance Stroll finished in P9 and P10 to round off the point finishers. It was noteworthy to mention that poor strategy compromised points finish for Yuki Tsunoda in the RB. Further, he had to swap positions with his teammate at the end so that Daniel Ricciardo could try to make a move on Kevin Magnussen in P12. Ultimately, that did not materialize leaving an angry Tsunoda on the radio fuming over the swap.

In the end, the opening race panned out the same way as predicted with Red Bull in the lead and Ferrari in the second seat. Plenty of work needs to be done by other teams to put up a fight against the new and improved RB20 and with most teams converging towards the concept of RB19, it looks highly unlikely that there might be any fight for the constructors in the season. Ferrari looks to be the lone challenger but hopefully, other teams and other tracks offer more to the story of the season.

POS DRIVER CONSTRUCTOR TIME/RETIRED PTS
1 Max Verstappen RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT 01:31:45 26
2 Sergio Perez RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT +22.457s 18
3 Carlos Sainz FERRARI +25.110s 15
4 Charles Leclerc FERRARI +39.669s 12
5 George Russell MERCEDES +46.788s 10
6 Lando Norris MCLAREN MERCEDES +48.458s 8
7 Lewis Hamilton MERCEDES +50.324s 6
8 Oscar Piastri MCLAREN MERCEDES +56.082s 4
9 Fernando Alonso ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES +74.887s 2
10 Lance Stroll ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES +93.216s 1
11 Zhou Guanyu KICK SAUBER FERRARI +1 lap 0
12 Kevin Magnussen HAAS FERRARI +1 lap 0
13 Daniel Ricciardo RB HONDA RBPT +1 lap 0
14 Yuki Tsunoda RB HONDA RBPT +1 lap 0
15 Alexander Albon WILLIAMS MERCEDES +1 lap 0
16 Nico Hulkenberg HAAS FERRARI +1 lap 0
17 Esteban Ocon ALPINE RENAULT +1 lap 0
18 Pierre Gasly ALPINE RENAULT +1 lap 0
19 Valtteri Bottas KICK SAUBER FERRARI +1 lap 0
15 Logan Sargeant WILLIAMS MERCEDES +2 lap 0

References

  1. Image Credits: @VerstappenCOM twitter
  2. Thumbnail Image Credits: www.formula1.com