The reigning champion will not be denied.
The Bahrain Grand Prix was held on Saturday and not Sunday, but the song remained the same regardless of the day — Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was crowned the winner, and he won by a lot.
Verstappen finished the race 22 seconds ahead of teammate Sergio Perez to take both the first win of 2024 and his eighth win in a row going back to last season, two away from tying his own record. The podium was rounded out by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who had a great race in competition with his teammate Charles Leclerc — see how the full race turned out below:
The race was a rather droll affair all around, as Verstappen’s dominance was combined with a lack of safety cars or retirements from the entire grid. The two most interesting elements of the day both came from in-fighting via Ferrari and Visa Cashapp RB.
Leclerc appeared to have a massive problem with brake imbalance across the race, locking up constantly at hard-braking corners. This not only led to him dropping from second to fourth by the end of the race, but it allowed Sainz to take advantage, overtaking Leclerc twice to end up on the podium.
Meanwhile, the VCARB cars of Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo were in the spotlight due to team orders to swap the two cars while Tsunoda was fighting Kevin Magnussen of Haas for 12th place. Tsunoda initially ignored the order but eventually completed the swap, but he also appeared to divebomb Ricciardo during the in-lap when the race was over.
Daniel was left unimpressed after the chequered flag 😨#F1 #Formula1 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/buuONwnK8M
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 2, 2024
Red Bull’s next race is in Jeddah for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix next Saturday, and it will likely be more of the same as Verstappen pilots by far the fastest car on the grid.
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