Tag: Bahrain GP

Max Verstappen romped to victory at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of teammate Sergio Perez.

The Dutchman led every lap of the race after launching pole position and set the fastest lap of the race for his fifth career grand slam. His controlled 22.457s margin amounted to a 0.39s advantage per lap over the field,

“Unbelievable,” he said. “I think today went even better than expected.

“We had a lot of pace. Super enjoyable to drive today. A great start to the year. It couldn’t have been better.

“It’s always very special to have these kinds of days, because they don’t happen often when it all goes perfectly and you feel one with the car.”

Teammate Perez made quick progress from fifth on the grid, gaining a place from Carlos Sainz off the line and picking off Charles Leclerc and George Russell by lap 14, the latter with a gutsy move into Turn 4 after the first stops.

Second is Perez’s best result since last September’s Italian Grand Prix.

“I think it was the maximum we could have achieved,” Perez said. “It’s good team momentum. We’ve got to keep it up for the coming weekend.”

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Carlos Sainz completed the podium after capitalizing on problems for both teammate Charles Leclerc and Mercedes’s George Russell.

Sainz had to battle past the sister Ferrari twice — before and after the first pit stop — with a pair of robust moves into the first turn while Leclerc suffered with a brake temperature imbalance between his front wheels, leaving him weak on the brakes.

Russell was easier pickings, with both Mercedes drivers hamstrung by overheating cars.

Sainz was quick enough to keep Perez honest in the middle of the race, but the Spaniard didn’t have a set of softs to go with the Red Bull Racing driver in the final stint, leaving him confined to third.

“I felt really good out there today,” he said. “Still not enough, not where we want to be, but a good step forward from where we were last year and a solid start to the season.”

Leclerc followed Sainz home in fourth after passing the limping Russell for the place with 10 laps to go, the Briton making a mistake and running off the road at turn 10 to make himself an easy pass.

Lando Norris survived a late pursuit from Lewis Hamilton to hold on for sixth place. Teammate Oscar Piastri finished eighth after being undercut by Hamilton at the stops.

Fernando Alonso took two points for ninth after a late second stop required him to charge past Zhou Guanyu and then teammate Lance Stroll, the Canadian backing him up in 10th in a remarkable recovery from the back of the pack after being spun around at the first turn.

Zhou finished a strong 11th for Sauber ahead of Kevin Magnussen and RB teammates Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda.

Ricciardo was ordered past Tsunoda in the final five laps — much to the frustration of the Japanese driver, who was within a second of Magnussen and attempting to size up a pass at the time of the instruction. Verstappen lapped all three of them shortly afterwards, breaking up the pursuit, and the Australian ran out of laps to try to break the Dane’s defenses, leaving the order fixed.

Alex Albon finished ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, whose top-10 start was undone at the first turn, where he damaged his front wing tipping Stroll into a spin on the apex. It forced the German into a first-lap unscheduled stop, from which his race never recovered.

The unhappy Alpine pair of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly trundled home 17th and 18th, spared the blushes of finishing last only by misfortune for others.

Valtteri Bottas toiled in the lower reaches of the midfield but had his race obliterated by a stuck left-front wheel at his second stop that held him stationary in his box for almost 60s.

Logan Sargeant finished two laps down after a steering wheel issue spat him off the road at Turn 4 on lap 10. He limped back to pit lane for an unplanned stop and steering wheel change and spent a lonely evening at the back of the pack thereafter.

Max Verstappen stormed to pole position for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

The reigning champion was challenged more closely than expected by Leclerc through the hour, with just 0.059s separating them after their first laps of Q3 despite the Monegasque using used tires for his initial attempt.

Pole seemed sure to go down to the wire, but Leclerc failed to improve as expected with new rubber bolted to his car, finding only 0.073s on his second lap.

It paved the way for Verstappen to snare top spot with a sizzling time of 1m 29.179s with his new Red Bull — slower than Leclerc had managed in Q2 but enough for the Dutchman to end qualifying unbeaten.

“To really get everything out of it in Q3 was a little bit more difficult,” he said. “But of course I’m very happy to be on pole.

“To be honest, I was a little bit unexpected, but luckily in qualifying the car came to us. I’m confident that we can have a strong race.”

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Leclerc ended up 0.228s behind Verstappen, and though he was buoyed by Ferrari’s competitiveness, he was frustrated not to have strung together the pole lap.

“I’m a bit disappointed, but we did a good qualifying,” he said. “It’s been a tricky weekend until now. I think we lost a little bit the rhythm with the used set of [softs] in Q3.

“We really think that Red Bull is still ahead by quite a bit in the race. We’ll see. If there’s an opportunity, as always I’ll go for it.”

George Russell was pleased to validate Mercedes’s off-season improvements, though he didn’t think Verstappen could be caught in race trim.

“We’ve obviously made a big step forward in single-lap and with quali pace,” he said. “We hope we haven’t compromised the race pace at all. I think it’ll be a close fight between everybody other than Max.”

Carlos Sainz qualified 0.022s behind Russell to join him on the second row of the grid.

Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso will share the third row of the grid, the Mexican pipping the Spaniard by only 0.005s.

McLaren teammates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri ended the session closely matched, with just 0.069s splitting them on the fourth row.

Lewis Hamilton was more than 0.2s down on teammate Russell to qualifying ninth, while Nico Hulkenberg was 10th for Haas, the German left with only used tires after unexpectedly making it through to Q3.

Yuki Tsunoda will lead the way for RB from 11th on the grid after being pipped for a spot in the top 10 by just 0.007s.

Lance Stroll was only fractionally behind for 12th on the grid, but that amounted to more than 0.3s behind teammate Alonso.

Alex Albon will line up 13th for Williams ahead of Daniel Ricciardo in the second RB, while Kevin Magnussen was a whopping 0.678s slower than teammate Hulkenberg to claim 15th on the grid.

Valtteri Bottas led Sauber teammates Zhou Guanyu in 16th and 17th, the pair split by just 0.001s and just over 0.1s outside of a Q2 berth.

Logan Sargeant streak of qualifying defeats to teammate Albon continued into a second season, the American qualifying 18th, some 10 places and 0.373s behind the sister car.

Alpine’s poor start to the season was confirmed, with Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly locked onto the back row of the grid, 01.47s and 0.302s respectively off progression.