Max Verstappen’s quest for a fourth consecutive Formula 1 world title started emphatically on Saturday evening when he pulverized the opposition during the Bahrain Grand Prix. Autoweek rounds up the most important talking points.
Victorious Verstappen, again
Extract the script from F1 2023 and CTRL+C, CTRL+V it.
This was ruthless brutality from Verstappen, as any apparent hopes rivals had of a closer title fight were well and truly extinguished before the season opener was even halfway through. At times Verstappen was 0.8-1.0 seconds faster than the chasing pack, leading the RB20 around the floodlit Sakhir Circuit with ease, as he opened the year with a Grand Chelem: pole position, fastest lap, all 57 laps on the lead and the race victory.
It was Verstappen’s eighth victory in a row, after he ended 2023 with seven consecutive victories.
It raises the prospect of another season of crushing dominance. Last year, Verstappen won 19 of 22, surpassing his previous record of 15 in 2022, and there is a good chance that this number can be immediately improved given the extended 24-round season in 2024. Verstappen and Red Bull’s supremacy, and the bold design of the RB20, are to be applauded, but the performance in Bahrain was bad news for a championship that desperately needs an injection of excitement and uncertainty.
“I just think everything worked very, very well today,” said Verstappen, underestimating the situation. “And of course I don’t expect this to happen every Grand Prix in the near future. So we will take it anyway, we will of course look back at it, we will analyze it and we will try to improve it further.”
Teammate Sergio Perez rose from fifth to second to complete a Red Bull 1-2, giving the team a perfect start, but boss Christian Horner was quick to throw caution to the wind.
“I’ve been in this business too long to draw too many conclusions from a single race,” he said. “It’s a fantastic start, we will enjoy this moment, maximum points score. But it’s a long season, lots of different locations, different challenges, different conditions. And what we saw in the testing is that things are closer. Now we did well this weekend, we brought the right cars to the race, we ran a perfect race with both cars and we had a great finish. But I think it will converge.”
But Mercedes boss Toto Wolff summed up the situation by stating: “I think Max is not in a different class today, but he is in a different galaxy, the performance is extraordinary.”
The battle against Sainz offers a reminder
Carlos Sainz was already something of a forgotten man in 2024, amid the news of his replacement for 2025 at Ferrari by Lewis Hamilton. Sainz reminded potential employers of his quality with an exciting drive in Bahrain, recovering from a somewhat slow breakaway to rise from fifth to third, past George Russell and Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc, a move he had to complete twice due to stop their pit strategies
“I think it’s just important to start the season well, start the season with a strong race, just not for my future, just for myself, you know, because last year I spent a lot of the races, you know , looking in my mirror, saving tires, defending my position,” said Sainz. “And I remember at the car launch saying, yeah, I wish we had a car this year to go racing, you know, and attack people and not care too much about the tires and do some overtaking and look forward instead of looking back. And it’s exactly what we got. You know, I have an attacking race, a very good race pace. And from that moment on everything felt really good to finish in P3. It was a simple and easy race, but yes, I enjoyed it a lot.
Leclerc, meanwhile, was crippled by a braking problem that caused the car to pull to one side, causing inconsistent lap times and driver frustration. He nevertheless managed to take fourth place – “all things considered it’s a very good performance” – but felt that second place was easily within reach. Nevertheless, he revealed that the problem had manifested itself earlier during testing and the cause is still unknown.
Boss Fred Vasseur was cautiously optimistic.
“It’s a very long season and there is room for improvement,” Vasseur said. “Yesterday we were fighting for pole, but in the race in Bahrain the relegation is always huge for everyone and we will have other opportunities to start from pole and other opportunities to win races. We will maintain this approach, push hard and everyone in the team is motivated. I’m quite happy with the step we’ve taken compared to twelve months ago. We will continue with our lead.”
Has Mercedes George Russell already lost the 2024 title?
It was a strange display from Mercedes, with the W15’s ultimate performance masked by cooling problems. George Russell had a fast opening stint and moved into second place, but was overhauled by both Ferrari drivers as he needed to cool the car for reliability purposes.
“As soon as I passed Charles I had big red alarms on the steering wheel,” said Russell. “We had to turn off the power to prevent the engine from overheating. It cost us 0.4 euros per lap and at that point we went backwards.”
Russell played down the idea that this is a longer-term problem – given the atypically cool conditions in Bahrain – and said Mercedes had simply been too aggressive. But he was open about the state of affairs.
“We definitely have a much better car this year,” he said. “Red Bull has always been strong here. This also applies to Ferrari. I would say this has been a bit of a bogey circuit for us over the last few years. But you know, Max is a favorite. I don’t think anyone will fight him for the championship this year.”
Lewis Hamilton made only marginal gains from ninth on the grid, passing the slower Fernando Alonso before passing Oscar Piastri through the pit stop phase.
Terrible Alps
Alpine had a terrible start to the 2024 season when Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly were the slowest drivers in qualifying and were actually the slowest drivers in the race. Their final positions of 17e and 18e were only improved by Valtteri Bottas enduring a one-minute pit stop, and by Logan Sargeant stopping briefly on track after a steering problem. Alpine was prepared for a slow start with its new design concept and there are updates in the pipeline – perhaps as early as the third round in Melbourne – but any new components will need to deliver huge gains to avoid 2024 becoming a write-off. There are already rumors of departure within the technical structure.
“Today was a continuation of what we saw in qualifying and overall it was not the weekend we wanted,” said Esteban Ocon. “The most important thing is that we had a clean race and collected valuable data that we can take into the race in Jeddah. We will dig in and put our heads together during the short break between races and see where we can improve.”
Gasly agreed that “we have many areas that we need to continue to improve and I know the hard work behind the scenes will continue. We have to keep taking steps forward, because we are not yet where we want to be.”
It could be a very bleak season for Alpine.
Haas starts 2024 with an encouraging outing
Haas scored no points, with Kevin Magnussen 12e and Nico Hulkenberg 16e after the contact on the first lap he was out of sync, but this was an encouraging display. Haas was hampered in race trim by chronic tire wear in 2023 and the pattern of the Grand Prix was for Magnussen and Hulkenberg to hold positions for a few laps before dropping like stones through the lower midfield. In Bahrain Magnussen rose from 15e to 12e on the opening lap and held that position until the checkered flag, following a conventional two-stop strategy, in a race with 20 finishers.
“We didn’t score any points, okay, and we still need to find more speed to become a regular points scorer, but we were two positions ahead. [of the top 10] Nothing crazy happened at the front, so this was a fairly normal race, a decent result,” said Magnussen. He warned that “it’s one song, one [type of] asphalt and that “we still have to prove that we have made progress [at other tracks] but this felt better than last year’s race.
“I feel like I’m on par with the guys I race with in terms of tire performance. I don’t feel wronged today. We have to find more speed, we have to tighten our pit stops and lose less. positions around the stops and things like that. If this is the case with this tire performance, we suddenly have to look at other things that we weren’t looking at before – that’s positive.”
Hulkenberg added that “our race pace and tire degradation seemed quite reasonable compared to other midfield runners, and I think we are fighting Williams, Sauber and RB, so I think we take that as a positive. ”
FORMULA 1 GULF AIR BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX 2024 – RACE RESULT
|
Pos |
No |
Director |
Car |
Laps |
Time/retired |
PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Note – Verstappen scored an extra point for setting the fastest lap of the race.