Bahrain 2024 Wrapped

In a week with the Paddocks rumour mill on high alert and a Saturday race, let's have a look at how things played out on track at the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix. 

Practice

We saw 3 different drivers top the weekend's practice sessions, giving us some hope that perhaps the Red Bull and Verstappen dominance we saw in testing was not all it was chalked up to be, with the drivers coming onto the radio with complaints about the car. 

With no clarity on where the teams and drivers stacked up, it was roll on qualifying, with viewers eager to see if a new story was to be written at the season opener. 

Qualifying

Q1

Following the trend of practice the Red Bulls lacked and it was Sainz who topped Q1. 

Missing out were both Saubers of Zhou and Bottas and Sargeants Willaims. Most interestingly, both alpines qualified in P19&20 reflecting the worrying predictions for the team. 

Q2

Ferraris Leclerc topped the table in this session with his 1.29.1 being the fastest time of the whole qualifying hour… just one session too early!

Knocked out here were both RBs, the Williams of Albon, Magnussen in the Haas and Strolls Aston Martin. 

Q3

Any hope the previous sessions gave up was swiftly crushed with Verstappen taking the top spot, followed by the Ferrari of Leclrc and Russel in the Mercedes. 

The biggest shock of Q3 then came from the Haas of Hulkenberg. Following the low expectations set by the team a Q3 appearance is a shocking event - although one we have become somewhat accustomed to from Hulkenberg.

Qualifying followed the story of last year, but there was hope that race pace could through up some interesting outcomes.   

The Race

With lights out, Verstappen held the lead and the top 3 remained the same. Further back contact from Hulkenberg spun Stroll out but both drivers were able to continue. 

This season DRS is enabled from lap 1 but, Verstappen had already built a +1s lead after the first lap was over, negating the intended benefit. 

From there, issues with the Ferrari of Leclerc started to show with brake issues causing multiple lockups when turning, this meant he quickly dropped back to fourth, which quickly became 5th in a nailbiting overtake between the Scuderia’s pairing. 

By lap 20 the top 3 had Shaken out with Sainz overtaking Russel to claim the final spot on the podium behind a Red Bull 1-2, with Verstappen dominating with a 22-second margin on his teammate.  

Further back on the grid, the Mclaren gave a strong performance with a double points scoring finish along with Aston Martin which firmly secures the ‘top 5’ teams early on in the season. 

Surprisingly out of these 5 teams, Zhou finished the next best in P11, a distinct positive for the teams despite the 52-second pitstop for Bottas. In this pack the Haas’ outperformed the Alpines which is again a positive which can be taken from the season opener. 

A spin from Sargeant dropped him to the back of the pack, so, taking this into account it was the 2 Alpines who on pace fell to the bottom of the standings, which although not surprising looks ever worrying for the team who have subsequently lost key staff. 

Perhaps disappointingly there were no points scored by either RB driver despite a promising practice showing. Yet, there was drama as a result of team orders which Tsunoda was not happy about. This resulted in a shocking divebomb on teammate Ricciardo on THE COOLDOWN LAP !!!

We can definitely say that Bahrain wasn't a thriller… not just because of Red Bull's breezy dominance, but further back there wasn't much at stake with the top 10 all being the top 5 teams. Although due to differing track conditions, there is hope that Saudi may have more to offer in terms of close racing so…

Roll on the weekend !!

Ttyl, 

B xx