Season Opener Bahrain GP 2024

If you’re wondering why we’re talking about the Bahrain GP already, that’s because the race was on Saturday.

Qualifying

The season kicked off as expected with Redbull starting the year from pole position with Max Verstappen.

Charles Leclerc and George Russell gave steep competition to the pole sitter in Qualifying on Friday. In fact, the Quali was so close between all teams that Q3 saw all 20 cars within a second of each other.

The teams in top 10 were no surprises, Redbull, Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Aston Martin competed for the fastest lap and the positions on the grid.

The surprise addition to top 10 was Nico Hulkenberg in a Haas, clinching that 10th position as Lance Stroll fell back.

The Quali concluded with the Alpines finishing P19, P20, a big blow to the team and both drivers.

Race

While in Quali, Lecrec’s Q2 performance was faster than Verstappen’s Q3, it really didn’t make any difference.

Max won the season opener race from the pole position, leading every lap, with the fastest lap of the race — a clean sweep of maximum points in a race.

Checo struggled in the beginning to move past Russell but did come in 2nd as the Mercedes dealt with car issues. While there were a few laps where it looked like it was a battle for the second place in the race, Perez pulled it off pretty smoothly.

Merecedes’ car trouble made Russell fall back further as Carlos Sainz took the third place, podium finish in this maiden race of the season and the final season with Ferrari. His smooth-operator performance earned him a very well-deserved Driver of the Day and Leclerc finished fourth with a Ferrari P3, P4. An optimistic beginning of the season from Ferrari. They faced overheating issues and Charles kept locking up on corners but the team has proven that the car has potential to give Redbull a run for their money.

While Lewis struggled with the car as well, George was able to secure a better position in the race than the seven time world champion.

Zhou finished at 11th, just outside the points but great performance from him in the Sauber.

Haas dropped to the back of the grid following their super Quali performance, P12 and P16, and the Alpines weren’t able to improve upon their performance much and finished the race from P17, P18 with Logan Sargeant finishing last for Williams.

Bottas’ long pit stop had him finishing in P19 and some team politics with the RBs saw a driver swap with 15 laps to go as they put Daniel Ricciardo in front to not really any advantage, they finished P13 and P14.

Lance Stroll finished just within the points at P10 and the McLarens gave Lewis a run for his money as they kept the pressure on him throughout, finishing P6 and P8 with Lewis in P7.

Takeaway

We are easily gearing up for another season of Redbull dominance on the track and there are no doubts left as all the sandbags came off the cars. Max led the pack with 12 to 27 second gap consistently. But the middle of the grid is firing up with cars being so competitive across teams this season. A couple of drivers and performances to look out for would be

1. Carlos Sains - as he doesn’t have a seat in 2025, he is surely looking to secure a place for himself and his performance this season has a lot riding on it.
2. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri - there is no doubt that McLaren is competitive this year out-pacing Aston Martin but we have seen the reversed situation last year when McLaren came back to compete with Aston Martin halfway through the season. This season could get interesting if Aston Martin catches up or if the McLarens start racing each other.
3. Lewis Hamilton - while it is clear that the Mercedes has issues to deal with, Lewis absolutely has to leave the team on a high and come back stronger next year. As he struggles behind the Ferraris in the middle of the field, it might look advantangeous for next season, but he has to make a bid for the championship this year as well. Russell out-performing him constantly will bring out some of the drama on and off the track.
4. Daniel Ricciardo - despite all the talk of the Honey Badger being back, there’s more people expect from Danny Ric and to aim for the second seat at Redbull, he needs to perform better than his teammate Yuki and finish in points. It will be interesting to see how the dynamics play out as Yuki was very evidently upset when asked by the team to give up his spot for the Aussie.

While it is still just the first race of the season and there is a long, long season ahead, longest ever in the Formula 1 history with 24 races on the calendar, Redbull dominance by a big margin has made the season already about the Constructors’ Championship and the battle for the seats ahead of silly season is a go.

Next race is next weekend, Saturday, in Jeddah.