BAHRAIN GP WINNER LEWIS HAMILTON BRACED FOR ‘TOUGHEST’ F1 SEASON YET
Mercedes man says pressure from Red Bull will complicate his bid for an eighth World crown
World champion Lewis Hamilton has acknowledged the threat from rival team
Red Bull and its driver Max Verstappen after victory at a thrilling season-opener in Bahrain on Sunday.
The Mercedes man won his 96th race in the desert but had to endure a strategic tussle with Verstappen. The Dutchman actually took the lead with four laps to go but was forced to hand the place back as he had completed the move off the circuit.
Hamilton said he had predicted that victory in the opening race – only the third time he had claimed the F1 curtain raiser win – would be a difficult task.
“Max was all over me at the end and I was just about able to hold him off. That was one of the hardest races I’ve had for a while,” said Hamilton.
Despite missing out on the win, Verstappen said he was happy with the performance: “We are really taking the fight to them, and I think that’s great to start the year like that.”
Red Bull star Max Verstappen says that his team will learn the lessons from his defeat in Bahrain last weekend and come out even stronger for the remainder of the season.
The Dutch star, running on preferable harder tyres, hunted down leader Lewis Hamilton over the closing stages of the opening grand prix of the season and made a pass into Turn 4. However, the Honda-powered car ran off the circuit and Verstappen was forced to back off and allow the Mercedes to retake the initiative. Verstappen was unable to mount a further attack in the remaining laps and crossed the line just
0.7 seconds behind Hamilton.
The second-placed finisher said that he would work with the strategy boffins at Red Bull to try to defeat Mercedes in the future, but he added that he was delighted with the increase in competitiveness from his car.
Verstappen said: “We’ll have to analyse what we could have done better, maybe. We didn’t have the tyres like [Merc] had so we didn’t really have a lot of flexibility in the strategy. So maybe also there we could have done better in choosing our tyres throughout the practice.
“[But] last year we would have been super-happy with this result and now we are disappointed, so we definitely made a good step forward and of course it is still a very long season. We just have to get on with it and try to do better.”
Hamilton added that he too was looking forward to a glovesoff battle with Verstappen – and his team-mate Valtteri Bottas, who finished third.
The seven-time champion said: “I’m super excited and super happy for the fans, that they are excited [too]. I think it’s something that all the fans have wanted for a long time. Of course, this is only one race, so we don’t know what the future holds in terms of the pace they have, they could be ahead a lot more, but we’re going to work as hard as we can to try and stay close in this battle and I hope for many more of these sorts of races with Max and Valtteri.”
Behind Bottas, Lando Norris claimed a competitive fourth place for McLaren in the first race back with a Mercedes-Benz powerplant, while Sergio Perez, who had been forced to start from the pitlane after a technical problem on the warmup lap with his Red Bull, climbed back through the pack for fifth spot. Charles Leclerc was sixth in the leading Ferrari. Results 1 Lewis Hamilton 1h32m03.897s; 2 Max Verstappen (Red Bull-Honda) +0.745s; 3 Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes) +37.383s; 4 Lando Norris (McLarenMercedes) +46.466s; 5 Sergio Perez (Red Bull-Honda) +52.047s; 6 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +59.090s; 7 Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren-Mercedes) +1m06.004s; 8 Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) +1m07.100s; 9 Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri-Honda) +1m25.692s; 10 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin-Mercedes) +1m26.713s. Points: 1 Hamilton 25; 2 Verstappen 18; 3 Bottas 16; 4 Norris 12; 5 Perez 10; 6 Leclerc 8. Next race: Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Imola, Italy, April 18