NORMAL SERVICE HAS BEEN RESUMED FOR MAX
Choppy waters in the paddock, but plain sailing on the track.
Abanner inside the Formula 1 paddock in Bahrain read: ‘A season of extraordinary starts here.’And yet, the result of Saturday’s race suggested this was merely a continuation of last year. Max Verstappen dominated proceedings, finishing over 20 seconds ahead of his Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez.
Mercedes’Toto Wolff described Verstappen as being in another “galaxy” to the opposition, but there are glimmers of hope that Red Bull’s advantage was exaggerated at the Bahraini circuit. The chasing pack are certainly in a better position than they were 12 months ago.
But it’s impossible to ignore the internal situation Red Bull found itself in. Team boss Christian Horner honoured his usual round table with media after the race, but he was noticeably drained. Earlier in the day he’d put on a unified front with wife Geri Halliwell, however the tensions in his private life and within the Red Bull organisation were clear for all to see.
“I can’t comment on what people are choosing to write,” he said quietly to a large gathering of reporters. “My focus is on the team, my family, and the team around me. I have their full backing so it’s about looking ahead and moving forward.
“I’m not going to comment on whatever motives a person may have for doing this,” he added.
“My focus is on going racing.”
As far as he was concerned, the inquiry over a grievance from a female colleague was thoroughly investigated and dismissed. But during the weekend a series of messages were emailed to over 100 journalists and senior F1 personnel from an anonymous source. Then after the race Jos Verstappen waded in on the controversy saying the team would “explode” if Horner remained in his position.
It’s an unfortunate reality that the saga was given so much attention but that was partly due to the lack of on-track action. And as Red Bull continues to dominate the sport, rivals are hoping that internal disruption could yet have an impact on on-track matters.
Wolff was asked on Saturday evening whether the friction could potentially lead to Verstappen heading to Brackley in 2025 – and you can imagine how quickly he dismissed the idea – but his father’s comments won’t be helpful for the World champion’s bid to claim a fourth title. Although, his clean sweep in Sakhir was the perfect riposte to the divisions going on around him.
“I think today was probably better than expected,” said the Dutchman on Saturday evening. “The thing that changed was the wind and the intensity of it. So I had a better feeling with the car and I could look after my tyres quite well at the same time. I’m happy to kickstart the season like this, but also as a team, to have a one-two is fantastic. Everything just worked really well, but I don’t expect that to happen in every single grand prix.”
Will Red Bull dominate the year again?
The 25-second margin Verstappen enjoyed over Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was masked by a couple of factors. Firstly, in the 20-year history of the Bahrain Grand Prix, the track has never been resurfaced. It has an extremely coarse texture that chews up tyres – particularly the rears. The Red Bull clearly continues the trait of the RB19 and is kind to its Pirellis, so degradation was not as punishing for the race winner. As a result the top two switched to the softs for the final stint, while virtually every other runner ran a hard set.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc set a qualifying time in Q2 that would have been good enough for pole if he’d repeated it in the final period of the session and his race was troubled by overheating brakes – a number of times he locked up at the tricky Turn 10 left-hander and ran off the road. Switching the brake balance to the rear only sought to work the rear axle more, so his tyre wear was more significant.
Podium finisher Sainz also revealed that his brake pedal went “long” a couple of times, but didn’t have issues to the same extent as Leclerc and passed his team-mate on the exit of Turn 1 on lap 11.
“At the first stint and the beginning of the second stint, whenever we were in traffic, we were having a lot of brake vibrations, so it was always a balancing act between going for it to try and get rid of the dirty air and overtake people, or thinking about saving my brakes because they’re going to fail,” said the Spaniard. “I started saving by moving a bit on the straight to cool the side that was getting hotter and the vibration started to get better. And then I could start to move forward.”
Sainz was hunting down Perez for second in the closing stages, but admitted he didn’t have the pace to overhaul him.
“When I knew Red Bull had a new soft for the last stint, it’s not like I went, ‘OK, this is my chance’. I’ve seen the long runs they did on the soft tyre in testing, and you could see they had the same deg on the soft that everyone had
“Today was better than I could have expected”
Max Verstappen
on the hard. So I wasn’t getting too excited. Also, I was in a bit of an uncomfortable position, as I was in the two, three-second margin, which is where you get all the dirty air.”
Overheating became a talking point after the race, as throughout testing and practice, drivers had not run in close company with each other.
While Ferrari had issues with brakes, Mercedes had not accounted for the additional cooling required and needed to turn down its power units. Its pace was masked by these issues – which also affected the two Williams cars – and Lewis Hamilton also reported his seat had cracked during the race.
“There is maybe a silver lining I can see,” said Wolff after the performance of the Mercedes was an improvement on where it was 12 months ago, “but it is very thin and far away and I almost can’t see that far,” he smiled.
Who else ran into trouble in Bahrain?
The pecking order vaguely continues where the end of last year finished. McLaren is in the mix with Mercedes with Aston Martin close behind. Off the start Lance Stroll was unfortunate to get knocked into a spin by Haas’s
Nico Hulkenberg, who was also tapped by Valtteri Bottas’s luminous green Sauber behind him. Hulkenberg pitted for a new front wing at the end of the lap, while Bottas suffered a cross-threaded wheelnut on his front-left during his second stop.
He was stationary for 52 seconds while another wheel was sought.
In a race of no retirements, Williams’ Logan Sargeant finished 20th and last, two laps down, and he too was provided with an additional wheel during his pitstop – a steering wheel. A new dash was causing electronics issues and at one stage caused him to lock up at Turn 4 on lap 10.
Despite Stroll’s rotation at the start, he recovered to take the final points position with 10th place.
His Aston Martin team-mate Fernando Alonso ran a long middle stint and was one of the last to pit for a second time, it meant a neat swap of positions between the pair in the final stages, so after 57 laps, Alonso finished ninth behind the Mercedes and McLarens.
That choreography was not mirrored at the newly named RB team (formerly AlphaTauri). For the final stop, Daniel Ricciardo was placed on the soft tyre and he quickly caught team-mate Yuki Tsunoda who was running in 13th place.
The Japanese racer was in close proximity to Kevin Magnussen’s
Haas ahead, but wasn’t finding a way past. Then came the dreaded order from the pitwall that no driver wants to hear: “We’ll do the swap this lap…”
The inevitable reply came back:
“Are you kidding me?!” Ricciardo, who was now right behind his teammate could see what was happening. “Yeah, I don’t need to say anything,” was his dry reply to his engineer.
Finally, with just a handful of laps remaining the switch occurred and Ricciardo gave it everything to try and get past Magnussen. He was close – but not close enough and finished 13th.
Tsunoda then made his displeasure known to Ricciardo on the slow down lap. He accelerated past at
Turn 8, locked up, then blasted past the Australian again on the run to Turn 9.
“What the f***, he’s a f**king helmet,” said Dan as the fireworks lit up the night sky.
The 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix will not be remembered for its thrilling action, but will be for its dramatic intrigue and internal turmoil going on in the paddock at Red Bull. Whatever the final outcome of this saga, it was certainly an extraordinary start to the new season off the track.