Red Bull lead pack with the fastest car, says Mercedes chief
➤ Hamilton win masks strides made by rivals, concedes Wolff ➤ Alonso retirement caused by a discarded sandwich wrapper
Mercedes chief Toto Wolff has warned that Lewis Hamilton’s sublime drive to victory in Bahrain should not disguise the fact that Red Bull have the fastest car.
Hamilton produced a defensive masterclass to beat Max Verstappen to the chequered flag in the first grand prix of the new season. But Verstappen headed into the race off the back of a practice clean sweep and finished almost four tenths faster than Hamilton in qualifying.
He then looked primed to win in the closing stages, only to perform an illegal move, conceding the place to his rival, and crossing the line just 0.7 seconds adrift.
“If somebody told me before Sunday that a Mercedes win was going to be the result, I would not have believed them,” Wolff, the Mercedes team principal and CEO, said.
“We recovered well from the pre-season test but, if we are 100 per cent honest with ourselves, we are lacking quite a bit of pace in qualifying. In the past, Bahrain has not been a strong race for Red Bull, and they have not been particularly good out of the blocks either, but this weekend shows that in 2021, that is no longer the case.
“I have no doubt they are extremely difficult to beat, and are leading the pack. We have not suddenly found some awesome performance, but the win was a combination of good race strategy, a solid race car and being fortunate at the end. The racing gods were on our side.”
Following a hectic seasonopener, the sport will breathe for three weeks before the next round in Imola on April 18. But Hamilton’s wheel-to-wheel fight with Verstappen has whet the appetite for a season-long battle between the two brightest stars on the grid.
Asked if the sport was about to usher in one of the great rivalries, Wolff said: “I hope so, for all the fans and for all of us. On Sunday, we saw a tremendous battle between two very good teams and two very good drivers.”
Meanwhile, Alpine have confirmed that a discarded sandwich wrapper forced Fernando Alonso’s retirement from the race after it became lodged in his car’s rear brake ducts.
The two-time world champion retired from his first race since 2018 after the car’s rear brakes overheated shortly after his second stop, costing him any chance of a points finish as he began his third stint with the rebranded Renault outfit.
“After the second stop, a sandwich wrap paper got stuck inside the rear brake duct of Fernando’s car, which led to high temperatures and caused some damage to the brake system,” Marcin Budkowski, the team’s executive director, said. “We retired him for safety reasons.”
Alonso had qualified ninth for the race at Sakhir and was running as high as seventh after a strong start, but retired on lap 32 after dropping out of the points due to tyre issues. “The start was fun, we gained some places and I had some enjoyable battles with old colleagues. However, it was disappointing to not see the chequered flag in the end,” the 39-year-old said.
Sunday’s curtain-raiser had fans in attendance, after organisers had made tickets available to those fully vaccinated against Covid-19, or who had recovered from the virus. Most of last year’s races were behind closed doors.
‘In the past they have not been good out of the blocks, but in 2021 that is no longer the case’