Max Verstappen’s results show he had the perfect weekend. However, he failed to dominate in the sprint race on Saturday. At the start, Charles Leclerc roared past Verstappen and led much of the sprint in his powerful Ferrari. In the wanning laps, Leclerc’s tire degradation became too great, and Verstappen was able to finally overtake him for the Sprint race win.
Charles Leclerc started on pole and ended in first place. His Ferrari has consistently been the strongest car on the track for the first three weeks. In Formula 1, strongest does not necessarily mean the fastest. One must finish the race. Formula 1 is about speed and endurance, and Ferrari is proving that they have both. Their only real issue as a team occurred this weekend when Carlos Sainz car spun out on lap three. There is some talk that there were some issues with the car in the first place given that he qualified ninth. When he spun out, he beached himself in the gravel and thus had to retire from the race. Despite his DNF, Carlos Sainz sits third in the championship standings.
This weekend looked like it was going to be a Red Bull weekend. However, Max Verstappen started fourth on the grid with his teammate, Sergio Perez (Checo), on pole for the first time in his career. Checo kicked the race off well by blasting ahead away from the grid and holding a two second lead on Charles Leclerc for the first fifteen laps of the race. Ferrari was knocked off their game plan during Perez’s launch into lap one, as he pushed Leclerc wide right, Carlos Sainz was also pushed wide right allowing Verstappen to undercut Sainz on the left and gaining third position. At lap 15 Red Bull made the unlucky decision to pit Sergio Perez. Under normal circumstances this was the right strategy. No one could have predicted that Nicholas Latifi would crash his Williams car into the wall during lap 16. This untimely crash allowed the rest of the field to pit under yellow leaving Checo in third place. Checo never recovered his pole position in the race.
Ferrari started their Bahrain weekend at the top of the pyramid. It became apparent during practice one, two and three that they had a strong engine. Every team, including Ferrari were working out kinks with their new cars during the practice runs. However, Ferrari showed that they had the pace and potential to have a great opening weekend. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz qualified first and third on Saturday, while Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez qualified second and fourth respectfully. Mercedes has some catching up to do and qualified fifth and ninth respectfully. The surprise team of the year is Haas. Kevin Magnussen is back in a Haas seat, and he qualified seventh. It is worth noting that Haas is powered by Ferrari. In fact, four Ferrari powered cars qualified in the top seven. Valtteri Bottas qualified sixth in his Ferrari powered Alpha Romeo. McLaren disappointed in qualification and on race day. They were simply not a factor this weekend. They have a long way to go to become competitive this year.
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