What did we learn: Bahrain GP
Max Verstappen won the opening race of the 2023 Formula One season but the battle for third was a hotly contested affair.
Fernando Alonso’s horrific drive to finish third was one of pure beauty. The pace the Aston Martin showed in Preseason Testing looks to have continued into the first competitive race of 2023 with Lance Stroll finishing sixth. In his charge through the field Alonso passed George Russell, Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz.
It was almost a terrible weekend for the team when Lance Stroll went into the back of Alonso on the first lap but luckily both drivers drove away without any serious damage to their cars.
Alonso was helped by Charles Leclerc who had to retire from the race due to engine problems. Not a good start to the year for Ferrari.
Other honourable mentions of the weekend include Pierre Gasly who finished ninth, compared to his teammate Ocon who had a DNF.
Williams also had a good weekend. Albon finished tenth and Sargeant finished 12th.
So, what did we learn from the weekend?
- Red Bull have the quickest car, at this stage of the season, and by a large margin. Max Verstappen finished almost 40 seconds clear of the next non Red Bull car.
- We also learnt that no matter what the FIA say to Lewis Hamilton he will never remove his nose piercing citing a medical note from a doctor as the reason for why he cannot remove it. He said there are “concerns about disfigurement with frequent attempts at removal of the device”.
- During qualifying we experienced one of the closest qualifying in Q1 ever. All the cars were within 1.1 seconds of each other. Even more impressive is that there was less than a 0.7 seconds between First to 16th in Q1
.
Let’s just hope George Russell can cheer up a bit in time for the next round in Saudi Arabia, on March 19th, he said this about Red Bull. “They have this championship sewn up.
“I don’t think anybody is going to be fighting with them this year. They should win every race is my bet with the performance they’ve got.”