Max Verstappen won pole position overnight at the Bahrain Grand Prix, but it was Charles Leclerc’s to lose.
We dared to hope during the unpredictable practice sessions leading up to the first race of the season that the gap between Verstappen and the rest at the pointy end of the field would be closer than expected after pre-season testing.
The first qualifying session delivered, with the fight for pole going down to the wire.
Every practice, qualifying session and race from the 2024 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE. New to Kayo? Start Your Free Trial Today >
A final margin of 0.228 seconds between Verstappen and Leclerc might appear underwhelming on the surface, but it required a perfect lap from the Dutchman and a fumble from Leclerc and Ferrari.
Just 0.059 separated the two protagonists after the first laps of Q3.
Verstappen improved by 0.242 seconds with his final lap, in line with expectations.
Leclerc improved by only 0.073 seconds. It was way less than he should have gained considering he switched from used soft tyres to a fresh set.
The evidence is at hand. Leclerc actually ended qualifying as the fastest driver, but he set his best lap in Q2.
Had he replicated that time in Q3, he would have pinched pole by 0.014 seconds.
MORE NEWS
‘I’m so sorry’: Mad Max stunned by pole in thrilling Bahrain quali as Hamilton, Ricciardo struggle
‘The gap is small’: Aussies react to brutal F1 reality check … but Ricciardo ‘didn’t drive s**t’
So the season starts with a lucky escape for Verstappen and an opportunity missed for Leclerc.
“I think [the used tyre] put us a little bit on the back foot, because the track is evolving and it’s a bit more difficult to read how much front flap you need to put for that last run,” Leclerc said. “There I think we lost a little bit the rhythm.”
Leclerc was forced onto the used tyre because Ferrari started qualifying with just four sets of softs, having used an extra set during practice earlier in the day.
It then miscalculated that Leclerc was unsafe in Q1, forcing him to scrub a set of tyres in the final minutes for security.
He didn’t complete that lap, but it nonetheless took the best out of the rubber. From that point his entire session fell slightly out of its rhythm.
“I’m not really happy about it, but it’s something we’ll discuss with the team,” Leclerc said. “I thought there was quite a lot of margin, but obviously being the first qualifying of the year, the team didn’t want to risk it, so we had to run again with another new soft.
“Again, it puts us a little bit on the back foot for the rest of qualifying.”
But even if the result is somewhat disappointing for Leclerc, the overall picture is optimistic after the first qualifying session of the season delivered a genuine contest between two teams.
Horner cleared but text messages leaked | 00:43
NOW COMES THE REAL TEST
Of course qualifying is one thing. Racing is entirely another.
We shouldn’t forget that Red Bull Racing’s qualifying margin over Ferrari in the dry was just 0.12 seconds last year, yet it still won 21 of 22 races.
Built into the 2023 car was a trade between qualifying pace and race pace, and Verstappen has hinted at the same exchange this season.
“We have done quite a few long runs now to the point where you almost get bored of it,” he said. “I’m confident that we have a good race car.”
There’s a particular trade-off between qualifying and race performance required in Bahrain too.
This circuit features some of the most abrasive asphalt anywhere on the calendar, and that combines with most of the corners being very traction sensitive. It’s a real tyre killer.
Setting up a car for maximum one-lap pace would be devastating to the rear tyres on Sunday, so teams tend to give their cars a more docile configuration with more understeer to protect the rubber.
That means handing back more qualifying performance than would be required at other circuits.
We can see a particularly good example of this between the Mercedes teammates.
George Russell qualified second, six places and 0.224 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
Explaining the margin, Hamilton said he set up his car differently to Russell to improve his race performance.
“The car is feeling really great, but I just went a little bit in a direction to help my race pace,” he said. “I wasn’t feeling as comfortable with that yesterday so that was the focus.
“I’ve definitely sacrificed more single-lap performance than I hoped too but I hope that pays off tomorrow.”
The change wouldn’t have been massive, but the result in lap time was large.
Looking at their telemetry, Russell makes up all his time in the corners, where he may be using his tyres more aggressively.
Comparing Verstappen and Leclerc’s telemetry shows a similar trend, with the Ferrari faster through the corners.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Verstappen is going to walk away from pole position to a dominant victory, however.
In testing Ferrari showed some formidable race pace. Even in practice on Thursday the team looked competitive over a long run.
Some amount of the time difference appears to be that the RB20 could be harder to set up, while the Ferrari could simply be an easier package to manage.
“I think also what you saw already yesterday in the long runs the gaps are small and it’s about attention to detail and that will make the difference also tomorrow,” Verstappen said.
Soon we’ll finally have our answer.
‘Piastri will win multiple Grand Prix’ | 01:32
HAAS GETS BIG BOOST
We’re witnessing a potentially interesting experiment unfold at Haas, which has been something of a sleeper team through the pre-season and during practice for the opening grand prix.
Haas has maintained a low profile under new team principal Ayao Komatsu. The Japanese boss, who has an engineering background, has kept the team strictly focused on trying to solve its woeful tyre problems of 2023. Rarely has he allowed the drivers to push on performance runs.
The strategy has been to find a set-up that worked for race pace and then adapt it for qualifying pace rather than the other way around.
It wasn’t until FP3, a few hours before qualifying started, that fuel was taken out of the car. Hülkenberg immediately put himself inside the top 10.
It appeared like an outlier result, but the German replicated it in qualifying, breaking into Q3 to qualify an excellent 10th.
Points will be difficult to cling to with at least one obviously faster car — Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin — behind him, but if he can race consistently on the fringe of the top 10, it will represent a great success for the team on one of the calendar’s most abrasive circuits.
The result also emphasises what a big difference a single driving performance can make to morale. Kevin Magnussen qualified five places behind and was an uninspiring 0.678 seconds slower in Q2 when his night ended.
Had both drivers been in that ballpark, Haas’s story would have been very different.
Instead Hülkenberg has given the team useful test — and a welcome boost.
Max blown away by world’s fastest drone | 01:07
ALPINE IN BIG TROUBLE
Whispers that Alpine would start the season as the slowest car were proved true, and emphatically so.
Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly locked out the back row of the grid and will start 19th and 20th.
This is the Renault works team, a grandee of the sport, that only last year thought it would be joining the frontrunning group. Now it’s dead last.
So comprehensive a flop as this would be considered unacceptable.
The team designed an all-new car for this season, extolling that only the steering wheel has been carried over.
But in exchange it’s ended up with a car that is rumoured to be as much as 11 kilos over the 798-kilo weight limit. It also appears to be aerodynamically inefficient — despite lacking downforce, it’s also slow down the straights.
Someone must finish last in every session. More teams will cycle through that place as the field gets closer — there was less than a second between first and Ocon in 19th at the end of Q1, and Gasly was only fractionally outside the one-second barrier after a mistake on his last lap.
It’s also worth remembering that McLaren was in pretty much this same position last year in Bahrain and recovered to be Red Bull Racing’s closest challenger by the end of the season.
But the pressure on Alpine is much higher given both its sudden decline and the management turmoil of recent seasons. It needs a strong showing in the race and to demonstrate it has a route forwards in the coming rounds, or else there’ll be serious questions asked about its direction.
#Red #Bull #Racings #Max #Verstappen #takes #pole #position #ahead #Ferraris #Charles #Leclerc #Haas #improvements #Alpines #struggles
