(Reuters) – Team by team review of Formula One’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix on Saturday (listed in their current championship order):
RED BULL (Max Verstappen 1, Sergio Perez 2)
Verstappen started the season with a grand slam of pole position, fastest lap (lap 39) and leading all 57 laps. The victory was the 55th of his career, and fifth grand slam, lifting Red Bull level with Williams in fourth place on the all-time lists with 114. The gap to Perez of 22.457 seconds compared to last year’s 11.987 advantage. Verstappen has now led the championship for 40 races in a row. Perez started fifth and took fourth from Sainz at the start and then third from Leclerc before passing Russell on fresh tyres for second.
FERRARI (Carlos Sainz 3, Charles Leclerc 4)
Leclerc started on the front row but was passed by Mercedes’ Russell on lap three. He then complained of oversteer and the car pulling to the right when braking. He dropped to fifth but took back fourth on lap 47 when Russell ran wide. Sainz dropped from fourth to fifth at the start but twice passed his team mate and ended the race on hard tyres and less than three seconds behind Perez, who was on softs.
MERCEDES (George Russell 5, Lewis Hamilton 7)
Russell started third, and ran as high as second early on before dropping back. Hamilton lined up ninth and twice passed Alonso as well as Piastri. Both had to manage over-heating power units after the team misjudged the cooling configuration.
MCLAREN (Lando Norris 6, Oscar Piastri 8)
Norris started seventh with Piastri eighth on the grid. Both made two stops. Norris said the wind had been a problem and felt a lot worse in some corners at a circuit the team always knew would be difficult.
ASTON MARTIN (Fernando Alonso 9, Lance Stroll 10)
Stroll spun at the first corner after a tangle with Haas’s Hulkenberg, dropping to last. He fought back with tyre management and some overtakes. Alonso started sixth but soon fell back and had a generally quiet race, hoping for a safety car and eking out his tyres.
SAUBER (Guanyu Zhou 11, Valtteri Bottas 19)
No repeat of last year’s fastest lap for Zhou, who qualified 17th and pitted on laps nine and 28. Bottas suffered front wing damage after being caught up in the Turn One incident between Stroll and Hulkenberg and then lost more time with a cross-threaded wheelnut on his second stop.
HAAS (Kevin Magnussen 12, Nico Hulkenberg 16)
Haas looked generally more competitive than they had expected, with Hulkenberg qualifying 10th but his race immediately wrecked at the first corner. The German had to stop at the end of lap one for a new front wing, his first of three stops. Magnussen started 15th and moved up to 12th on the opening lap before holding off a strong challenge from the RBs.
RB (Daniel Ricciardo 13, Yuki Tsunoda 14)
Tsunoda was told to swap places with Ricciardo five laps from the end as they chased Magnussen, a request he did not take kindly to and asked: “are you kidding me?”. Ricciardo reported a problem with his car’s front axle just after the halfway point.
WILLIAMS (Alexander Albon 15, Logan Sargeant 20)
Sargeant had to change his steering wheel at a pitstop due to electronics issues that had first surfaced in qualifying. Albon said his power unit was overheating through the race, leaving him down on power.
ALPINE (Esteban Ocon 17, Pierre Gasly 18)
The two French drivers started on the back row and the race was as difficult as they had expected. Gasly had a good start but was then caught in the Turn One action, with cars spinning in front of him.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Christian Radnedge)
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