As David Croft would say, "It's lights out and away we go!". The first race of the season has taken place, and it has left us with quite a lot of news, let's review some of them:
Race summary
Quick debrief of the race
Right when the traffic light turned off all its lights we were immersed onto the first race of the season. Apart from a little race incident between Stroll and Hulkenberg, which costed both of them having to enter the pits, no major accident happened. Additionally, there were no relevant yellow flags nor Safety cars during the whole race.
When they only had done 10 laps, Max Verstappen was already in a 10s margin between him and the 2nd. This made everyone realize it's probably going to be a season of absolute dominance of Red Bull.
Carlos Sainz pulled an absolute superb race and was able to get on the podium alongside Verstappen and Pérez. As a consequence of his driving, he was awarded by the public with the Driver Of The Day award.
In the end, these were the podium results:
- P1: Max Verstappen (+26)
- P2: Checo Pérez (+18)
- P3: Carlos Sainz (+15)
Driver swap is never a pacific approach
In this race we were able to see one of the first, if not the first, polemic of the season, and that was the driver swap between Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo, both from Visa CashApp RB.
On their 3rd and last stint, Yuki was on the Hard compound, whilst Ricciardo was racing with the Soft compound. And right when Tsunoda was trying to overtake Magnussen to achieve P12 he was ordered in a team radio to swap places with Ricciardo, who was behind him, and he'd try to overtake Magnussen. It all resulted in P13 for Daniel and P14 for Yuki as Ricciardo, although he had a faster tyre, didn't have the pace to overtake the Haas driver.
All of this resulted in a burst of anger from Yuki, demonstrating it with a dive-bomb after the race to Ricciardo and then, before turn 9, putting both cars so close that it could've resulted in a post-race crash.
Wait, and what about Alpine?
It is clear to everyone that Alpine is not in their greatest moment of their F1 career. With both drivers qualifying last, Ocon being P19 and Gasly P20, they had absolutely no pace during qualifying nor in the race. And that resulted in a very poor performance by the French team, which, additionally, had to increase the number of air inputs to the engine due to overheating.
This problem, combined with extra weight, a poor engine which gives them a relatively bad top speed, and most recently, the departure of their aerodynamic director and technical director, creates even more doubts about how competitive will be Alpine this year.
Red Bull's civil war
It is all related to Christian Horner. After the dismissal of the "Case Horner" in which he was accused of sending inappropriate photos to a female worker, the proofs of it were leaked, and everyone got access to them.
After that, we've seen a lot of movement and talks between Jos Verstappen (Max's father) and other influential people in F1. Jos has stated the following:
The team is in danger of being torn apart. It can't go on the way it is. It will explode. He is playing the victim, when he is the one causing the problems.
This is clearly letting us know that Verstappen Sr. is not happy with Christian Horner and the possible departure of Max Verstappen earlier than expected is more alive than ever. He even has had appointments with Toto Wolff.
What is more, it is rumoured that engineers like Adrian Newey and other major people in RB might have a clause in which they'd be free to leave the team if Horner leaves his job.
One thing is sure, and that is that this "civil war" is not acting beneficially to neither Horner nor the team itself.
BREAKING NEWS: While I was writing this post, a rumour has been leaked. It says that Jos Verstappen wants Christian Horner out of Red Bull, if that isn't the case, he'll get his son out of the team.
Next week's schedule
Remember that because of the start of Ramadan, the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix has been moved to Saturday, and that was the reason for which we had the Bahrain GP on Saturday as well.
Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
| Session | Date * |
|---|---|
| Free Practice 1 | Thursday 13:30 PM |
| Free Practice 2 | Thursday 17:00 PM |
| Free Practice 3 | Friday 13:30 PM |
| Qualifying | Friday 17:00 PM |
| Race | Saturday 17:00 PM |
* All times are in UTC format.
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Miguel, Co-owner of SBOF1