F1’s frightening 38-sec reality as wild card emerges; ‘embarrassing’ truth for McLaren

If you thought Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing were vulnerable at the start of the new season, think again.

There was no moment on Sunday at the Bahrain Grand Prix that the reigning champion was in anything other than complete control of the race. The extent of his dominion was so great that it was difficult not to see it extending all the way from here to the end of the season.

There were challengers, but none came close. Ferrari succumbed to old foibles, including yet another alarming power unit failure. Mercedes is still well off the pace after an off-season looked back upon as increasingly dissatisfying.

Even Sergio Perez couldn’t lay a glove on Verstappen, with a botched start ensuring he was never within striking distance despite decent pace.

While Verstappen romped into the distance, all these would-be contenders were stuck battling with the frontrunning pack’s newest member: Aston Martin and the ferocious Fernando Alonso, who was pulling no punches in his long-awaited arrival back to the front.

It was welcome reprieve from the suffocating dominance of the victor on a sparkling night for Red Bull Racing in the first race of the year.

Red Bull Racing finally stretches its legs

Verstappen wasn’t lying when he said on Saturday night that Red Bull Racing had been setting up the car for race day.

The paddock — maybe the team itself too — was surprised just how close the fight for pole was on Saturday, but there was absolutely no competition for victory come race day.

Verstappen’s race was won in effectively the first few seconds, with his clean launch all he needed to lock out the grand prix. Pulling away at almost a second lap in the opening phase of the race, he never meaningfully lost the lead and beat teammate Perez by a very comfortable 12 seconds.

More alarming, however, was the gap to the next non-Red Bull Racing finisher — it was a whopping 38.6 seconds back to Alonso in third at the flag.

After the intrigue of practice and qualifying in Bahrain, the RB19’s advantage over the field was every bit as great as feared after pre-season testing.

“I think we have a good race package,” Verstappen said after the first race of a season likely to feature many similar gross understatements. “Of course it will depend a bit race to race, but we can definitely fight with this.”

The only chink of light for a competitive season was Perez, who showed decent enough pace in Bahrain to keep the promise of an unlikely title challenge alive.

Only the Mexican’s poor start cost him a closer finish to his teammate. Dropping to third behind Charles Leclerc lost him 13 seconds to the lead in the 26 laps it took him to get back into second — that is, pretty much his deficit to Verstappen at the flag, even if the Dutchman had already engaged cruise mode by then.

Red Bull Racing said after testing that it had found a way to make the RB19 work for both Verstappen and Perez, and the evidence of the Bahrain Grand Prix suggests that might in fact be true — and potentially the saving grace of what already looks likely to be a very one-sided season.

Alonso on form could be the highlight of 2023

If Verstappen and Red Bull Racing are about to walk this season, Formula 1 must be breathing a sigh of relief that Aston Martin did the hard yards during the off-season deliver Fernando Alonso a podium-contending car.

The veteran Spaniard is in the kind of form that will see him easily carry the season on 41-year-old shoulders with his take-no-prisoners approach to racing and swashbuckling overtaking style.

There’s not much that comes close to watching Alonso size up rivals in a competitive car, and Bahrain featured more than just a few examples of why you should be salivating about the prospect of the two-time champion not only competing this year but perhaps vying for wins and maybe even the title in coming seasons.

His duel with former teammate Lewis Hamilton was sublime. The pair sparred for position through turn 4, with only a snap of oversteer denying him the place there.

But it only enlivened the Spaniard. His manoeuvring through the turns 5–7 and into eight gave him a great run into turn 9, from where he suddenly dived down the inside of turn 10 — not a conventional overtaking spot.

He then pursued Carlos Sainz. Dancing on the very edge of his car’s capabilities, he harried his compatriot into a mistake exiting turn 10 to earn himself a clear run down the back straight that delivered third place by turn 11.

“This is a lovely car to drive,” he said as he engaged cruise mode to the podium.

While third was somewhat lucky considering Leclerc’s retirement, Aston Martin clearly had better race pace than Ferrari. There’s also reason to think that a better first lap — one on which he wasn’t tagged by teammate Lance Stroll, costing both a couple of places — might have seen him put the podium beyond doubt even earlier in the race.

Whatever Aston Martin is capable of this season — and it’s clearly quite a lot, especially considering it will have a significant development allowance advantage over the frontrunners for the first half of the year — Alonso will ensure it’ll look spectacular achieving it.

Piastri suffers shocking debut

“Challenging start to the year” is the way Zak Brown described McLaren’s Bahrain Grand Prix in one of the weekend’s great understatements.

McLaren was one of only four teams not to be represented in Q3, placing it firmly in the lower midfield before the race had even started. Despite strong starts from both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, they both inevitably began sliding backwards as they struggled to extract consistent pace from the car.

Piastri did slide back for longer, however. By lap 13 he was reporting gearbox problems that forced him into an early stop for a steering wheel change, but the root of the issue was electrical, and once the car stopped in its box, it never got going again.

The Australian’s maiden race ended with a very early retirement.

Norris, meanwhile, was faring barely better. He’d already stopped on lap 10 to top up a pneumatic leak; he was forced to stop five more times for more air pressure.

He finished two laps down and 60 seconds off the back of the pack in last, as demoralising a result as they come.

It was as bad a first race as the team had feared after pre-season testing, albeit for slightly different reasons.

The MCL60’s pace wasn’t as dire as feared a week ago, but chronic unreliability has shown up the team as being painfully underprepared for the second season in a row.

This is more concerning for McLaren in this wayward phase of its competitive rebuild than just its car pace. While the team is fair — to a point — to attribute its slow development to the delays in bringing its new wind tunnel and simulator online, neither piece of infrastructure does anything for this kind of sloppy outcome.

McLaren’s mid-season update might improve speed, and it might set the team on a better development trajectory for next season, but it won’t mean much if it continues to embarrass itself with races like these.

The Ferrari power unit is up to its old tricks again

Ferrari had two major technical targets for the off-season: improved tyre wear and improved power unit reliability.

Bahrain was as damning an assessment of those targets as you could get.

Leclerc’s gamble on keeping a fresh set of soft tyres from qualifying paid dividends off the line, but the advantage didn’t last. Red Bull Racing’s race pace and degradation rate were simply overpowering, leaving the red car for dead.

Ferrari’s continuing race pace problems were underlined by Fernando Alonso’s late pass on Carlos Sainz — his tyres were only three laps fresher — and by Lewis Hamilton gaining on the Spaniard in the final laps despite using an older set of tyres.

It’s true that Bahrain is the most abrasive circuit on the calendar and that this year’s Ferrari seems less well suited to the traction-sensitive configuration that last season, but it’s impossible to give the team a pass mark regardless.

The more alarming development, however, was Leclerc’s late stoppage with a power unit failure, suspected to be related to the internal combustion engine.

Sunday started with Leclerc’s mechanics needing to change his battery and electronics system and may well have ended with yet more limited power unit parts needing to be put into his pool for the year, potentially threatening penalties after a single grand prix.

Title challenges can recover from here — Verstappen retired twice in the first three races of last year and romped to the championship — but considering the tyre wear rate, engine concerns and the gap to Red Bull Racing, there’s clearly still some way to go for Ferrari to convince that it’s a challenger.

Williams impresses under new team boss

James Vowles enjoyed a dream debut as just the third team principal in Williams history by navigating Alex Albon into the points in Bahrain./p>

The Thai driver is no stranger to pulling big results out of lacklustre grid slots, and this was another excellent defensive drive after Leclerc’s virtual safety car gave him the opening he needed to secure a top-10 finish.

It also represented a considerable turnaround from his pre-race talk about Williams being only a better version of last year’s last-placed team. Bahrain suggested it’s well in the fight in the lower midfield, which is comfortably within distance of sniping for points.

Logan Sargeant’s assured performance on debut is the supporting evidence. Finishing 12th and less than 10 seconds behind Albon at the end of his first grand prix distance is a big tick for the American rookie and must have Williams smiling at the thought that brighter days might be a little closer than first thought.