\nEditor's Choice<\/h2>\n 2 Related<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n
Although Verstappen's victory on Saturday never looked in doubt, there were reasons why his rivals' challenge evaporated so quickly. Leclerc, who was only able to hold on to second place until the third lap, suffered brake problems early in the race which caused his Ferrari to pull to one side entering the corner and miss regularly the top, no matter how hard he tried to correct it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was impossible in the first 15 laps,\u201d he said after the race. \u201cThe problem was getting much worse with each lap, so I was basing my braking for turns 9 and 10 on the previous lap, which seemed too late all the time, but the problem was getting much worse, so every time I was braking. three meters earlier but still locked up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen on lap 15 or 20, the problem stabilized. The team told me on the radio that it was over 100 degrees. [Centigrade] I realized the best I could do was take the car home.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, since the problem didn't get better throughout the race, we started to be more consistent when the problem didn't get worse with each lap. All things considered, finishing fourth is a very good effort, but I'm obviously very disappointed with the result. Honestly, I think a second place would have been completely possible today.<\/p>\n
His teammate's pace seemed to underline Leclerc's optimism about his car's true potential. Sainz finished third, less than three seconds behind Sergio P\u00e9rez in the second Red Bull, after struggling to match Leclerc's level in qualifying.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt really good today,\u201d Sainz said. \u201cThe start wasn't ideal but from then on I managed my tires well.<\/p>\n
“And then from there I was able to pace myself, pass two or three cars on the way to the podium and then follow a Red Bull at the end, which was a pleasant surprise. Still not enough, not there wherever we want.” but it's a good step forward from last year and a good start to the season.”<\/p>\n\nMax Verstappen started the 2024 F1 season with a dominant victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix on Saturday. Mark Thompson\/Getty Images<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/aside>\nIn typical fashion, Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur put a positive spin on the result, emphasizing the fact that our knowledge of the cars' performance is based on a sample of just one of the 24 circuits on this year's calendar. .<\/p>\n
“First of all, I don't focus on Red Bull, I focus on myself and trying to make the best of what we have. What we had this weekend is not wasn't completely bad. We had too many small problems in qualifying yesterday and in the race today.<\/p>\n
“We also have to consider that Jeddah will be a completely different story, it's not the same layout and it's not the same track. We'll probably have a better idea of \u200b\u200bthe global situation after Melbourne.”<\/p>\n
“Before Melbourne it will be difficult to have a clear picture of the championship, but if you compare a year ago we were one second away and now we are maybe 0.5 seconds away. It's not enough , we are still behind, but to score the points of P3 and P4 today, in these circumstances, it is not a tragedy.<\/p>\n
Mercedes also encountered problems on Saturday evening, with overheating becoming a factor after the first stint. To deal with the problem, the team sacrificed a significant amount of performance which saw Russell fall from second place on lap three to fifth place at the finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe start went well and unfortunately we had to start cooling the engine more than expected,\u201d Wolff said. \u201cWe don\u2019t yet understand where this comes from.<\/p>\n\nLISTEN TO 'UNLAPPED'<\/h2>\n
Katie George, Nate Saunders and Laurence Edmondson get to know Formula 1 and the personalities behind it on 'Unlapped,' ESPN's weekly F1 podcast. Listen to \u201cUnlapped\u201d<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n
\u201cFrom that point on, when you had to turn off the powertrain performance for 0.3 to 0.4 seconds and you had to lift and coast, it cost us all 0.5 to 0.6 second we couldn't get anything out of the car…so it wasn't much fun.”<\/p>\n
Asked if there was a glimmer of hope in Sunday's result, Wolff added: “In qualifying we were quite close together. It was good and I think our performance was masked by our problems. P\u00e9rez is 20 seconds behind his teammate, so we have hope.” “Maybe that's the positive side that I can see, but it's very thin and far away and I can't see almost that far.”<\/p>\n
Russell also pointed out that the Bahrain circuit, which has always been an outlier on the F1 calendar due to its difficult track surface and the way it punishes the rear tires, likely played to Red Bull's strengths and exposed Mercedes' weaknesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe definitely have a much better car this year, which I think we can build on,\u201d he said. “Red Bull has always been strong here, as has Ferrari. I would say it's been a bit of a terrible circuit for us over the last couple of years, so I think it's too early to say. [if Red Bull will be as dominant elsewhere]”.<\/p>\n
Even the most optimistic version of Saturday's result would make it difficult to believe in a serious title fight this year. There is no doubt that Ferrari and Mercedes did not show their full potential in Bahrain and have a better foundation on which to build their performances this year than 12 months ago, but a margin of victory is unlikely of more than 20 seconds is entirely due to the characteristics of the track.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Red Bull remains wary of the improvements made by its rivals and, after a series<\/a> of questions on matters other than racing, Horner was keen to stress that his team would not rest on their laurels despite the RB20's dominant debut outing .<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve been in this business too long to draw too many conclusions from one race,\u201d he said. “It's a fantastic start, we will enjoy this moment, score as many points as possible. But it's a long season, many different venues, different challenges, different conditions. And what we saw in the tests, things are tighter.”<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we did things well this weekend, we entered the right cars in the race, we ran a perfect race with both cars and we got a great result. But I think it will converge. “<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Verstappen’s win in Bahrain hints at continued F1 dominance\u060c Laurence Edmondson, F1 editorMarch 2, 2024, 10:21 p.m. Close \u2022 Joined ESPN in 2009\u2022 F1 journalist accredited by the FIA \u200b\u200bsince 2011 SAKHIR, Bahrain \u2014 With each lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix, Max Verstappen extended his lead over his rival drivers and a fog of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28848,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11248,8657,5734,2695,4822,10],"class_list":["post-28847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","tag-bahrain","tag-continued","tag-dominance","tag-hints","tag-verstappens","tag-win"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28849,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28847\/revisions\/28849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}