The first race of the season turned out to be a lot different than most of us expected, for sure. A guess had been that the other teams would be closer to Red Bull’s competitiveness but the reality turned out to look quite different.
Already in the first 7 rounds Verstappen managed to gain a lead of 5 seconds while Leclerc, who a lot of people expected to be the closest to Verstappen, struggled with his cars front axis constantly locking up and the braking not working the way he wanted it to. Because of that he lost a lot of positions, first to Russell in lap 3 with a great overtake on the side of the Mercedes driver, then to Perez in lap 8 and in lap 11 finally to his own teammate Sainz, after an impressive battle between them.
But that were not the only things happening in the first few laps. Right at the start Stroll spun, Hulkenberg and Bottas received front wing damage, the German driver being forced to Box, and during lap 10 Logan Sargeant’s Williams overheated and the steering wheel seemed to shut down, which caused him to go off track. Luckily he was able to come back into track, although sadly in last place.
During the first pit stop period Leclerc undercut his teammate leading to another position battle between Sainz and Leclerc during lap 17, Sainz going out as winner. Not even two laps later Sainz overtook Russell, making it up to place three chasing after the two Red Bulls on p1 and 2.
But the race didn’t end there. During lap 32 Bottas had to face a horrendous pit stop of 52 seconds after his front left tyre knob got stuck, marking game over for the Sauber driver. Throughout the next laps we saw a few overtakes, Zhou and Stroll in lap 34, Russell overtaking Alonso in lap 34 and Piastri trying to defend against Hamilton on cold tyres in lap 35, which did not work.
Yet what did work was Leclerc overtaking Russell during lap 46, after the Mercedes driver experienced a lock up, making it to p4 right behind his teammate.
Five laps before the race finished Tsunoda was told to swap places with Ricciardo, the racing bulls team hoping to gain advantage over Magnussen, who was driving in front of them. Tsunoda was not happy with the swap and after the race the drivers seemed to have a lot of tension between them.
Overall the first race of the season was a very surprising and eventful one, even though one thing did not surprise us:
Max Verstappen taking first place on the podium. The Red Bull car showed incredible pace, so it is no surprise that his teammate Perez followed on p2. Sainz and Ferrari had hoped that the hard tyres he had for the last stint would be an advantage against the soft tyres Red Bull was using on the last laps and gain them p2 on the podium, sadly without result. Yet they can still be proud of themselves with Sainz taking the last step of the podium and Leclerc being right behind on p4. He is followed by Russel (5), Norris (6), Hamilton (7), Piastri (8), Alonso (9) and Stroll (10).
This marks the end of the first race but since the season has now officially just started we already have the next race coming up in Jeddah. Let’s see what the teams will show us then.
Picture credits:
official Red bull racing, f1 and scuderia Ferrari Instagram account
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