F1 review: Verstappen, Red Bull quickly off the blocks

While it is too early to predict that Red Bull will walk away with the title after just one race, there is enough evidence to show that rival teams have a huge mountain to climb, even to force an exciting contest for the title.

Quickly off the mark: Race winner Max Verstappen of the Netherlands drives alongside his team celebrating on the pitwall at the F1 Grand Prix of Bahrain at the Bahrain International Circuit. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

The month of March signals the arrival of spring, and there is a sense of optimism in the air after the gloomy and cold winter days.

Hunkering down in their factories during the last few months to find that magic bullet to leapfrog to the top or for the final tenths of a second in performance, Formula One teams arrived in Bahrain to start the 2023 Formula One season with hope and excitement.

Defending champion Red Bull Racing now had a target on its back after clinching both the drivers’ and constructors’ titles easily last year, with Max Verstappen winning a record 15 races en route to his second driver’s crown.

But after the day’s race, the hopes of a promising spring for the pursuing pack had a crude reality check. Verstappen dominated the weekend, coasting to victory from pole position to lead a 1-2 for Red Bull, with team-mate Sergio Perez finishing second.

It became evident that Red Bull is not only the team to beat; it might even have a more considerable advantage over the field than it did at the end of last year.

In 2022, the Ferrari was faster on a Saturday in qualifying, while the Red Bull had a stronger race package. It was an area Red Bull has worked on this year, and in Sakhir, Verstappen duly put his car in pole position, nearly three-tenths faster than Charles Leclerc in the Ferrari, who was only third-best behind Perez, in second.

It was a sign of things to come as Red Bull maintained its superior race pace as Verstappen left Leclerc behind in the race’s opening laps.

The Ferrari driver got ahead of Perez at the start, but after taking the first round of pit stops, Perez breezed past Leclerc to slot in second behind his team-mate, while Carlos Sainz in the other Ferrari struggled.

The fabled Italian team’s title challenge last year imploded due to strategic errors during the race and the unreliability of its power unit, which forced it to turn down its engines for a large portion of the season.

ALSO READ - David Coulthard dazzles Mumbai in Red Bull’s iconic RB7

Ahead of the 2023 campaign, Ferrari made a lot of effort to ensure the reliability of power units so that it could be run at full capacity. However, on lap 40, the old problems returned to haunt as Leclerc retired with an engine failure.

More worryingly, the Scarlet cars’ race pace was poor as it suffered from high rear tyre degradation, with Leclerc reckoning his Ferrari was losing nearly a second per lap to Red Bull. After some promise last year, the Prancing Horse can ill afford to slip back again.

While the Scuderia was a distant-second best, Mercedes seemed like a team heading in the wrong direction. After a troubled start to 2022, the team fought back to almost beat Ferrari for second place in the standings. However, from pre-season testing in Bahrain, Mercedes lacked pace, and during the weekend, it became evident it had slipped further behind.

AUTO-PRIX-F1-BAHRAIN | Photo Credit: GIUSEPPE CACACE

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finished fifth and seventh, and the team which dominated the sport from 2014 to 2021 may have another challenging year.

The bigger worry, though, is the lack of performance has started to expose the fissures in the team.

Team boss Toto Wolff was critical of his design team’s approach and wanted radical solutions. At the same time, Hamilton, too, complained that the team did not take his inputs about the deficiencies of last year’s car seriously.

The big gainer this year has been Aston Martin, with Fernando Alonso taking third on his debut for the team. The green car looked quick in pre-season testing, and when Alonso topped Free Practice 2, there was an air of excitement about him even challenging for the front row.

In the end, the two-time world champion did well to qualify fourth and — despite losing positions at the start — fought back without trouble to finish on the podium.

The team has taken the biggest leap in the field, gaining nearly two seconds per lap from last year and in Alonso, the Silverstone-based team has a driver capable of extracting the last tenths of lap time.

His team-mate Lance Stroll was equally impressive, finishing sixth after having missed pre-season testing due to a cycling injury that fractured his wrist. A week after surgery, Stroll showed immense grit to drive through pain to post a good result.

Rounding out the top 10 were Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas in eighth, Pierre Gasly in ninth for the Alpine, while Alexander Albon took the final point-scoring place for Williams.

The team that has had the biggest fall this year so far is McLaren. The British team, which finished fifth in the standings last year, has come out with a car birthed in a flawed concept.

Lando Norris did well to qualify 11th but steadily slipped in the race and finished 17th, a lap down. His team-mate, debutant Oscar Piastri, had a forgettable outing as he qualified 18th before retiring from the race due to an electrical issue. After some progress in the last few years, McLaren, which finished fourth in 2021, is slipping again and will have an arduous task, at least in the first half of the season, to get even a few points on board.

The second year of a new rule cycle usually allows the teams to catch up to the front-runners. With the legendary F1 car designer Adrian Newey at its disposal, Red Bull stole a march over its rivals last year when the new technical rules were introduced.

However, this year offered the other teams a chance to eat into Red Bull’s advantage, considering that the defending champion is serving a penalty in the form of reduced time for developing the car for breaching the cost cap budget rules in 2021.

But the 38-second gap Verstappen had over Alonso in the third meant the Red Bull was nearly seven-tenths of a second faster per lap than the next-best team. It is a considerable advantage to have in hand without taking into account the fact that the Dutchman took it easy towards the end of the lap and drove well within himself.

While it is too early to predict that Red Bull will walk away with the title after just one race, there is enough evidence to show that rival teams have a huge mountain to climb, even to force an exciting contest for the title.