Max Verstappen cruises to easy victory in ominous Bahrain GP

For a while now, people have been clambering that they want to see “interesting driving” rather than domination in Formula 1. But “interesting driving” is the exact opposite of what Red Bull wants to see. Because if the race is boring, it means that Max Verstappen is winning handily. 

And that’s just what happened in Bahrain.

22 seconds

In my season predictions, I said that the title battle would last about 15 seconds, which would also be the gap by which Verstappen would win the first race. Turns out that was actually an underestimation. Verstappen won from pole position, with the fastest lap, and a gap of 22.4 seconds to his teammate in second without ever giving up the lead. Verstappen and Red Bull walked away from the first race of the year with the maximum amount of points.

But it wasn’t just the domination from Verstappen that made the opening race of the season boring. Last year, whenever Max was disappearing like a mere spot on the horizon, there was at least something happening downstream to keep our interest. But in Bahrain, we didn’t even get that. No justling for points in the lower midfield. No brilliant strategies to offset the running order. No team coming out with an unexpectedly strong car to catapult their driver to the podium. 

The only bit of interesting material came from the opening laps. A handful of overtakes between the drivers from position 2 to 5 meant that there was some battling for the podium. Ultimately, the big winner of that was Sergio Perez, who jumped from fifth to second. Sainz made his dissatisfaction with being stuck behind his teammate known, only to receive back the infamous: “We are checking”. But once that stabilized a few laps later, and the first round of pit stops didn’t change anything either, it was clear that the race - and with that, the season - was pretty much over.

Ominous signs for everyone who isn’t Max Verstappen

If nothing else, this race was a bellwether for the rest of the season. We can draw some careful conclusions from the first 57 laps of this year. Aston Martin has fallen back a little compared to this time last year. McLaren hasn’t been able to sustain its form from the second half of 2023 and is now solidly embedded in the middle of the frontrunner pack. Haas is bad but not terrible. Williams is decent but not great. There are some minor technical issues that teams need to get on top of, but nothing that ruins their chances.

In short: this season starts the same way the previous one ended. Nothing has changed over the winter.

Well, that is not entirely true. One very significant thing has changed over the winter. Lewis Hamilton has signed a contract to join Ferrari in 2025, which means that Carlos Sainz will leave the team. And he made very clear what he thought of that decision, even if he didn’t say it with so many words. Because while last year Sainz and Leclerc would be fine with holding position behind the other and listening to the orders of the team, there was not a single trace of that in Bahrain. When Sainz - rightfully - felt he was faster than Leclerc, and he - again, rightfully - felt that the team wasn’t quick enough to make a call, he took matters in his own hands. Not once, but twice, did he overtake Leclerc for position, ultimately landing himself a place on the podium, though he was still leagues behind Perez. 

Next week, Formula 1 will race on the circuit of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that anything will change in the next six days when it comes to the running order. Which means that for those who are hoping for interesting races, there is only one possible conclusion after Bahrain:

It’s going to be a very long season.