The drama with Red Bull’s reliability meant that Carlos Sainz Jr was able to follow his teammate into second, with Lewis Hamilton taking a surprise third for Mercedes.
At the start, Leclerc and Verstappen spun off the line in unison, with Ferrari quickly turning to his right to cover Red Bull and close the inside line for the first turn.
There Verstappen braked later and ended up next to Leclerc, but the inside lead position meant he could easily pull ahead through turns 2 and 3 and then swerve once on the short straight to turn 4 to the right, where he pulled away. clearly leading.
By the end of the first lap of lap 57, Leclerc was already out of the DRS zone ahead of Verstappen, with Sainz chasing the world champion, followed by Hamilton, who overtook Sergio Pérez as the Mexican slid out of turn one behind Kevin. As a result, Magnussen Haas.
Over the next few laps, Leclerc, who was fitted with new soft tires rather than used tires on Verstappen’s car, pulled away from his Red Bull rival, who at one point complained that his mid-corner engine braking was “funny”. Leclerc’s backlog was widening by a few tenths per lap, and the pair were the only drivers in the lead who could regularly stay in the 1:38 grid.
By lap 10, Leclerc’s lead had reached three seconds, with Sainz still a chunk behind and now running ahead of Pérez, who overtook Hamilton after the Mercedes driver fell under pressure on Sainz and retreated, unable to match the lead pace.
Leclerc excelled at the start and confidently led Verstappen and Sainz
Photo: Zak Mauger/Motorsport Images
At the end of lap 14, Verstappen and Sainz, who also started on used softs, came in for new ones, while Leclerc stopped at the end of the next round to do the opposite. Verstappen used his lead on fresh tires to completely erase Leclerc’s lead, but Ferrari was able to maintain the lead out of the pits.
But the next time, at the start of lap 17, Verstappen used DRS to close the 0.7 second gap and dive inside Leclerc in turn one, taking the lead with a thrilling drive on the inside line. But he was only briefly ahead, as Leclerc used DRS himself on his way to Turn 4, first hitting a daring pass around Red Bull from the outside.
The same sequence was repeated on the next lap, although this time Leclerc regained the lead by pinching Verstappen from the inside on the approach to turn four and then passing his rival to take the lead again.
In his third attempt to enter turn 1, this time on lap 19, Verstappen was 0.9 seconds behind to make a wild run from the inside, but this time he got stuck hard and the Ferrari was able to bounce back and run away. as a result, outside the DRS range.
Blocking and the loss of DRS sapped Verstappen’s momentum as he slid back to run at a low 1:38 while Leclerc ran a series of mid-to-high 1:37 which soon regained his three-second lead.
By mid-way, Leclerc was running four seconds ahead, losing a piece by overtaking Nico Hulkenberg before regaining it, and more when Verstappen passed Aston Martin’s interim replacement Sebastian Vettel.
Red Bull stopped Verstappen first on the second stop lap, taking the Dutchman to mid-level at the end of lap 30, and Ferrari had Leclerc cover him for exactly the next time.
This time around, Leclerc took the lead much further, despite Verstappen overtaking a little faster than before and Ferrari leading Red Bull in stationary time by half a second.
Verstappen and Leclerc engaged in a fierce battle, but Leclerc emerged victorious.
Photo: Zak Mauger/Motorsport Images
The pair immediately hit a 1:36 grid they hadn’t done before, even as they cut through traffic early on in the third stint, where Verstappen furiously told Red Bull he took it easier than he wanted and “never will” . ever” to do it again, such was his fury that he stayed so far behind Leclerc with even a minimal lead.
Although Verstappen was ahead of Leclerc and two seconds behind on laps just after their second stops, Ferrari was soon able to regain their lead again, with Leclerc holding the middle at 1:36 and Verstappen falling by 1:37.
By lap 43, Leclerc had extended his lead to four seconds when Red Bull decided to take both of their cars to the third stop – Pérez drove average speeds on his second stint and then closed in on Sainz, well behind him. two leaders.
It appears that Ferrari left Leclerc to watch the race in a two-stop car and Sainz was brought in to cover for Pérez, but the final stages became more dramatic when Pierre Gasly retired with an engine problem that caused the engine to catch fire on the race. Round 46 – AlphaTauri stopped at the exit of the third turn, just at the beginning of the short second straight.
The virtual safety car was activated, but the full safety car was activated, and that’s when Ferrari invited Leclerc, and he was able to take another set of software for the restart.
Racing resumed at the start of lap 51, with all cars that completed the lap allowed to overtake. Prior to this, Verstappen had complained loudly that his steering was getting heavier in the corners and on the straights, with Red Bull moving to tell him it would be a problem towards the end of the race, which he would have to adapt to.
As the safety car pulled up, Leclerc was back up to race speed while Verstappen was pinned down tightly into the penultimate corner and it was clear so far that the action had shifted to Sainz attacking second.
Verstappen forced the Spaniard into the outside line and the pair were quickly behind Leclerc, who took the lead by 1.6 seconds with the fastest lap of the race of 1 minute 24.570 seconds.
He pulled off easily to win by 5.5 s, taking his first win at the Bahrain Grand Prix on the spot, where he had lost his first career F1 win due to a late engine problem three years earlier.
Hamilton surprisingly takes third place behind Red Bull drama
Photo: Steven Tee/Motorsport Images
But it was Sainz who was able to follow Leclerc home as Verstappen went from complaining about steering problems to reporting a battery problem, which Red Bull first dismissed and then said it was a mistake he could do nothing about.
With two laps to go, Verstappen suddenly fell on the penultimate straight and then crawled back into the pits to retire, with Pérez then reporting a loss of power as Hamilton, through a soft, hard, medium, soft three stops, closed. threaten the unlikely Mercedes podium.
Just when it looked like Pérez might linger, he spun into Turn 1 on the final lap, his engine jamming and spinning his rear end, putting him in place.
Thus, Hamilton finished third, 9.6 seconds behind Leclerc, and George Russell fourth, who quickly moved up the rankings from his ninth place on the grid early on and followed his teammate 14 seconds back to period of the safety car.
Magnussen fought his way to fifth by riding most of the race between Russell and Gasly, while Valtteri Bottas recovered from a slow start to finish sixth.
Esteban Okon and Yuki Tsunoda passed Fernando Alonso in front of the safety car and the trio finished seventh to ninth at the flag.
In his first Formula One race, Zhou Guangyu finished 10th for the first point of the championship, while Mick Schumacher was 11th for Haas ahead of Lance Stroll, who brought the former runners home far ahead of the rest. they could catch up.