The messages Red Bull sent over the winter were confirmed in the first qualifying session of the season in Bahrain, where Max Verstappen clinched his first pole position of the year and the 21st of his Formula 1 career. Although this result was easy to imagine given the speed the team showed in group testing a week ago, few anticipated such an even Saturday with up to four teams having the opportunity to battle for the front row . The current champion will be joined by Checo Pérez while the two Ferraris form the second row, with Charles Leclerc (third) ahead of Carlos Sainz (fourth). Fernando Alonso will start from fifth, a position that confirms the big step forward that Aston Martin has taken. Lewis Hamilton starting seventh after falling just six tenths from first also suggests Mercedes are ready for the fight.
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Red Bull has met the forecasts and this Sunday (4 p.m., Dazn) is the favorite in the fight for victory in a test with more candidates than originally listed in the pools. If the strength of the Milton Keynes (Great Britain) team were a given, no one would have expected Ferrari and Mercedes to be so close to the world champions. At this point, it would be a real recklessness to devalue one of the members of the big teams, even more so when we consider the strategy of the other. Leclerc, for example, got out of the car after his first fastest lap attempt and when he had the second best time he gave up the fight for first place because, looking ahead to a much more open race, he had expected an extra set of soft tyres, which one initially expected could think.
Mercedes and Ferrari join the Red Bull party after the former got rid of all the baggage that was camouflaging them and the latter went from less to more. You can expect anything from Alonso, especially when you look at the very high level of Aston Martin on the long runs, where it shows that they treat the tires much better than, for example, the Scuderia. “We’re missing half a second to fight for pole position, but we lived up to our expectations. It’s to pinch yourself because eight months ago when I signed it looked a lot worse,” the Asturian concluded. “The strength of the car is the long runs. If something happens in front of us, we’re confident that we’ll be in contention for the podium. Seeing is believing,” added the two-time Renault World Champion (2005 and 2006), enthusiastic about this stage that he started together with the Silverstone build-up. “This car is just the beginning of this project. I talk to the designers and they tell me there are important things coming up in the next races. The fact that Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin are so equal promises a very interesting championship,” predicted the man from Oviedo.
“It was a difficult start to a Grand Prix,” commented Verstappen. “It was difficult for me to find the rhythm, but in qualifying we were able to get the best out of the car. We have a good car that usually does better on a Sunday,” said the reigning champion. “In the course of the sessions I improved little by little until I reached fourth place, which is not where we want to be,” said Sainz. “For how we were yesterday [por el viernes] We are satisfied. In the race we will have to suffer a little more because we already know that the Ferrari degrades the tires a little more than our competitors,” emphasized the Madrid native.
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