It’s a concerning indictment of what the Formula One championship battle might look like that, after a single race out of 23, the idea of a perfect season is being floated.
No team has ever won every single race. McLaren came close in 1988, winning 15 out of 16 rounds. Mercedes has the best ratio over a season, recording 19 wins from a possible 21 in 2016. But nobody’s gone undefeated.
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Yet that’s what Mercedes’ George Russell suggested after finishing a lowly seventh in Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix, which Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won easily.
“Red Bull have got this championship sewn up,” said Russell, just minutes after getting out of his car. “I don’t think anyone will be fighting with them this year. They should win every single race this year, (that) is my bet.”
Red Bull’s utter supremacy
The nature of Verstappen’s domination in Bahrain, where he led all but three laps — in which his teammate Sergio Pérez got ahead, by virtue of pitting a bit later — cemented his tag as the championship favorite. Since clinching his first crown in 2021, Verstappen has just gotten better and better. This was a first warning shot to the rest of the pack that it will take something very special to beat him.
At no single moment did Verstappen look at risk of losing. The straight-line performance of the Ferrari cars — which suggested was its key strength over Red Bull — meant Verstappen needed to nail the start and ensure Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, starting third and fourth, couldn’t get close enough to pass at the end of the long straights on the opening lap. So that’s what he did, reacting quickest to the lights, leaving the more sluggish Pérez to deal with the Ferraris behind. By the time Leclerc swept around Pérez to take second, Verstappen was well out of range.
The gap grew with every lap. 1.9 seconds, 2.6, 3.4, 4.1, 4.7. Seven laps in, he was already five seconds up the road. “It was important to have that first stint where I could open up the gap,” said Verstappen. “After that, I could look after my tires quite well.”
The only brief moment of concern for Verstappen and Red Bull came on Lap 10, when he reported on the radio that his rear tires were locking when downshifting. He reported the issue over the radio to Gianpiero Lambiase, his race engineer, who advised him to change engine mode. The issue soon went away, and was brushed off Verstappen post-race as “nothing too big of a concern.”
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Pérez a distant second
The only driver who stood any chance of taking the fight to Verstappen in Bahrain was his teammate. But Pérez’s race was undone at the start, when he dropped behind Leclerc. “It was difficult to get by him,” said Pérez, who had to wait until after the first round of pit stops, when he took on quicker, soft tires to attack the hard-shod Leclerc, to mount a serious challenge. When he took back second place on Lap 26 of 57, Verstappen was 13 seconds ahead of him. “It was just too late,” Perez later admitted.
That left Verstappen to ease home, ticking through the laps, learning more and more about his new car for this year with every corner, every steering wheel input, every push on the throttle and brake. Everything was under control. A final pit stop saw him emerge 11 seconds clear of Pérez, a gap that grew only by a couple of seconds come the checkered flag. “It was quite straightforward,” he said after the race.
Ferrari and Mercedes nowhere to be seen
So where did Ferrari and Mercedes factor in the fight for the win? Well, they didn’t.
Ferrari had been quite upbeat about its race day chances after running Verstappen much closer than expected in qualifying. But the race again showed that Ferrari cannot look after its tires as well as Red Bull. Leclerc and Sainz both fit hard tires for the second stint, theoretically meaning they could run longer than the Red Bulls on softs. Sainz did 18 laps on hards, Leclerc did 20. But Verstappen went 22 laps on his set of softs. Yes, he could manage more being so far in front, but it pointed again to Red Bull’s tire advantage over Ferrari, as did the fashion in which Sainz slipped behind Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso in the closing stages, leaving him fourth at the flag.
Meanwhile, the race confirmed Mercedes’ fears that it simply isn’t a factor in the lead battle right now. Lewis Hamilton said after finishing fifth that the team had to accept it was the fourth-fastest team, trailing Red Bull, Ferrari and Aston Martin. Team principal Toto Wolff called it “one of the worst days in racing” for him.
We’re a long way from where we want to be right now, but it’s not through a lack of commitment. Every single member of this team is giving their all to get us back to the front and together I know we will achieve it. I’m proud to be a part of this awesome group of people.
— George Russell (@GeorgeRussell63) March 5, 2023
It’s a sizable advantage Red Bull has right now. Alonso’s third-place finish might have been the big story of the day, given the hype around Aston Martin in pre-season and his own drought of success. But the Spaniard was 38 seconds behind Verstappen. That’s a lifetime in F1.
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A new kind of dominance
To make things even bleaker its rivals, Red Bull rarely starts a season this strong. You have to go back to 2011, when Verstappen was 13 years old, for the last time it won the a season opener. Last year, Verstappen and Pérez both retired in Bahrain after lagging behind Ferrari for outright pace.
“It’s been a great start for us, for the whole team,” said Verstappen. “This is not something we are used to.”
If a team that traditionally starts slow and grows stronger has started with a 1-2, finishing 40 seconds clear of the field, then what’s possible?
“Twenty-three races is a marathon,” said Red Bull boss Christian Horner. “It’s about being consistent over the campaign. We fully expect rivals to come back hard in the future races.”
That could be as early as two weeks from now in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Although it is a street circuit, the high-speed layout and long straights means Ferrari could come into play, particularly as tire wear is less of an issue there.
Verstappen said it was “really hard to know” just what the gap to the other teams looked like. “We’ve only driven these cars here in Bahrain,” he said. “You’ll just have to wait and see.” Yet the nature of Red Bull’s domination would make it a surprise to see anything but another victory in a couple of weeks.
It’s hard to remember a team starting a season so convincingly, so dominant in recent F1 history. It could make for another big year for Verstappen and Red Bull.
(Photo: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
