World champion Max Verstappen dominated Formula 1’s 2023 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix to win ahead of Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso, while Charles Leclerc lost a podium to an engine issue.
Verstappen led easily away from pole position, while his Red Bull teammate Perez lost second to Leclerc after he made a slow getaway and fell behind the Ferrari driver.
Any hope of a battle for the lead was quickly extinguished when Verstappen romped clear of Leclerc by over half-a-second a lap, with Perez tracking Leclerc across the first stint before they made their first of two pitstops.
Leclerc was the first of the leaders to stop to switch from softs to hards on lap 13 of 57, with Verstappen coming in from nearly ten seconds clear to take a second set of softs after both Red Bull cars had come into the race with just one set of the white-walled rubber available.
Perez ran a few laps longer before he stopped to take more softs too, which he then used to close in on Leclerc and took second with a DRS-assisted blast to the inside of Turn 1 on lap 26.
From there, Verstappen was only bothered by a minor downshift issue causing occasional rear-locking and ran clear of Perez to win by 11.9 seconds after they had both completed one more pitstop to finally take the hards in what was a crushing performance from Red Bull.
That was made even better when Leclerc, who had dropped to nearly ten seconds behind Perez before making a second stop for fresh hards on lap 33, retired from the race after suddenly losing drive on lap 40, with Ferrari later saying it had “lost the engine” on his SF-23.
That triggered a brief virtual safety car as the Ferrari was recovered, after which Alonso charged after and passed compatriot Carlos Sainz to score a podium on his first appearance for Aston Martin.
He had earlier lost a place to Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes on the first lap, then lost another to George Russell when Lance Stroll tagged his new Aston team-mate outbraking himself while battling Russell into Turn 4 on the opening tour.
Alonso followed Hamilton through the race’s early tyre management phases and two stops for both Astons and Mercedes cars, the Spaniard running long before making his second stop after Mercedes had pitted Hamilton early for a second time to ward off an undercut threat from his former McLaren team-mate.
The two world champions engaged in a thrilling fight over what was then fifth place, with Alonso needing two attempts to clear Hamilton after his first pass at Turn 4 went wrong before he put in a brilliant Turns 9/10 dive to clear the Mercedes.
Post virtual safety car, Alonso quickly caught Sainz, who had been running a long way adrift of Leclerc and concerned about his second set of hards making the finish, and also had a close call with the Ferrari when he tried to pass for the first time at Turn 4 on lap 45, lightly tagging the Ferrari’s right-rear with his left-front.
But a few moments later, Alonso’s superior pace meant he benefitted from DRS down the back straight and he blasted by to take a third place he would not lose.
Hamilton shadowed Sainz to the finish in fourth and fifth, with Stroll beating Russell to sixth after Aston pulled off the undercut at his second stop.
In other incidents of note, Pierre Gasly rose from last to finish ninth, with Alex Albon tenth for Williams.
Lando Norris stopped five times due to a pneumatic pressure problem on his McLaren before he retired late on, as was Esteban Ocon after he picked up three penalties – for being out of position in his grid box, Alpine working on his car before he finished serving his five-second penalty at his first stop and the speeding in the pitlane.
So congratulations to Max Verstappen by kicking off the new season with victory. This is the perfect start for Red Bull Racing with a 1-2 finish with Sergio Perez taking second position. As for Fernando Alonso, what a drive in the Aston Martin. Points finish for the double champion in his first race in British Racing Green. Well done Fernando!
Bahrain Grand Prix, race results:
1 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:33:56.736
2 Sergio Perez Red Bull +11.987s
3 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin +38.637s
4 Carlos Sainz Ferrari +48.052s
5 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes +50.977s
6 Lance Stroll Aston Martin +54.502s
7 George Russell Mercedes +55.873s
8 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo +72.647s
9 Pierre Gasly Alpine +73.753s
10 Alex Albon Williams +89.774s
11 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri +90.870s
12 Logan Sargeant Williams +1 lap
13 Kevin Magnussen Haas +1 lap
14 Nyck de Vries AlphaTauri +1 lap
15 Nico Hulkenberg Haas +1 lap
16 Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo +1 lap
17 Lando Norris McLaren +2 laps
– Esteban Ocon Alpine DNF
– Charles Leclerc Ferrari DNF
– Oscar Piastri McLaren DNF
Bahrain Grand Prix race review as reported by Formula1.com.
Red Bull enjoyed a perfect start to the season in the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix as Max Verstappen cruised to victory over team mate Sergio Perez – while Fernando Alonso finished third as Charles Leclerc retired from the race.
Everyone bar hard-shod Kevin Magnussen (P15) began the race on soft tyres and Verstappen had a solid getaway, but team mate Perez fell back and lost second place to Leclerc – while Carlos Sainz couldn’t quite pry P3 off the Red Bull. The reigning champion stretched his legs in the lead and eventually won by more than 10 seconds. Perez completed the one-two with both Red Bull drivers on similar soft-soft-hard strategies.
Aston Martin’s hopes of crashing the podium fight seemed to have come crashing down on Lap 1 when Lance Stroll made a lunge on team mate Alonso into Turn 4 and hit the rear-right of his car, allowing both Mercedes ahead.
Ferrari’s hopes of the podium did however come crashing down on Lap 41, when Leclerc retired with an engine issue. That was just after Alonso produced an absolutely brilliant move to take P5 off Lewis Hamilton, down the inside of Turn 10. Alonso went on the warpath and on Lap 45 he passed Sainz after a stunning battle through Sector 2, to seal his first podium since Qatar 2021.
ainz therefore settled for fourth, fending off a brief attack from Hamilton, who ended up fifth on the board. As for Stroll, he was perhaps relieved not to get a penalty for hitting his team mate on Lap 1, and perhaps more relieved to see Alonso finish on the podium. The Canadian made an admirable recovery from his wrist injury, however, and finished sixth between the Mercedes – as George Russell was undercut by the Aston Martin in the second pit stops and finished seventh.
Valtteri Bottas capitalised on poor starts for his rivals and finished a solid eighth for Alfa Romeo, while Pierre Gasly recovered from P20 for Alpine, pitting three times, to finish ninth. Alex Albon finished 10th for Williams after a great start, while Yuki Tsunoda narrowly missed out on the final point in his AlphaTauri.
Rookie Logan Sargeant battled with Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu to take 12th on debut, while Zhou pitted on the penultimate lap of the race to promote Kevin Magnussen – whose hard-hard-soft gambit didn’t yield points – to P13.
Nyck de Vries took P14 on his AlphaTauri debut, leaving Nico Hulkenberg 15th with a five-second penalty. Zhou was classified 16th for Alfa Romeo, and Lando Norris endured a tough race, a slow pit stop seeing him barrel down the order. A last-lap pit stop for softs saw the McLaren driver round out the standings.
Esteban Ocon had a calamitous start to the season for Alpine, copping a five-second penalty for lining up on his grid slot incorrectly, a further 10-second penalty for serving that penalty incorrectly, and another five seconds for speeding in the pit lane. Alpine decided to retire him late on.
Leclerc was incredulous when he retired on Lap 41, and Oscar Piastri’s debut ended after just 13 laps when he pulled into the McLaren pits with an electrical issue.
Alonso, meanwhile, was jubilant to take his first podium in over a year.
And it was a perfect start to 2023 for Red Bull – but things can change. Just last year, both Red Bulls retired from the opening race of the season…
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Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso hails “unreal” Bahrain Grand Prix Formula 1 podium on his new team debut. Motorsport.com has the news story.
Fernando Alonso has hailed an “unreal” start to the 2023 Formula 1 season after the Aston Martin driver grabbed a late podium in the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The two-time champion was fortunate to come away from the opening lap of his Aston Martin debut unscathed after receiving a whack to the rear-right from Lance Stroll, as the team-mates already engaged in their own respective duels with the Mercedes duo.
Fifth-starting Alonso then came to the fore in the final stint as he maximised his hard tyres to chase after Lewis Hamilton, executing a precise pass on his former McLaren stablemate with an unlikely overtake on the inside into the tight Turn 10 left-hander to gain fourth.
The Spaniard then pursued compatriot Carlos Sainz, the pair also narrowly avoiding contact, before Alonso picked off the Ferrari with DRS into Turn 11 to land an “unreal” third place.
Marking the second podium of Aston’s modern era, with four-time champion Sebastian Vettel having finished runner-up in the 2021 Azerbaijan GP, Alonso said: “[It’s] amazing for the team. It was a great weekend.
“Finishing on the podium in the first race of the year. It is just amazing what Aston Martin did over the winter to have the second-best car on race one. This is just unreal.”
Alonso lamented his opening lap, when he was squeezed out by Hamilton down to sixth on the run to Turn 4 after enjoying a strong initial getaway.
But on overhauling the Mercedes and both Ferraris, with Charles Leclerc retiring with a late engine failure, Alonso added: “Obviously, I would love to start in front of them and then use the pace.
“But we had not the best start today. We had to pass on track. It felt a little bit more exciting. More adrenaline for sure. People enjoy it. We did enjoy [it] as well.”
Alonso also paid tribute to Stroll, who returned from his pre-season cycling incident in Spain to race with a pinned wrist and broken toe to bag sixth place.
“First of all, I think congrats to Lance, my team-mate,” he said. “He had the surgery 12 days ago and now he’s fighting right with everybody.”
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc commented that the Scuderia are one second off Red Bull pace before Bahrain Grand Prix retirement. Motorsport.com provides the full details.
Charles Leclerc estimated Ferrari was one second per lap slower than Red Bull before a mechanical retirement saw him fail to finish the 2023 Formula 1 opener in Bahrain.
Leclerc was running a lonely third place in the Bahrain Grand Prix behind the dominant Red Bull duo, as Max Verstappen went on to lead a 1-2 in the opener until his Ferrari engine lost power and forced him out of the race on lap 40.
Speaking immediately after the race, Leclerc didn’t know the cause of his retirement from the race but was already frustrated by Ferrari’s pace deficit to Red Bull which he estimated to be one second per lap.
“I cannot say it feels good,” Leclerc, who had his Ferrari’s energy store in the power unit changed before the race, said.
“Obviously, there was quite a lot of work on that [over the winter] but we need to keep working because obviously first race and first reliability problem were not good.
“I was as confident as I could be, being one second off of the pace, which is not really confident, to be honest.
“Red Bull seems to have found something really big in their race pace.
“In terms of quali pace, they are actually pretty similar to us, at least we managed to extract the lap time yesterday, but then we come to the race and we are one second a lap off the pace which was huge.
“So we need to look into that plus the reliability.”
Leclerc felt he could have held on to third place without the engine issue, the place going to Fernando Alonso, who beat Carlos Sainz and both Mercedes drivers to the final spot on the podium.
Leclerc did acknowledge the new threat from Aston Martin is present.
“They seem to be quick,” Leclerc said about Aston Martin. “I think today third place was possible, I had a bit of margin with the guys behind and I was managing well in that last stint.
“But they were starting also a bit further back, so I don’t know. Bahrain is also a very specific track so I hope that the picture can change a little bit for the next race, but we cannot rely on that as we need to work and find something.”
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen credits race victory to dominant Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix start. Motorsport.com provides the details.
Max Verstappen has credited his opening stint in the Bahrain Grand Prix as the foundation of his dominant victory in the first round of the 2023 Formula 1 season.
The two-time champion kicked off his title defence in imperious fashion by scoring his first win at the Bahrain International Circuit by 11.9s over Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez.
Despite starting on used softs compared to Ferrari rival Charles Leclerc’s brand-new Pirellis, Verstappen escaped DRS range and boasted a 1.8s lead at the end of the second lap.
He then stretched his rubber a lap longer than Leclerc before pitting for another set of softs.
With the Dutch racer able to manage his degradation aboard the RB19, Verstappen stopped again for hards and never faced a serious threat from another driver to his victory chances across the 57 laps.
Verstappen said his strong first phase allowed him to focus on managing the tyres.
“It was a very, very good first stint where I basically made my gap,” he explained.
“From there on, it was all about just looking after the tyres because you never really know what’s going to happen later on in the race.
“We just wanted to make sure that we had the right tyres and in good condition as well.”
The only possible scare came when Verstappen complained that he was having to manage some locking of the rear axle when downshifting. But a cycle through the steering wheel settings soon had this under control aboard an RB19 that he “can definitely fight with”.
On the glitch, Verstappen said: “Nothing big. Just little, little things. You always want to fine-tune so I think they’re quite easy to get on top of.”
Meanwhile, Perez lamented his poor getaway – which meant he ceded second place to Leclerc into Turn 1 – as the decisive factor in not being able to challenge Verstappen.
The Mexican said: “[It was] that start that really put me out of contention from the race. But it was all about minimising the damage. Finishing second is the maximum I could do today.
“It’s a long season. I think I’m getting closer [to Verstappen] every single session.”
Perez reckoned he could “certainly” give Verstappen a run for his money over the coming season, adding: “I’m feeling comfortable with the car and we have a strong package. I will give my best.”
Red Bull had kicked off the 2022 campaign, ahead of its dominant 17-race-winning record, with a double DNF in Bahrain owing to two fuel system failures.
On the change in fortune, Perez added: “It’s a great start. When we look back at last year, how we started here, it is really nice.
“It’s a nice comeback as a team. We work really hard over the winter. So, it’s great to see all the boys enjoying the first race.
“We have a strong package. It was important today to get both cars until the end.”