Here’re The Ones Who Shined And Ones That Fell Short At Formula One’s Season Opener In Bahrain

We’ve all been longing for a proper fight at the front of the Formula One grid, and we got that and then some at a thrilling 2021 season opening Bahrain Grand Prix. A tense battle between the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and the Red Bull Honda of Max Verstappen saw the former come out on top. Among others that shined this race, there were also some that had a weekend to forget. Here’s everything that transpired

Winners

Lewis Hamilton And Mercedes  

Despite heading into the race with Red Bull being the favorites for the win, Reigning seven-time World champion Lewis Hamilton triumphed against the odds, as a showcase to why he sits at the peak of the mountain in terms of F1 greats. The Briton managed a sublime defensive drive against pole sitter Max Verstappen in the closing stages of the race on tyres 10 laps older for an epic 96th win of his career by just 0.7 tenths. 

The Mercedes squad also played a major part in making this win happen with a strategic win over Verstappen and Red Bull by pitting Hamilton early in the first round of pit stops and thereby undercutting the Dutchman to take the lead of the race. 

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Ferrari

After facing its worst season since 1980 in 2020, it was quite a sigh of relief for the prancing horse to catch up to the sharp end of the midfield. A strong 6th for Charles Leclerc and 8th for new joinee Carlos Sainz caps off a positive start to the season and look to be locked in a tense fight for 3rd overall in the constructors standings. 

McLaren 

McLaren’s rekindled engine partnership with Mercedes couldn’t have gotten off to a better start with 4th for Lando Norris and 6th for Carlos Sainz’s replacement, Daniel Ricciardo. This puts the team as the leader of the midfield, but it will be an extremely close fight with its iconic rival, Ferrari to hold on to third in the constructors standings.

Losers

Aston Martin

To say that it was a weekend to forget for Aston Martin would be quite the understatement after all the preseason hype. Lance Stroll had qualified 10th, ance Stroll had qualified 10th, with four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel a difficult 18th on debut for the team, after being caught out by yellow flags. This was further compounded by a grid penalty to last on the grid for not slowing down enough during  those yellow flags.  

In the race, Stroll didn’t look like much of a challenge against the McLarens and Ferraris and finished where he started in 10th. Vettel’s race weekend just kept getting worse with uncharacteristic errors, and an incident with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon landing him a 10-second time penalty that dropped him down to 15th in the end. Overall, a very underwhelming weekend for the Aston Martin squad, and will be hoping to bounce back soon.

Alpine

It's really difficult to judge Alpine’s true standing in the pecking order as they also had a pretty messy opening round. Esteban Ocon was another driver that was caught out by the yellow flag incident in qualifying and had to settle for 16th. As for two-time World Champion Fernando Alonso’s first race back in F1, the first stint was looking pretty good, starting 9th and shadowing the McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo. But he faded away as the race progressed and had to retire from the race, following brake issues. 

Ocon was making his way up the field, but that charge was halted after Sebastian Vettel punted him into a spin. A difficult start to the rebranded Renault outfit, but there’s still another 22 races left, and the team has bounced back before in 2020 in fine fashion.

Max Verstappen and Red Bull Honda 

It was looking pretty rosey for Red Bull Honda heading into raceday with Max Verstappen on pole position and the favorite for the race win. Unfortunately, the team were caught off guard by Hamilton and Mercedes’ undercut in the first round of pit stops and surrendered the race lead. But they did have a counterattack in the final round of pit stops which had Verstappen on 10-lap fresher tyres than Hamilton and he was slicing through Hamilton’s lead at a rate of nearly a second a lap and was set for a great battle to the chequered flag. 

On lap 53/56, Verstappen finally made the move stick on Hamilton around the outside of Turn 4. But it was done off-track, and had to give up the position after Turn 10. While Verstappen immediately piled on the pressure again, key mistakes at Turn 13 in consecutive laps pretty much cost him a clear shot at the race win. But nonetheless, it is a positive sign that sets up a titanic battle between Mercedes and Red Bull for the 2021 title.