F1 Talk: Agony for Leclerc; Hamilton picks up the win in Bahrain

Mercedes has never had a 1-2 in the first two races in Formula One before, incredible to think, considering their four years of dominance. But that all change on Sunday after Lewis Hamilton heartbreakingly stole victory from a limping Charles Leclerc whilst Valtteri Bottas overtook the Monegasque driver with four laps to go to hold the championship lead in Bahrain.

It was a pretty dramatic F1 race and there was lots of brilliant racing not only in the midfield but at the very front as well, under the lights in Sakhir.

The big question coming into the weekend was would Ferrari bounce back after a disappointing weekend in Melbourne. After Friday, it looked very positive as they topped both practice sessions and showed good pace over the long runs.

This was confirmed on Saturday when Charles Leclerc took his maiden pole position; the 99th driver to do so in F1 history. Leclerc had two laps in Q3 that were good enough to take pole position, underlying his raw, natural speed. He looked on it from the get go and to beat Vettel in qualifying already is very promising to say the least.

Vettel was definitely compromised by not having two runs in Q3. His lap was conservative and had he been able to do a good banker lap, he would have been able to take more risks to perhaps snatch pole position from Leclerc. Vettel was only able to do one run because he had to do two runs in Q2 to make sure he progressed to the final part of qualifying.

Nevertheless, Ferrari locked out the front row for the first time since Monza last year and it was so good to see that they will challenge Mercedes on raw speed alone this year.

In the race, Leclerc got a poor start but limited the damage by only dropping to third place when Hamilton and Verstappen looked like they were going to overtake him. Very quickly, he made his was past Bottas and overtook Vettel for the lead, his defence on Vettel was even more impressive – showing he was willing to get his elbows out, even on his teammate. From then on, he simply pulled away with laps that were consistently at least 0.2-0.3 quicker than the rest of the field.

Meanwhile, Hamilton was having a great ding-dong battle: first with Bottas and then Vettel. It is so good to see the Mercedes and Ferrari teams allowing their drivers to fight each other. No more “stay behind your teammate” business, its may the best man win.

Bottas did put up a stern defence but Hamilton had the pace to get by. Hamilton then undercut Vettel at the first round of pitstops but the latter overtook Hamilton to take back second place. It was after the second pitstop period where things got tasty.

Hamilton put the pressure on immediately and he really used his head well. There was a big headwind going into turn four (around 30MPH) so from a very long way back, Hamilton just sent the car into the corner around the outside and very nearly made the move stick. He didn’t but the onboard shot of that attack was phenomenal as he just have it everything and hoped the car would stick. Seeing a four-time world champion go toe to toe on the track with the five-time world champion is amazing and great for the sport. We did not have enough on track Hamilton vs. Vettel battles last year and I hope Sunday’s race was just a starter for what’s to come.

Hamilton did make the move stick on the next lap as he was a bit more further up on Vettel and made the overtake work around the outside at turn four. Suddenly, Vettel spun. It came from nowhere and instantly memories of Vettel spinning at Grand Prix last year came to mind.

It was without a doubt a driver error. Listening to his onboard, you can hear Vettel’s rear wheels spin up before he actually spins so it was nothing to do with the wind but simply Vettel got on the power too hard as he tried to outaccelerate Hamilton to turn five to try and keep second place.

With the three DRS zones, Vettel should have known that he probably would have had a chance to reovertake Hamilton anyway on the next lap. Was it the pressure? I think no, just another small error which has big consequences but its the consequences which have the biggest effect on your result.

It turned out to be the winning overtake after Leclerc’s cylinder failure. There is nothing I can say on Leclerc’s problem apart from he was just so unfortunate and so unlucky to not become the 108th winner in F1. Races wins will come this season, it is just a question of how many.

At least he did take his first F1 podium as a consolation but in terms of the championship he lost 10 points whilst the Mercedes pair gained 10 points. That is a 20 point swing and could be key come Abu Dhabi.

Away from the head of the field there was action in abundance. Red Bull struggled with the balance of their car throughout the weekend with another poor weekend for Pierre Gasly and an average weekend for Verstappen. Verstappen only just kept Kevin Magnussen at bay in qualifying and Carlos Sainz in the race. The Sainz/Verstappen incident was a racing incident in my opinion, Sainz could have gave a bit more room and Verstappen was very aggressive.

Lando Norris made up for some of the Sainz losses with an excellent 6th place. He was in amongst the midfield skirmishes and did very well to hold off Kimi Raikkonen. McLaren have made a very good start to the season and look like they are right with Haas as best of the rest.

Renault had a nightmare. Daniel Ricciardo opted for a one stopper which was completely the wrong strategy and he did not optimise what could have been a good result. Nico Hulkenberg had an engine mapping issue in qualifying which meant he went out in Q1 but he made up 11 places in the race and was running well. But, with a few laps to go both cars stopped out on track and both just 100 meters are so apart from each other. It was so weird but just shows that Renault have not got on top of their reliability issues. This comes after an engine blow up for Sainz in Australia. There is a fundamental issue with the Renault power unit and it is almost embarrassing that they promise so much over the winter period to only underdeliver on the track.

Alexander Albon scored his first F1 points and impressed after teammate Daniil Kvyat found himself in the wars after Antonio Giovinazzi sent the Russian spinning. So much happened in the midfield that I will probably have an article purely focused on how each of them have started their seasons after the next race in China.

What is clear, is that Leclerc has the ability to legitimately challenge Vettel and if Ferrari have the right car he is a championship contender, that’s refreshing. This year’s title battle is already promising to be fascinating, doubly so because although Bottas was 30+ second off Hamilton during the Grand Prix he has enough to speed to pick up podiums and notch up the points.

The 1000th Grand Prix is next in China so it will be intriguing to see if Ferrari or Mercedes have the edge in Shanghai.