Bahrain GP overreactions: Ferrari is clearly best of the rest behind Red Bull
There’s no better time to make sweeping statements about a new Formula One season than the days after the first race.
Out in front, things looked the same, with Max Verstappen sweeping to victory for Red Bull. But the picture behind is less clear, while two teams — RB and Alpine — created negative headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Here we look at some sweeping generalisations you could make right now ahead of the second race of 2024, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and whether they’re valid.
Ferrari is the closest challenger to Red Bull right now
Ferrari looked strong throughout the two weeks in Bahrain, with an impressive test followed by a solid race week. Lewis Hamilton struggled to replicate George Russell’s pace for Mercedes while McLaren and Aston Martin did not feature in the fight for the podium as they hoped. So, great news for Ferrari then?
Verdict: OVERREACTION
It was a solid start to the season for Ferrari, no doubt, but there’s some important caveats to consider here. The first, and most obvious being that Bahrain is just one race sample. The desert circuit has always been a bogey track for McLaren and, to a lesser extent, Mercedes, while Ferrari has traditionally been strong there.
George Russell’s hopes of challenging Carlos Sainz for a spot on the podium were thwarted by an overheating issue with his Mercedes early on which skewed an understanding of just how quick that car really is.
The margins are so close between those three teams it will take a little while to make sense of the order. It might stay too close to call for a while and the Saudi Arabian GP might muddy the picture further.
Jeddah features a lot of the high-speed corners McLaren thrived in last year, while Mercedes sounded confident of a stronger showing around the street circuit. And let’s not count Aston Martin out either — although they had an underwhelming opener compared to 12 months ago, the Silverstone team cannot be written out of this fight given the ambition and investment of team owner Lawrence Stroll.
The only thing we know for certain about the chasing pack is its going to be super close until one makes a clear break from the rest in terms of car development.
Red Bull really is in a ‘different galaxy’, like Toto Wolff said
Max Verstappen won the opening race at a canter, with the next closest non-Red Bull car 25 seconds down the road. Mercedes boss Wolff gave a grim assessment of the season in store for Red Bull’s rivals, suggesting the team is on a different level to the rest, while George Russell said the best rival teams can hope for is to fight for the odd victory here and there.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
Let’s get real now. F1 media can sometimes be guilty of trying to oversell the product but there is no way to polish or spin this situation. Throughout the build-up to the race it felt like many were trying to desperately find a reason — any reason — Red Bull might actually be closer to the rest than we all thought, but Verstappen looked untouchable from the moment the race started. The gap might come down in other places, but it’s rare in F1 to see a significant advantage disappear from race to race.
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Red Bull has delivered a fantastic car in the RB20 and, especially when in the hands of Verstappen, it is a different beast to the rest. If Sergio Perez can get his head around the qualifying issues which constantly mean he starts races out of position, there’s no reason to think he will always be as close to the chasing pack as he was in Bahrain.
Most worryingly of all, because Adrian Newey’s new car was a radical new direction to the RB19, logic dictates there are huge gains to be found. Red Bull will be bringing upgrades just the same as its rivals and Newey is unrivalled at improving cars significantly throughout a season.
Alpine is a team in deep trouble
After a poor test, Alpine was dead last in qualifying. It made little improvement during the race. Alarm bells around the team turned to full-on sirens as it emerged technical director Matt Harman and head of aero Dirk de Beer, essentially the two men guiding the design of the car, handed in their resignations ahead of the season.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
To borrow a quote from Edmund Blackadder, titular character from the famous British comedy: “This is a crisis. A large crisis, a twelve-storey crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour portage, and an enormous sign on the roof, saying ‘This Is a Large Crisis’.”
We at ESPN couldn’t quite believe the worst reviews about Alpine which followed preseason testing, but things really were as bad as that at the opener. Already held back by what is known to be the most underpowered engine on the grid by some margin, Alpine has delivered a severely overweight car for the new year. The news of Harman and De Beer was surprising only in how early personnel changes came.
The situation will be galling to both Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, two drivers who had hoped to be taking steps up F1’s competitive order at this stage of their careers, not the other way around. Both issued the team a rallying cry during the weekend and called for patience, pledging their faith in the team’s long-term focus, but nothing on the outside suggests Alpine has much reason for optimism at this stage in the season.
There is a recent example the contrary argument could take — McLaren was in a similar situation 12 months ago, struggling in preseason and the opening race and then parting company with technical lead James Key.
An upgrade at the Austrian Grand Prix propelled the team back up the order as Red Bull’s closest challenger on pure pace. One key difference there to how things seem at Alpine currently was that McLaren CEO Zak Brown quickly installed a new technical team and had already pledged his long-term faith in team boss Andrea Stella.
Alpine has been a revolving door of driving and technical talent in recent seasons and it remains to be seen if team boss Bruno Famin is the right man for the job or simply the next man for the guillotine.
RB is clearly a team set up around Daniel Ricciardo
RB’s first race under its new guise finished in controversial circumstances. Yuki Tsunoda delayed on obeying a team order to swap positions with his teammate late on, a decision which was not reversed when Daniel Ricciardo was unable to get past Kevin Magnussen in 12th. Tsundoa then divebombed Ricciardo on the cool-down lap and drove past him, leading to Ricciardo to call him out for “immaturity”. Many fans felt the incident showed where the team’s priorities truly lie this year.
Verdict: OVERREACTION
Yuki Tsunoda clearly felt aggrieved by what took place during the race but his actions afterwards were careless and dangerous, so he’s ruined the goodwill he might otherwise have had from being on the receiving end of an unfair call. Ricciardo and the team said the possibility of a driver swap was discussed before the race as both were likely to be on differing strategies late on — mapping out scenarios like that is common practice.
The call made some sense. Fans were annoyed the team swapped drivers for positions well out of the points but F1 logic always dictates anything can happen in front. While bulletproof reliability is helping increase the feel of predictability around F1 these days, had two cars ahead collided or had issues, RB would have lamented settling for 13th when Magnussen seemed catchable ahead.
Where RB went wrong was not reversing the two drivers once Ricciardo had been unable to gain that position. The whole situation was handled poorly, perhaps highlighting the fact it was team boss Laurent Mekies’ first time leading a team from the pit wall. Little moments like that can be crucial in management.
It’s worth noting Mekies and RB CEO Peter Bayer have made a point while answering questions about Ricciardo’s marketability to also mention Tsunoda’s importance to the team and highlight the superb season he had in 2023, so in public they’ve actively been playing up the fact its a two-driver team.
So was this a poorly executed strategy? Absolutely. Was it evidence RB already has all its eggs in the Ricciardo basket? No. Tsunoda should definitely seek assurances this isn’t going to happen every week but he can also now point to the fact he should get similar treatment if he ends up on a faster strategy behind Ricciardo going forward. If he doesn’t get it, then this suggestion will be valid.
F1’s global boom is in trouble
For the second year in a row, after just one race Formula One already knows Max Verstappen will win the title — it’s a matter of when, not if. F1 has been riding the wave of an incredible U.S. and international popularity in this decade but ratings in 2023 had started to show signs of decline. Another one-sided and inevitable season out in front could intensify that downward trend.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
Kudos to Red Bull for what they’ve achieved lately — as always, complaints about F1 dominance are not a dig at the dominant team. But, like any sport, F1 relies on the entertainment value to keep a fan base and 2023 was a difficult season to watch given how predictable it all was out in front. You can hype the fight for second, third, fourth or fifth as much as you want, but ultimately jeopardy out in front is what F1 needs from its on-track product. With Verstappen and Red Bull in this current groove that just isn’t the case.
History dictates this will be bad for business. Viewing figures dipped significantly in the dominant Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes days of the mid to late 2010s, and that partnership never produced the winning streaks and the records Verstappen and Red Bull are setting now. Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari dominance was also bad for business at the start of the millennium.
Teams should be concerned by this. There’s been an influx of big-money partnerships in F1 (especially from American companies) and the sport is in rude health across the board. Less than a decade ago there were multiple teams struggling to make it race to race, we are in a different world to that reality now. But what happens to all of that if fans stop watching? Many pointed out it was short-sighted of F1 to reject Andretti and it was, for a number of reasons — one of them is that good times don’t last. The interest in joining F1 might not be there in a few years if the boom goes bust.
F1 can’t keep pointing to the amazing 2021 championship forever. The spectacle has not been good for a while now and it feels like we are heading towards a difficult season. And here’s something else to consider — next year teams will have one eye on building their 2026 car under the new regulations, meaning it is unlikely we will see much car development in 2025. If Red Bull is still significantly ahead 12 months from now rival teams might well look at shifting all their focus to the next car straight away.
