Max Verstappen holds off the field in qualifying for F1 Bahrain Grand Prix

Heading into the 2024 F1 season, the most important questions are:

Can anyone catch Max Verstappen?

Three days of preseason testing and three practice sessions yielded few answers. While other teams, particularly Ferrari, recorded impressive lap times during pre-season testing, Verstappen was still lurking, and his times matched those of his rivals in part on more difficult compounds. Mercedes made a big step forward in Thursday’s second practice session, with Lewis Hamilton topping the timesheets, followed by teammate George Russell.

Has F1’s dominance been captured in 2023?

That day may indeed come, but it did not come today. One night in Bahrain, Verstappen was once again at the front of the field, leading his RB20 to pole position in the first race of the 2024 F1 season. He finished slightly ahead of Charles Leclerc, one of the Ferrari drivers, and George Russell, one of the Mercedes drivers.

Full results from Friday’s qualifying session are below.

With 24 race weekends left, there’s a good chance Red Bull and Verstappen will catch up in the field.

But not yet.

alpine – loser

The quotes that follow in Q1 tell Alpine’s story.

from F1TV The commentary box opened with comments from Alex Jacques, who described the difficult Q1 session as “a tragic story for the French manufacturer”. Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly both missed out on qualifying for Q1, but that was just the beginning of the bad news. Ocon crossed the line in 19th place, with Gasly following behind in 20th place.

This is the second year in a row that Gasly has started the season at the back of the field. Gasly also started last year at last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix, behind rookies Oscar Piastri, Logan Sargent and Nick de Vries.

“It’s an unfortunate situation for Alpine,” Jacques added.

“Yeah, disaster on the out lap,” Gasly said over the radio after Q1. His teammates took a more optimistic view. “Yes, guys, it’s only round one. We keep moving forward and keep moving forward. I trust you guys,” Ocon said.

Alpine have been on the back foot in many ways since pre-season testing and since last year. A year ago, the team struggled with the A523’s power unit, going so far as to request an exemption from F1’s mid-season power unit freeze. That request was denied, and the team limped to a finish in the middle of the field. They were fast enough to stay ahead of Williams in sixth place, but too slow to catch the Aston Martin and McLaren in front of them.

This has led the team to take a new approach to its 2024 campaign challenger, A524. So far, returns have been mixed at best, with the team making it clear they expect a “challenging” start to the season. What model should they follow? McLaren from last season. A year ago, it was McLaren who struggled from the start and pointed out that an upgrade to the MCL60 was planned to improve their form.

Alpine must now believe that they too can continue down that path.

Nico Hulkenberg – Winner

Friends, take note.

You’ll be seeing a lot of this photo this season.

Qualifying a year ago was a strength for Haas, and that trend looks set to continue in 2024. Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg drove the VF-24 into Q2, with Hülkenberg also advancing to Q3, qualifying 10th.

“At the end of last year, we still managed to get into Q3 a few times and we knew our strengths in qualifying last season. We don’t seem to have lost it, but on race day from earlier We need to resolve the issues,” Hulkenberg said in the team report after qualifying. “Obviously that is the most important point for us this season and we focused almost exclusively on that during testing and in the winter to further develop the characteristics of last year. It feels good. But tomorrow is the real test to see if it actually gets better, so there are exciting times ahead.”

As Hulkenberg pointed out, the bigger problem for Haas will come tomorrow. In fact, the team spent much of its preseason testing schedule adjusting race pace, hoping to resolve the tire deterioration issues that plagued them a season ago. So this is a good start and the fact that the VF-24 seems to have a strong one-lap pace compared to the previous model is very good, but there are bigger hurdles coming tomorrow. Sho.

However, the team also took a pragmatic approach to Q3 as Hulkenberg progressed into the third and final session.

“From FP3, we focused on fuel-efficient performance, and after the session we thought if we did a good job we could advance to Q2, and we were able to achieve that, so I’m very happy.” Nico advanced to Q3 after Q2. It was a great lap up until that point, so I’m really happy with this as well. I can say that in Q3 I was in a calm state of mind knowing that I would not be racing against Mercedes or McLaren tomorrow. So we left one new set of tires for Nico on Saturday to give ourselves the best chance. ” said Ayao Komatsu, the new team leader. “I would like to think that everything we learned from pre-season testing and yesterday’s high-fuel run we can put into practice tomorrow and try to get some points.”

We’ll know within hours whether that pragmatic approach, as well as their focus on race pace, will pay off.

Sauber – Loser

Alpine was not the only car where both drivers were eliminated in Q1.

The same fate befell stakes F1 team Kick Sauber.

Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Chou were both eliminated after Q1, with Bottas finishing on the outside in 16th place and Zhou behind him in 17th place. On Zhou’s final push lap, his C44 shook violently at Turns 14 and 15, causing him to lose valuable time. If we had avoided that moment, we might have survived into Q2.

It was a bit disappointing for the team as the C44 had shown some pace in pre-season testing and in this week’s practice sessions. Chou scored a P3 on the final day of testing despite using the softer C4 compound, which is unavailable this week.

Perhaps the team will be able to make some progress at the track tomorrow and race pace will exceed the one-lap pace they showed on Friday. However, this is not the start to the season the team was hoping for.

ferrari – winner

Verstappen will take pole position on Friday, with Mercedes also filling the front two rows (more on Russell later).

But what about the other two cars in the first two rows? A pair of Ferraris. As mentioned above, Leclerc qualified second behind Verstappen, and at lights out on Friday night Leclerc will be directly behind Leclerc with teammate Carlos Sainz Jr., who qualified fourth.

This could potentially give Ferrari an advantage at the start, giving the duo the opportunity to push each other from the start to turn one.

After qualifying, Sainz revealed that he was happy with the SF-24 and was increasing his pace for the first race of the season.

There may be some disappointment that Leclerc missed out on pole position, as the team felt that first place was within reach.

However, points will be awarded tomorrow.

VCARB – Loser

After completing pre-season testing and the first practice session of the year on Thursday, there was hope that the Visa Cash App RB F1 team could be this year’s surprise package. Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda showed great pace in the days leading up to qualifying, and the first practice sessions of the year gave VCARB fans great hope.

After FP1, with both drivers in the top five, VCARB fans began to dream.

But that dream didn’t come true Friday. Both Tsunoda and Ricciardo made it to Q2, but their night ended there. Ricciardo was in 14th place, while Tsunoda unfortunately missed out on making it to Q3, and will start the Grand Prix in 11th place.

It may be worth noting that a season ago, rookie Nick de Vries was eliminated in Q1, and Tsunoda was also eliminated in Q2. Therefore, it certainly looks like progress for both drivers to qualify for Q2 this season. Additionally, points will be distributed tomorrow, putting both Ricardo and Tsunoda within range of having them added to their VCARB accounts in the new year.

Still, I would have liked to see a little more on Friday.

George Russell – Winner

After FP2, it looked like Mercedes were going to get their driver in the lead and maybe even pole position.

Although it was a close second, it was George Russell who qualified in 3rd place. Lewis Hamilton, who topped the timesheets ahead of Russell in FP2, managed to advance to Q3, but only qualified in 9th place.

Still, if both cars can make it to Q3 and Russell can take the lead, Mercedes has a very good chance of getting a great result on Saturday.

More importantly? The team and both drivers seem much happier with his W15 than his previous two cars.

“Everyone at the factory did a great job to give Lewis and I a car we were happy with. It’s a foundation on which we can build. We still have some catching up to do to be at the forefront, but Starting third is a good position for tomorrow’s race,” Russell said in the team’s post-qualifying report. “It’s clear how close it is between a lot of the teams, including us, Ferrari, McLaren and Aston Martin. If we can find 10 seconds or two over the whole lap, we could get some positions on the grid. I’m excited to think I’m going to get that.”

The team also made it clear that they are focusing on Saturday instead of Friday. Mercedes made several changes to both cars in hopes of maximizing race pace on Saturday.

“I struggled through qualifying, just like I have for the last few years. The car feels really great, but I’ve only made a little bit of progress towards improving my race pace. I wasn’t that comfortable yesterday, so that’s what I’m going to focus on. ,” Hamilton said. “I have also sacrificed more single-lap performance than I expected, but I hope it will pay off tomorrow. It will be tough to pass a lot of fast cars starting from the front, but I’m sure it will be fun. Let’s talk.”

In the case of Toto Wolff (who is giving yet another meme early in the season, as seen here), the gains are modest, but there is reason to be hopeful. “Behind Verstappen, the gap with some other teams is very close. Just a few tenths makes such a big difference. It’s the absolute tiny margins that matter, and even the smallest gains If you get it, you’re in the game right,” Wolff said. “Hopefully tomorrow will be a little better, but we are still learning a lot about the car.”