Red Bull secured a one-two finish at the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Sergio Perez coming second and also earning the bonus point for fastest lap of the race. However, Ferrari’s two drivers — Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz — were forced to retire with engine failure long before the end. In total, four cars powered by the Ferrari engine, including Zhou Guanyu’s Alfa Romeo and Kevin Magnussen’s Haas, retired from the grand prix. The Mercedes duo of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton took full advantage of Ferrari’s woes by finishing third and fourth, respectively.
The Dutchman’s victory meant he eclipsed Sebastian Vettel’s record of most podium finishes in a Red Bull car, with 66 top three finishes in his 126 races with the constructor. The win came after an impressive drive from Hamilton, who started in seventh and said he was struggling with serious back pain exacerbated by his car’s instability, a car Mercedes team principle Toto Wolff called a “s***box to drive” in his post-race radio message to Hamilton.
Verstappen was also redeeming himself for his previous crash in Azerbaijan the year earlier.
Verstappen on Sky Sports: “You can never make up what you lost last year, but today we had incredible pace and we could look after the tires. We were a tiny bit lucky with the retirements but our car was really good today. Overall, really happy with the balance of the car. Tire behavior, together with general grip of the car, that’s what you need around here. In the end, to have one-two as the team is a really good day for us.” After his retirement, Leclerc said today “hurts” for both him personally and for the team. “We really need to look into that for it to not happen again,” he told Sky Sports.”I don’t really find the right words to describe (it), obviously its very, very disappointing. I dunno, we really need to look into it.”
From our early season , we learned that we didn’t have alarmingly many problems to deal with. Consequently, we did not make changes to large things but instead bonded together and began racing better. We will have a hard time making changes for the better at this race involving the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, as Ferrari is still recovering from what we had to fix earlier in the season.
