Anyone for bowling?

 

I thought of that blog title, perhaps somewhat smugly, as soon as the first corner carnage unfolded. Turns out, great minds think alike - check out poor Charles LeClerc on Twitter...

I cannot recall such an action packed, exciting race in recent memory. Wow. 

 

First corner carnage changes the race

They really did topple like pins from a bowling game, cannoning off into each other. 

Bottas made a poor start, and was overtaken by Norris and Perez. To be fair, it was the first wet running all weekend, so some errors were bound to happen somewhere. Bottas misjudged the braking and nerfed into Norris, who in turn was a passenger and spun into Verstappen. Bottas continued sliding and took out Perez. They all went off at the outside of the hairpin corner. Then a charging Stroll mounted the inside grass and clattered into LeClerc, who then in turn hit Ricciardo a little further around the corner. Utter carnage. Pieces of F1 car strewn everywhere and anyone who stayed to the inside probably did better than those going around the outside of the carnage. Ocon and Vettel nipped through from eighth and tenth to go second and third behind Hamilton! Sainz came from 15th to...4th was it? Amazing. And also shows just how many cars were retired or knocked to the back. Alonso sort of got stuck a bit on the exit, having had to slow right down as he went more to the outside to try and avoid the spinning cars. The race was stopped due to just how much wreckage there was on track.

 

Weirdest restart in F1 history?

Coming round to the grid for the restart, everyone but Hamilton elected to change from wets to slicks and to start from the pitlane. This left Hamilton to take the grid alone. What the actual smeg was that? You'd have to rub your eyes a few times to believe it. It turned out later that Mercedes thought it was going to rain again. The Channel 4 pundits thought it might have been to do with well, if he pits with everyone else, there are no guarantees he comes out first. Witness George Russell making massive pitstop gains to emerge second I think?

Ocon vs Vettel

For most of the race, Vettel was closely tracking Ocon, never more than 1.5 seconds adrift. He made a couple of notable moves, the biggest was when Ocon was lapping a McLaren down the start finish straight. All in all, Ocon took full advantage and drove an absolutely flawless race in the lead with a four time champion breathing down his neck for 68 laps. Amazing. Thoroughly well deserved win!

You can look at a full race analysis here, courtesy of BBC and Andrew Benson. I'm gonna delve into the juiciest bits.

Hamilton vs Verstappen

The last 2 races have been a disaster for Verstappen, of fairly epic proportions. He was 32 points ahead before Silverstone. He is now 8 behind. That's a 40 point swing to Hamilton. Ok, for Hungary there was absolutely no blame on Verstappen as he was clattered into by Norris, a mere passenger himself. His car was severely damaged and he laboured near the back of the race for the majority of laps, but he did scrape a point near the end. How valuable could that be at the end of the year?

 

Hamilton vs Alonso

Hamilton had so much speed during the race and would unquestionably have caught Ocon for the win (after being slap bang last after the first lap of the restart, having pitted for slicks) if it hadn't been for the dogged brilliance of Alonso in a battle for 4th. He held Hamilton off for ten laps, which prevented Hamilton catching Ocon - you could see he was under a second from Vettel at the end!

It was just two supreme racers at their total best. Alonso celebrated his 40th birthday in style with a defiant, classy drive to 4th (well, 5th, but Vettel was later DQ'd due to fuel irregularities).

Check out the battle here.

Other epic stuff...

The Williams boys drove brilliantly to both get Williams' first points of the year. Latiffi was in third at one point, Russell in second at one point too (I think? I lost track to be honest with so much going on!).

Sainz again drove a pretty stellar race, finishing 4th with Alonso breathing down his neck. Though obviously this was later third due to Vettel's DQ.

I think we all need a little break just to calm the hell down after this one. Just, wow. Nothing I can really say will describe just how much fun, excitement and proper wheel to wheel racing this one had.

The title race is evenly poised as we go to Spa. 

And breathe.

Round 1: Bahrain race review

Phew. F1 is back with a bang. And luckily for us fans, it seems we have a genuine two team fight for the title.

I was wrong. All those years of Mercedes arriving into the first round and unleashing their full qualifying potential have left me somewhat cynical it seems. Max was 4 tenths ahead of Lewis for pole and provided the 7 team world champion with a stern test through the race, albeit racing apart for most of it. It was a game of cat and mouse, of strategy, that ultimately led to a showdown on track for the last handful of laps. And we were not left disappointed as the 2 drivers went at it hammer and tongs to win the season opener. Max hunting down Lewis when Lewis was on tyres that were 11 laps older, so he had to defend with all his racing acumen, and then some! Max ultimately overtook Lewis off the track at turn 4 and had to hand back the lead immediately, through fear of race control punishment (the turn 4 off track rules seemed confusing during the race and at the end to be honest!). 

It was a grandstand finish from two drivers at the very top. Let us hope Red Bull are competitive at all tracks this year, and don't drop away on other tracks like they did at times last year. Game on!

This. This is what I wanted all along. Racing, fighting for the win!

Elsewhere there was plenty to see. Norris made a blinding start and was soon in 4th. Perez's Red Bull turned itself off on the parade lap and he had to start from the pitlane - he finished an excellent 5th!

Fernando Alonso didn't drive like someone who has been away from F1 for 2 years. He made an excellent start, taking Sainz immediately and tracking the McLarens until falling away a bit. He also had a doozy of a battle a bit later with Vettel and Sainz. A shame he had to retire really, as no doubt he would have got some good points for Alpine.

Both McLaren's looked pretty nippy early on and Ricciardo finished a solid 7th in a car he is no doubt still getting used to. Ferrari looked solid enough too, finishing 6th and 8th. A good start compared to the utterly disaster strewn year of 2020! Read the full race report from BBC here now.

Of course, plenty of people will look at the benefits of the new aero regulations for some teams versus others. Ehm. Still. They are all in the same boat and have to adapt to the rules as best they can. But this is an interesting little graphic about how much time each team has lost in Bahrain 2021 qualifying versus the same race last year.  

There was proper racing throughout the field, throughout the race. Brilliant.

Also, I can't be the only one who mistaken the Aston Martin's for the Mercedes on around 3 different occasions?! Under the lights the paint jobs look rather similar! 

Round 2 - let's go! :-)

Round 1: Bahrain qualifying report and views

It was great watching the C4 F1 gang again, like welcoming back old friends you haven't seen for a few months :-). DC is celebrating his 50th birthday (loving Mark commentating on DC getting a face full of cake), and Mark Webber's folks are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. Fantastic. And they had a beautiful piece from DC about Murray Walker.

Qualifying for round 1 threw up some interesting results. LeClerc in 4th, Gasly in 5th, Vettel out in Q1, Perez 11th. And Russell once again getting (what is quite likely) the slowest car into Q2. Fantastic. You can read the full report here from the BBC. Sainz was half a second behind LeClerc, which might sting a bit, but then again the whole car would have been built last year around LeClerc so let's give Carlos some time to get fully up to speed.

The McLaren's were both in the top 10, along with the returning Fernando Alonso in a fairly strong 9th.

But let us talk about Max in the 33 Red Bull (my sometime blogging colleague will be living in a very happy household given the Max superfan status of his wife). Wow, what a lap, nearly 4 tenths up on Lewis! I mean, I really don't want to get carried away. But, it looks like Red Bull are genuinely quicker than Mercedes, at least at the first track here. I wasn't really listening to all the talk before qualifying of Red Bull being quicker, as we've seen in previous years Mercedes arrive at qualifying and blow everyone away. I thought that would likely happen here. But, we may indeed have a genuine fight at the front. Proper racing at the very front! Let's see. I am excited.

Now to the real important stuff. How are my fantasy F1 teams looking based on qualifying? Hehe.

Ok, my team 1 drivers are Alonso, Gasly and Kimi. Not looking too bad.

Perez, Russell and Ocon in team 2. Eh.

Vettel, Stroll and Schumacher in the last team. Go Stroll!

I'll be back early in the week for a full post-race analysis :-).