The critical Red Bull tyre tactic Ferrari couldn't copy in Bahrain GP

“It was quite straightforward.” Max Verstappen succinctly summed up his 36th Formula 1 victory, a crushing display from his Red Bull squad in the Bahrain opener to the 2023 season.

For the world champion, there was little to worry about over 57 laps at the Sakhir circuit, but the nature of his and his team’s display left their rivals reeling. Because it was all very 2022 – Red Bull in control, Ferrari’s reliability failing, Mercedes badly off the pace – albeit with one new green podium shoot.

The start was Verstappen’s only real moment of peril. Ferrari claimed it had stopped Charles Leclerc from attempting a second soft tyre flier at the end of qualifying to give the Monegasque – who has clearly retained his searing speed to bother Red Bull over one lap – a brand new set of the red-walled C3 rubber to use at the start.

Leclerc expected this to provide “a bit more grip” that he could use to get among the Red Bulls ahead, with Verstappen heading team-mate Sergio Perez on the front row. And it worked.

When the lights went out, Verstappen shot ahead and swung right to cover any threat behind on the inside run to the Turn 1 right-hand hairpin. Behind, also gaining from Perez being “on the dirty side of the grid that benefited the brand new tyre off the start for Charles”, per Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, Leclerc was quickly surging after the Dutchman and getting alongside the second RB19.

Perez said “Charles was a little too aggressive” and indeed Leclerc’s jink as they both moved to stay in Verstappen’s slipstream did send Perez right, into the pitlane exit, pushing the following Carlos Sainz wider still – sparks from all cars flashing wildly. But Perez had also dropped his revs fractionally just before the lights went out, which appeared to contribute to his sluggish getaway. It all meant Perez was condemned to spending the race’s opening stint behind Leclerc, while Verstappen simply romped clear.

Leclerc's fresh tyres helped him get the jump on Perez off the line, but it mattered little as the race played out

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Over the 11 laps that followed the first tour, which Verstappen ended with a 1.2-second advantage, the leader pulled clear of Leclerc by 0.68s each time. On lap 10, even as he was complaining about a downshift problem causing minor rear locking, Verstappen added 0.7s to his lead. By the time Leclerc stopped to switch his much-discussed softs for new hards on lap 13, Leclerc was nearing 10s behind Verstappen, with Perez ominously just 1.45s adrift.

“He was very strong on that first stint and every time I could get close to him, I was just taking out my tyres,” Perez explained, Red Bull feeling the added freshness of Leclerc’s starting softs also gave him a tyre degradation boost across the first stint.

While Verstappen was brought in the lap after Leclerc, the leader taking a second set of softs as he did so, Red Bull waited until lap 17 to service Perez with the same strategy. This meant the Mexican emerged with a 4.0s deficit to Leclerc – Sainz by this point nearly 12s in arrears of the lead Ferrari and 22s behind Verstappen – but the RB19s were perfectly suited to keeping the softer rubber alive while being rapid at the same time.

"The fact that [Red Bull] were able to do a two soft [strategy], [then] one hard when we have to do two hard, one soft, for sure it's a game killer and we have to improve on this" Fred Vasseur

“We focused on the race more than quali and that paid its dividends,” said Horner. “We were able to run on the softer compound, particularly in the middle part of the race, and still have the durability.”

Perez used his softs to close the gap to Leclerc in six tours. Even though Ferrari informed Leclerc the hards were lasting better than expected across the field, his briefly raised pace following that radio call on lap 24 wasn’t enough.

On lap 26, Perez used DRS down the main straight to get close enough to the SF-23’s rear to make a move. He went through on Turn 1’s inside in a fairly simple move, though a late one, with Leclerc leading past the DRS detection line and so missing out on using the system on the second straight, which made his look to hit back at Turn 4’s inside all the more speculative.

“I was as confident as I could be being one second off of the pace, which is not really confident to be honest,” Leclerc said of his race with Perez. “Red Bull seems to have found something really big in their race pace…”

Leclerc's advantage over Perez was short-lived as the Mexican soon moved ahead following the first stops

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The coarse track surface meant once again this event would be a two-stop affair, with Leclerc again the first of the leaders to pit – for more hards in his case – on lap 33. By this point, he was 8.2s adrift of Perez, who in turn had a 14.0s gap to Verstappen and knew “Max was just too far down the line” in terms of any remaining hopes for a lead battle. Red Bull’s victory was already complete.

“The fact that they were able to do a two soft [strategy], [then] one hard when we have to do two hard, one soft, for sure it's a game killer and we have to improve on this,” said Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur of Leclerc’s key tyre degradation weakness against his rivals.

It was clear this was killing his pace from the off against Verstappen – despite Vasseur claiming “we were there, even to be able to match them the first 15 laps” – and that Perez was biding his time behind. Of the critical tyre tactics difference Ferrari lamented, Horner said Red Bull had “discussed many different scenarios” but felt “both drivers were particularly happy on the soft tyre”.

“We [also] only had one set of hard tyres, so we didn’t want to expose ourselves had there been a safety car around half distance,” he added.

Had that hypothetical scenario somehow happened and Leclerc had been armed with fresh hards against Red Bull returning to the softs having run the hards in the middle stint, it likely wouldn’t have made a jot of difference to the results of the top two positions given what happened on lap 40.

Seven laps into his third stint, Leclerc suddenly slowed through the Turn 12 fast right. His drive gone, Leclerc crept almost silently through Turn 13, then pulled off and retired a short way down the penultimate straight.

“I couldn’t do anything after [the car shutdown],” said Leclerc, who had seen his SF-23’s energy store and control electronics changed ahead of the race. Almost foreshadowing what was to come, he’d also climbed out of his cockpit at the back of the grid following the pre-race reconnoitering laps and walked ahead of the Ferrari mechanics pushing it to his third-place grid spot. Again, all very 2022.

“Honestly, we don't know yet what's happened exactly,” said Vasseur afterwards. “There was an issue [in the] morning and we changed the part. We don't know where it's coming from and we have the investigation soon.

Ferrari's Fred Vasseur era made an inauspicious start as Leclerc lost a likely podium to engine failure

Photo by: Ferrari

“We never expected to have something like this. Because [it’s] the first time that we had it and we didn't face the same issue at all during the 6000-7000km that we did with the engine in the last week [during testing] with the three teams [Ferrari plus engine customers Haas and Alfa Romeo] and didn't develop the same issue on the dyno.”

Leclerc’s stoppage brought out a brief virtual safety car activation, after which the Red Bull cars rolled home unchallenged – Verstappen winning by 12s.

“We basically just maintained the gap throughout the race,” concluded Perez. “So, I had no chance to fight for the win. But today was all about minimising the bad start.”

Behind the dominant leaders and the absent Leclerc, there was an excellent race – one that also featured a recovery after a shocking start.

"Fernando went for a cut back on Hamilton at Turn 4 and it was just really bad timing. We came together" Lance Stroll

There had been immense interest in how Fernando Alonso would get on during his Aston Martin debut. The Spaniard had shone during testing here and was so strong on a race simulation run during FP2 he got very close to Verstappen’s average and at that point left the mighty Mercedes feeling it had underestimated just how good its engine customer could be this year.

The fuel adjustment understanding from the practice running was that Red Bull had a “substantial” advantage over Aston, per team principal Mike Krack. That proved correct in the race and it may actually be even more considering “we don't know how much management that Red Bull had to do and did”, he added.

But Aston really could take the fight to the other ‘Class A’ squads it has surely now joined. This was clear in qualifying, when Alonso took fifth behind Sainz and lined up ahead of the Mercedes cars, with George Russell heading Lewis Hamilton.

When the lights went out, Hamilton jumped his slow-starting team-mate – Russell like Perez on the less grippy side of the track – and followed Alonso through the opening corners. But, with Alonso possibly “struggling” with “warm-up or whatever”, per Krack’s pre-post-race-data-analysis theorising, Hamilton was able to mount an attack on his former McLaren team-mate.

Verstappen took a straightforward victory that was never really in doubt after the opening lap

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The Mercedes dived ahead on Turn 4’s inside line, with Alonso appearing to cede ground in preparation for powering out of the open hairpin and responding as Hamilton swung towards the heavily monitored track limit on the outside. Here, Alonso felt he “got lucky”, but was also unlucky, as team-mate Lance Stroll “braked late to stay in front of George” – the second Mercedes attacking the second Aston’s outside.

“Fernando went for a cut back on Hamilton at Turn 4 and it was just really bad timing,” Stroll continued. “We came together…”

They did indeed – Stroll’s left-front tagging Alonso’s right-rear and somehow not giving it a puncture or spearing the lead Aston off-track. Nevertheless, Alonso’s lost momentum meant Russell could power by and he ran sixth behind Sainz, Hamilton and the dominant leaders. This order held until the first round of pitstops for this gaggle, which was kicked off by Hamilton coming in on lap 12 and on the next tour Sainz and Russell stopping behind Leclerc.

Aston left Alonso out for an extra lap, with the Spaniard taking advantage of Russell’s slow left-rear change and so emerging from his service for new hards ahead, just as the Mercedes was diving by Kevin Magnussen’s Haas into Turn 1. They both then had to pass Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas, who had demonstrated the undercut’s considerable power here by using his lap 11 stop to briefly jump ahead. Stroll had to do likewise – he’d pitted last of all the leaders bar Perez – and the new order held until the second round of stops.

This was again kicked off by Mercedes bringing Hamilton in – not that he wanted it. But the Black Arrows squad had recognised that Alonso, once through the tyre management phase required for a longer stint around this tyre-demanding venue, was an undercut threat. He’d erased Hamilton’s post-pitstop 6.2s gap and was just 2.1s behind at the start of lap 30.

When Hamilton therefore came in, Aston left Alonso out for four more tours, during which Stroll returned to the spotlight. The Canadian had followed Hamilton in and so was able to use the undercut’s advantage to jump Russell when the Briton emerged from his own second stop for hards one lap later (Sainz also stopping for a second time at this same stage up ahead).

Stroll’s pace (and Alonso’s too) against the Mercedes duo all race had been aided by the black cars suffering from more extreme tyre degradation. This was exacerbated by the W14s running their low-drag rear wing – needed, according to Toto Wolff, because “the single lap pace was just not there” with the higher-drag, downforce-boosting arrangement.

Alonso blitzed Russell before the first round of stops and spent his second stint tracking Hamilton; Stroll undercut Russell with a slightly earlier second stop

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Using DRS on the second straight on lap 32, Stroll blasted alongside Russell and used his Aston’s superior braking and apex confidence – features on both green machines all weekend – to sweep ahead on the outside line into Turn 4. The move got Stroll into seventh, which became sixth after Leclerc’s retirement. Stroll noted, understandably, that the pain from his broken right wrist “was the biggest limiting factor in the last 20 laps”.

“I was struggling to just turn in with confidence without the pain,” he added. However, Stroll did not need to take his left hand off his steering wheel to support his right wrist in certain corners as he had in Friday practice thanks to Aston upping the “assist level on the wheel a little bit for me”.

“I was just trying to get to the end. But it was still just a lot of fun to drive the car.”

That had been Alonso’s feeling all through testing. And in the race’s final third, he showed just how fast and impressively he could use the AMR23 too. Having been left out until lap 34, which he actually thought was not long enough in his quest to best Hamilton, Alonso then started his third stint on more of the hards all the leading finishers took to the end.

"I enjoyed the little tussle that we had and I knew [Alonso] was going to come by due to the way he caught me. He was in a different league at the time, performance-wise" Lewis Hamilton

After resuming 1.0s behind Hamilton, he was all over his old sparring partner in just two tours. On lap 37, Alonso used DRS to muscle his way to Hamilton’s inside at Turn 4. But, just when it seemed the place was his, Alonso slid wildly – his rear stepping out so badly he had to fully cross his arms to avoid a spin and this plus lifting off the throttle allowed Hamilton back by as Alonso gathered things up.

On the next tour, having locked up briefly at Turn 1 and then feigned inside and out at Turn 4 to no avail, Alonso powered up towards Hamilton’s rear exiting the downhill Turn 8 hairpin.

“You normally pass into Turn 1 or into Turn 4,” Alonso later explained. “[But] we could not match their straightline speed.”

So, he had to try something different. Alonso chased Hamilton up the rise ahead of the plunging Turns 9/10 double left complex and then “played a surprise move” on the Mercedes. This was releasing the brakes and sending his Aston on a narrower line to the Turn 10 apex, where Hamilton was finally bested.

“I enjoyed the little tussle that we had and I knew he was going to come by due to the way he caught me,” the seven-time world champion reflected. “He was in a different league at the time, performance-wise.”

Even with an earlier second stop Hamilton couldn't keep Alonso at bay and was ambushed at Turn 10

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Despite their battle, both Alonso and Hamilton were now only 2.7s behind Sainz. This was down to 2.2s when Leclerc’s stoppage up ahead triggered the VSC two tours later.

Sainz had been 9.2s behind his team-mate before Leclerc retired, with “degradation on Carlos' car the main problem”, per Vasseur, who also felt Leclerc’s new starting softs gave him an extra edge on the second Ferrari. But Sainz concluded that, despite all the efforts gone into improving on tyre management at his squad over the winter, “it’s about as bad as it was last year”.

“It’s just that the other two cars [Red Bull and Aston] for some reason found something that means they degrade half,” Sainz added. “You could just see how much Fernando and Max could push on the tyres and how much we needed to save. As soon as we push, we go backwards. That doesn’t leave you a lot of margin.”

With that in mind and Alonso now bearing down on what had suddenly become the final podium berth, Sainz was concerned his hards wouldn’t make the finish when Ferrari requested he “protect position” against his compatriot.

On lap 45, three laps after the VSC had ended, Alonso attacked. Just like with Hamilton, he knew the Aston’s extra drag meant he had to wait for Turn 4. But when he sent the move to Sainz’s inside, another sudden snap left meant he clipped the Ferrari’s right-rear and lost momentum.

Sainz, who would hold on to beat Hamilton to the flag by just 2.9s, felt the contact but concluded it was “just a little touch”. In any case, just seven corners later, Alonso finally pushed his way by with a forceful move into Turn 11 – benefiting from the shorter back straight meaning the Ferrari’s greater top speed couldn’t be brought to bear.

Those two Turn 4 slips, Alonso did his best to not fully explain, were down to the Aston “not 100% tailormade [for me] yet”. That “getting used to the car, getting used to the driving input, feedback from the steering wheel and power assistance” was knowledge he still lacked and meant that when he stamped on the gas out of Turn 4, often the rear would buckle. Indeed, it had been doing so at the same spot throughout opening practice.

But the slides couldn’t take the shine off Alonso’s 99th F1 podium visit, as he concluded his result was “a perfect start for this project”.

Alonso made it a memorable debut for Aston as he joined the Red Bull duo on the podium

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images