Where each F1 team must improve in 2019

Whether it was collective sympathy for Charles Leclerc losing what would have been a maiden Formula 1 win to a dropped cylinder, or a bit of fatigue after a fairly brutal month travelling from Barcelona to Melbourne and on to Bahrain, the paddock at Sakhir on Sunday night felt flat.

Yes, some people were pretty chuffed with their evening's work - Mercedes celebrated its unexpected win and Zak Brown bounded down to the TV pen to congratulate Lando Norris for his first F1 points - but elsewhere smiles were hard to find.

Just two races into the campaign, the reality appears to have hit home that F1's unpredictable start to 2019, as good as it has been to watch, has caused some pretty big headaches for the teams. Now they must try to find the cures.

Even Mercedes, which has enjoyed a gilded start and opened a pretty neat lead in the world championship, will be returning to Brackley with concerns about the competitive picture.

It won in both Australia and Bahrain, but Mercedes knows both those victories came on weekends when Ferrari didn't get its act together. In Melbourne, Ferrari never found the sweet spot with its car and engine settings, while in Bahrain a spin for Sebastian Vettel and Leclerc's issue left the door open.

But it will not be lost on Mercedes' engineers that Ferrari appears to have found something special with its power unit - when it's working properly. The straightline speed advantage that the Maranello cars showed in Bahrain was palpable, and suggests the team may well be dominant at those venues where its engine can stretch its legs.

The challenge for Mercedes will be in working out just what Ferrari has done to find a speed advantage. Insiders suggest it's a different characteristic of performance to what was seen last year when the focus was on the double battery system inside the red cars.

But while Mercedes might be worried about Ferrari's potential, the Italian outfit is not without its own concerns too, for it has had two weekends where results have fallen short of expectations.

Ferrari headed to the Australian Grand Prix quietly bullish about its prospects on the back of a promising showing in testing. Melbourne's disappointing showing could have been interpreted as a blip, but its second disappointment in Bahrain - when it failed to capitalise on a front-row lock out - has put pressure on the team to ensure that 2019 doesn't turn into another year of lost opportunity.

When things go wrong once, it's relatively easy for a team to move on. But when a pattern of failures develop, there's a danger of falling into a negative spiral where the pressure to turn things around ends up triggering further problems. A response in China is essential for Ferrari.

Red Bull left Bahrain in a considerably less jubilant frame of mind than it had been in leaving Australia, where a surprise podium finish in its first race with Honda allowed the team to dream that it was well on course for multiple wins in 2019.

For every team, banishing their current headaches is going to be essential to avoid being left behind

The difficulties that both Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly had over the Sakhir weekend in trying to find a comfortable set-up has highlighted the work Red Bull needs to do to improve its chassis. The RB15 clearly has a very narrow operating window.

For the first time in ages, Red Bull knows that the biggest progress needs to come from its car rather than its power unit - even though Ferrari's straightline speed advantage will not have been welcome to either the team or its new engine partner.

Another outfit whose lofty expectations were frustrated last weekend was Haas. It had left Melbourne on a high after Kevin Magnussen's qualifying and race pace suggested it could have a car that was the 'best of the rest' behind the top three. McLaren's Carlos Sainz Jr even suggested before track action began in Bahrain that Haas was half a second clear of the midfield.

That prediction looked pretty solid when Magnussen just missed out on pipping Verstappen in qualifying. All the indications were that the American-owned team might be coming close to bridging the gap to the top three outfits.

But those dreams painfully evaporated on Sunday when Magnussen went backwards from the off. Haas's inability to switch its tyres on in the race - a characteristic the team has suffered from in the past - will leave it anxious about what is to come at future races.

Haas's dramas appeared to have left the door open for Renault to get its season back on track as Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo moved towards the front of the midfield battle in Bahrain after an indifferent qualifying.

But its "brutal" race ending, as both cars were halted by unrelated problems within seconds of each other, left the team in a state of shock. Up at the Renault motorhome afterwards, team boss Cyril Abiteboul untypically chose to steer clear of speaking to the media while he digested the calamitous evening.

Renault is no stranger to reliability problems but this, in combination with the issues McLaren encountered with Renault MGU-Ks in testing and in Melbourne, suggests it may not have put its durability dramas to bed. In an era where teams are so limited in the number of engine components they can use, a spate of DNFs in the opening races is unwelcome.

Other teams less afflicted by headline-making problems also face challenges. McLaren, Force India, Toro Rosso and Alfa Romeo know they need to lift their performance if they are to keep fighting for decent points in the incredibly close midfield battle. Williams needs to improve dramatically before it can even dream of fighting for points on merit. So no one is really able to sit back after the first two races and feel confident about how the campaign is going to play out.

The early impression actually appears to be that success in 2019 will not be about the teams exploiting their strengths. Instead it will be about curing their weaknesses.

For every team, banishing their current problems is going to be essential to avoid being left behind, because the closeness of the competition means the pack will be ruthless.

While that situation may be painful for the teams at the centre of it, it has all the hallmarks of a campaign that will be defined as much by joy as it will be from heartache, drama and turmoil. And that's exactly what F1 should be like.