Max Verstappen has secured himself pole position for the first Formula 1 race of 2024, the Bahrain Grand Prix. He beat Charles Leclerc in qualifying, who starts from the front row alongside him. George Russell completes the top three.
Results | Qualifying GP Bahrain 2024
With only half a second splitting the top 9, this is going to be a great season.
Jeez, what is wrong with the Alpine. For a team that wants to attack the top teams, they are surely moving in the wrong direction. Again Nico shows he can bring something extra. Okay, Kevin isn't top notch, but the GAP in the seconf session was enormous. Delighted to see 2nd till 9th place with 3 tenth of a second. Promissing start of the season.
Alonso, George, Hulkenburg, Albon and Max all out classing their team mates in an embarrassing fashion
@jem they got bad team mangement behide the seens that let whole team down .alpine looked well bad nico last year did great job at hass and he done great today .kevin i never thought him as good driver
You're wrong, this isn't normal chess, this isn't even 4D chess, this is quantum chess. They look like they're going backwards, but that's because they're in the 6th dimension, which is slightly longer in some parts and defies entropy, that's why it looks like they're losing time.
I mentioned I have made 3 predictions for this season. George, Yuki and Piastri to be quicker than their team mates. I got 2 out of the 3 correct and the 3rd was only off by 0.069 of a second!
Should have added the obvious Leclerc, Max, Alonso, Albon and Hulkenburg to pad your stats
I will go out on a limb and predict that Max will outscore Checo, i might have a 100% accuracy on that!
Those few drivers are 'expected' to beat their team mates. The 3 which I have predicted goes against the expecteations of most fans.
ohh you must have a glass ball or something if you start to judge from 1 quali.
Unexpected results at the back, Alpine all the way down, Stake being spared of that embarrassment. I thought Stake would be above Haas, but it looks like Haas did make a jump. Which is good news for Visa and Haas, they might be getting some decent points compared to last year. Bad news for Williams, Logan might prove to be a dragging weight for them again. Aston will probably be dangling at the bottom of the top teams, but without Alpine in there, they might have a bit of a buffer to the midfield, unless Stroll fails to get any points.
Yeah the Alpines.. it's funny, yesterday while I was still at work, my girlfriend watched DTS. During dinner she said to me: "Last year Alpine was very bad, then they got rid of the TP (Szafnauer) and a new one came in (Famin) and they improved considerably. The old TP was really bad, Alpine will perform better next year". Me: "Don't trust DTS, it's entertaining, it's more complicated than that". Today after Q3, also during dinner. Me: "Well..." She: "Don't trust DTS" ? Funny anecdote. We watched the qualifying on the "official" swiss french broadcaster. The commentators said that they will call Sauber just Sauber because the sponsor (Stake the company) is forbidden in Switzerland. Therefore we are not allowed to pronounce their name. The best part, every time they showed a Stake on TV, you could clearly read Stake on the side pods ? Your not allowed to pronounce it, but can clearly read it on TV. ?
Hah, yeah, Alpine had a really terrible year in terms of management last year, maybe they'll do better in that respect this year, but yeah, the race results might've suffered in the meantime. I said this last year as well, they quickly gathered a lot of investors that barely knew the team, like that big rugbyplayer (i forget his name or what sport it was, but he was big) sorta tried to educate the listener with saying: "it's pronounced al-peen, and not al-pine, i found out recently". I think people like him might be pulling out quickly if this is what the rest of the year will be for them, and that could possibly start a cascading effect and suddely Alpine will be in big trouble AND last in the championship. Andretti will be watching closely, now that Haas suddenly started performing (possibly). And yeah, i never actually thought about that, i know that the teams will be called differently in different countries, but yeah, the rest of the races will still be broadcast anyway, and they can't superimpose a different advert on the cars live during the race either. That's just silly. Maybe this word thing is like the falling tree in the forest... If there's nobody around to hear it... even though we can clearly SEE the tree falling, but we pretend that it's not happening.
Things can still change during season. Last one, Haas started pretty decently, just to end up last. Alpine is a big question mark to me. I don't know Famin. But I don't feel "the frenchy" will be capable to convince all the Brits in the factory in Enstone and therefore, build a strongly needed bridge between the two factories in England and in France. But an increase of performance during the season should still be possible.
Yeah it didn't look very good today, i'm really starting to feel like they're about to flame out, because i have no confidence in the new backers, and the team isn't showing much promise right now either. Hopefully they'll be on an upwards trajectory quickly, otherwise it might go down very quickly. And it just makes the Andretti argument look weaker and weaker, especially when you look at the F2 races, they're having 11 teams right now. But yeah, whatever. I am not really well versed on all the tracks, i'll take any and i'll take your word for it, i just like "home" races for the teams, but i've already lenghtily discussed that last year here :)
Yeah it's a shame for a major car manufacturer like Renault. French GP sure. But please Magny-Cours this time. ?
Yeah, it's kinda comical, i think one of the Sky presenters hinted at it last year as well; the divide between the Brits and the Frenchies. Even though it's more of a comedy stereotype, but it does kinda seem to look like a bit of a reality here. They should definitely be able to make progress, they're not 'supposed' to be a bottom team. But it really needs to happen, because unlike Haas or Aston, they don't have a steady investor, and if it doesn't improve quickly... I have no insight or knowledge about any of the figures at the teams, so i cannot tell if Famin is the right guy, but i hope that they can make it work. I like seeing a French team with French drivers, all i need now is the French GP back.
Look where Perez is. The true pace of the Redbull is worse than Ferrari but the Max magic as usual makes the difference
Drivers who can handle pointy cars are always faster than ones who cannot.
Another way to put that is that pointy cars are faster but only the best drivers have the reactions to take advantage of that extra speed
I agree whole heartedly , that car isn’t for everyone, even Albon succinctly explains this in an interview about MV and the RB.
Ok, here we go again with your anti-Perez statements. Do you still think Danny Ric would do better? Weren’t you the one who predicted he’d be the 2nd driver by now?
Are you addressing me? I don't think Ricciardo even deserves to be in F1. That should be Lawson's seat. I think Perez is maybe 1-2 tenths slower than other top drivers. Max and Alonso just make their cars shine in a way no other drivers could.
We will see tomorrow. Leclerc and Russell both in their post qualifying interviews said it's a forgone conclusion that Max will win the race. They have the data. They would know.
That was last year my man, this year a whole other game is in perspective.
Does Max catch a tow every lap of every race? If you average out the times he's a step ahead of everyone at almost every track.
Was that any different than last year? I think that the qualifying / one lap pace of the Red Bull not that dominant is, kind of like last year when the Ferrari's took plenty of poles. It was a fun quali and Max was doing Max things in the end, but others were good as well! Hulk, Russell, Alonso, LecLerc. Lewis a bit down on pace, but he will be fine in the race I think! Very curious about the race tomorrow, even though I cant watch (live) ? Lets see how Max' race pace is, because that was the real strength of Max and that RB19!
Or put it another way, Max can reliably extract 100% of the cars performance but Perez can't.
Apparently he didnt as his last lap wasnt better despite the track improving. He lost time in the final sector.
The track wasn't improving. It was cooling. Same reason Leclerc couldn't beat his Q2 time
You think Perez is a indicator of the car performance? I definitely agree there is a gulf between Max and Checo...but that RB is not half as bad as Ch co makes it look to be.
He's beaten Max on occasion so he must be pretty good. Just not Max good
Nor as good as the other top drivers if he's 1-2th behind them. You seen to be saying that the Redbull is actually slower than the Ferrari but it's only the "Max magic" that results in the car being quicker. Hence why I suggested Max gets 100% out of the car and Pezez (clearly) doesn't. Hopefully you're not suggesting that Max gets "110%" out of the car? Might Max in the 24 Ferrari be quicker than Max in the 24 RB? We'll never know. That's the eternal conundrum of F1.
No, if you add 2~tenths to Perez then Ferrari wins. If you subtract 2~ tenths from Verstappen Ferrari wins. I'm saying Verstappen is getting more out of the car than it would be capable of in anyone else's hands.
ok. but you started by saying that "The true pace of the Redbull is worse than Ferrari" which clearly isn't true (based on the results from qualy). What you're simply saying is that you believe that Max is faster than anyone else (except maybe Alonso). ok. All we know for sure is that (in the same car) he's certainly a lot faster (and more consistent) than Perez. How Max would compare to other top drivers in the same car will likely forever remain unknown. Consider the list of WDC who weren't in the best car at the time.
I'm saying Max would get 1-2 tenths more than any other driver except maybe Alonso out of any car. He has the same advantage over other top drivers that the other top drivers have over Perez.
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