Leclerc victorious in season opener, Sainz P2 in promising start to 2022 campaign for Ferrari; disastrous late double DNF for Red Bull leads to podium for Mercedes’ Hamilton, P4 for Russell

In the first race of the 2022 Formula 1 season, team Ferrari proved that its early mastery of the new ground effect-dependent chassis and new engine specs was not a fluke. The famed Scuderia from Maranello, which suffered a prolonged period of mediocrity for much of the prior turbo-hybrid era, saw a spring resurgence as their blood red Prancing Horses finished one-two in the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday. Charles Leclerc, who clearly was the fastest man of the weekend, earned victory after starting from the pole, while his stablemate Carlos Sainz fought hard and took advantage of the terminal failures of both contending Red Bulls late in the race to come home a happy  P2. That marked the first one-two Ferrari finish in a GP since 2019 in Singapore when Sebastian Vettel led home Leclerc. While Leclerc was relatively dominant all day, he was effectively harassed by Verstappen’s Red Bull for the lead throughout, including a ding dong, see saw battle between the two after the first round of pit stops between Laps 16 and 20. Verstappen and his team made effective use of the undercut coming in a lap earlier than then Monegasque to gain track position on Leclerc, which led to several laps of Verstappen passing Leclerc going into Turn 1 and Leclerc snatching the lead back coming out of Turn 4, where the Ferrari’s excellence in the slow speed corners neutralized the Red Bull’s straight line pace advantage. After a period of holding stations and status quo for many laps after that while Verstappen bided his time, it looked like it would be game on again between the two contenders when a full Safety Car was deployed on Lap 46 of this 57-lap contest after Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri stopped on track and unceremoniously burst into flames. It proved to be a very bad omen for other Red Bull-engined cars.

With the field now bunched up again behind Leclerc after pretty much everyone dove to the pits for the cheap stop and a switch to the high performing Soft Pirelli tires to finish out the race, Leclerc’s advantage over Verstappen was reduced to less than a second. But by the time the Safety Car tucked in at the end of Lap 50, Verstappen had been on the radio complaining about a heavy feel to the steering, perhaps having something to do with the power steering hydraulics. Leclerc initiated the restart superbly and gapped Verstappen, although the Dutch reigning world champion still seemed able to stay on the lead Ferrari’s gearbox. But Verstappen’s radio messages to and from the pit wall kept getting more fraught and there was clearly trouble brewing in the car. Sure enough, on Lap 54 something in Verstappen’s engine let go and he was quickly overtaken by most of those behind him. Verstappen wound up limping his mount to the pits but the issue was terminal and he was forced to retire. Climbing out of the car in stunned disbelief as the race stormed to its conclusion without him was a sad way to begin the defense of his first championship.

Passion overload from @ScuderiaFerrari 😍#BahrainGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/x17iZaCUfJ

— Formula 1 (@F1) March 20, 2022

As if that wasn’t bad enough for the team, Sergio Perez’s car also conked out on the very last lap with the engine seizing up, sending the Mexican veteran, who surely had dreams of challenging Sainz for P2, into a spin and permanent stall. With both Ferraris now home and dry without any more serous threats behind them, Red Bull’s disastrous double DNF also promoted both Mercedes up two spots respectively. Despite their obvious porpoising issues, Verstappen’s and Perez’s misfortunes saw Hamilton grab the last step on the podium with a fortuitous P3, while his new teammate George Russell also scored valuable points in P4. For as bad as Mercedes looked in preseason testing and throughout the start of the race weekend in Bahrain, this was just the lucky break they were looking for, as the team’s braintrust works to dial out the excessive oscillation that has plagued their new design. To be fair, mighty Mercedes made a lot of progress just since Friday. But they’ll probably need a few more weeks to get things right, particularly with another race immediately next Sunday in Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, thoughts that the Merc power plant might not be the one to have may have been premature, particularly in light of a whopping three failed Red Bull power units in just this one race. Relaibilty was always going be a concern with so many changes to the cars & engines under the new formula. It was just hard to imagine that Red Bull, which had looked so slick up until today, would be the first to show vulnerability.

The failure of both Red Bulls to finish, as well as Gasly’s DNF, opened the door to some surprising results for some very happy drivers. None more so than Haas’s Kevin Magnussen, who returned to the team on short notice after they dumped their prior Russian pilot Nikita Mazepan due to Russia’s unprovoked invasion Ukraine. After a year driving IMSA sports car prototypes and Indycars in America, K-Mag was simply awesome back in this new Haas, finishing a rather astonishing P5 in what had previously been a last place car the past few years. With teammate Mick Schumacher finishing just out of the points in P11, it reinforced Haas’s wisdom not only in bring back Magnussen to be team leader but also their decision to focus on this year’s spec instead of wasting resources developing last year’s car. Behind the fifth place Haas, Vlatteri Bottas recovered from a terrible first third of the race that saw him drop like a stone to fight all the way back to where he started, in P6, on his debut for Alfa Romeo. Not to be outdone by his veteran Finnish teammate,  Zhou Guanyu scored a point in tenth place in his first F1 race, making the rookie not only the first Chinese national to compete in the series but also, more impressively, the first to score. The two Alpines of Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso finished P7 and P9 respectively, while the lone surviving AlphaTauri of second year man Yuki Tsunoda was able to salvage P8.

Top 10 finishers of the Bahrain GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is in but a week’s time from the Jeddah Corniche Street Circuit in Saudi Arabia. So Ferrari won’t have long to savor their victory, Red Bull won’t have long to figure out their engine woes and Mercedes won’t have long to work on the aero issues. Hope to see then to find out how it all shakes out as we barrel ahead full speed into the 2022 season!