Max Verstappen dominates opening Bahrain Grand Prix

Sakhir — Max Verstappen could not have hoped for a better start to his bid for a fourth successive Formula One title, with even rivals hailing his crushingly dominant display in Saturday’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix as being in “a different galaxy”.

The Dutch driver took the chequered flag 22.4sec clear of his teammate Sergio Perez driving a similar RB20. He did it having started from pole, led every lap and with the fastest lap to complete a “grand slam”.

“Unbelievable, I think today went even better than expected,” Verstappen said. “It was a lot of fun, I felt really good in the car.

“It’s special to have these kind of days, where it all feels perfect and you feel at one with the car.”

A closely run qualifying race on Friday and a constant changing of the guard in practice, with three different teams occupying top spot in the three sessions and none of them Red Bull, had raised the prospect of a closer race on Saturday.

The seemingly untroubled ease of Verstappen’s win in the first race of a record 24-round season swiftly dashed those hopes, instead giving way to a sense of resignation and foreboding.

Verstappen, who barely broke a sweat on Saturday, had similarly won last year’s Bahrain season-opener from pole. But that was not as commanding as his win on Saturday, with his 2023 winning margin half of what it was this year and no fastest lap.

Nevertheless, it set the stage for Verstappen to sign off 2023 with 19 wins from 22 races. With his Red Bull harder to catch, at least on the evidence of the 2024 season opener, there is every possibility he could go better.

Rivals are not ruling out the prospect.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said when asked if Verstappen could be uncatchable. "[We] just have to acknowledge his performance levels are really strong.

“I think today Max is not in a different league, but he’s in a different galaxy — the performance is extraordinary.”

At the same time, Jos Verstappen, Max’s father and a retired racing driver, claimed “there is tension” in the Red Bull team in comments he made to the Daily Mail newspaper.

“The team is in danger of being torn apart if Christian Horner stays as principal,” the newspaper quoted Jos Verstappen as saying.

Horner was cleared last week by an independent investigation into allegations of misconduct made by a female employee.

The inquiry dominated the preseason and Horner has remained in the spotlight after an email from an anonymous sender, purporting to contain evidence submitted to the investigation, was distributed to media and key figures in the sport.

“The team is in danger of being torn apart. It can’t go on the way it is. It will explode. He is playing the victim, when he is the one causing the problems,” Jos Verstappen told the newspaper.

Reuters