Bahrain GP Qualifying Report

Qualifying kicked off with a written test, as the FIA report on the last race of last season was published just in time.  Ultimately it was down to "human error" so onwards and upwards this season.  They did decide that team principals, shouting at the race director, live to the watching world, may have put undue pressure on him.

Pre-season testing, with the new high levels of downforce brought on by ground-effect, made porpoising the word of the week.  It looked hideous on the Mercedes, painful and impossible to drive.  At least it's only on straights as I can't imagine you could go through a corner accurately with this, it makes me wince just to look at it.  Everyone agreed that for once, Mercedes saying they aren't as quick as others, wasn't sandbagging.  This was proven to be the case and Verstappen commenting how pleased he was with it.

What were the surprises of qualifying?  Despite amazing testing in Barcelona, McLaren just didn't deliver pace.  Covid did not serve Ricciardo well, as he qualified 18th.  Zhou on his debut gets through to Q2 in his Alfa Romeo.  Showing that money can't buy you success, Latifi was plumb last (with Albon scraping though) and both Aston Martins, with Hulkenberg out-qualifying Stroll.  Magnussen went through in 5th in his new Haas seat.

There were no huge surprises for who was knocked out in Q2: Ocon, Schumacher, Norris, Albon and Zhou.  But Magnussen through to Q1 in his heroic Haas.  Bottas also through in his Alfa. All the hope was that LeClerc could find something in his Ferrari to take the pole from Verstappen in his Red Bull.

Through to Q3 went three pairs, both Mercedes, both Ferraris and both Red Bulls, then a mixed bag of Alpha Tauri, Alfa Romeo, Haas and Alpine.  The older. more experienced drivers of Alonso, Bottas and Magnussen showing how it's done.  LeClerc took the pole, which promises a fantastic season if Ferrari can continue to bring this kind of pace and he's highly skilled at qualifying.  Sainz split the two Red Bulls behind his team mate.  Hamilton was 5th but did out-qualify his young pretender team mate, Russell, who was also out-qualified by the man he replaced at Mercedes, Bottas.  Magnussen feels "unbelievably lucky to be in a good car", which he doesn't need to say, so the car must be performing quite well.

The star of the show was obviously baby L-Mag.