New season, same Max Verstappen, on the track and in the statistics. As in 2023, the world champion did not leave even crumbs to his opponents in the Bahrain GP that opened 2024. Pole position, victory, fastest lap and race always in the lead. Verstappen He is the first driver to score a grand chelem in his first race since Michael Schumacher in 2004 and fifth ever: besides him and the German, only Alberto succeeded Ascari, Jim Clark and Nigel mansell.
Furthermore, Verstappen he has won all of the last 17 races started on pole position: No one had ever done it before. Also counting the end of 2023, the Dutchman has won the last 8 races in a row. This means that in the last 10 months he has recorded two of the three longest winning streaks ever (10 and 8 victories). Thanks to his success, Red Bull now has the same victories as Williams (114)
Verstappen and Leclerc, who can be seen in the front row
At the start of the race, Charles was on the front row together with Verstappen Leclerc. The Monegasque has the longest streak of consecutive front rows of all the riders on the grid (6) and the two have shared the front row in the last four consecutive Grands Prix.
Going back a couple of days, the weekend had already started with a record: first place for Daniel Ricciardo with the newly created Visa CashApp RB in the FP1 it was the first P1 for a rookie team since Robert Kubica on BMW Sauber finished first in FP1 in 2006, also in Bahrain.
Alpine, that's not how it works
Moving on to the sore points, Alpine it seemed like the worst team of the 10 seen on the track in Sakhir. The "double" in the last row in qualifying was theirs worst result in eight years, since Magnussen and Palmer qualified 21st and 22nd respectively Baku since 2016.
If Leclerc has the longest streak of consecutive front rows, the record for most eliminations in Q1 in a row goes to Guanyu Zhou, than in Bahrain he failed to make the Q1 cut for the fourth race in a row. Lewis too Hamilton he has seen better weekends: ninth place in qualifying was his worst result ever in Bahrain, excluding grid penalties.
A little gem to conclude: for the first time in history, the inaugural race saw no retirements.
