The first Qualifying session is complete at the Bahrain International Circuit, as it was an intense and hotly contested session under the Sakhir lights.
Max Verstappen took pole position, with his teammate, Sergio Perez making it an all Red Bull front row lock out. Charles Leclerc rounds out the top three.
The full top 10 are: P1: Verstappen, P2: Perez, P3: Leclerc, P4: Sainz, P5: Alonso, P6: Russell, P7: Hamilton, P8: Stroll, P9: Ocon and P10: Hulkenberg.
Lando Norris missed out on Q3 by a couple of tenths as he started to make up for a tricky pre-season test. I think it will be interesting to see how he can do in the car whilst on race pace.
Rookie, Logan Sargeant almost joined his teammate in Q2 for the first time of asking, but he set an identical time to 15th place Norris towards the end of Q1, as the American set it second it meant to he was out.
Something I didn’t expect to see was Pierre Gasly out in Q1 but the Frenchman starting P20 on the grid, as he had a lap time deleted.
A shoutout to Hulkenberg though, starting P10 on his first race back, he already looks comfortable in the car so if he can keep this going for not just the race this weekend but throughout the season, Haas shouldn’t have a problem with being in the midfield.
Predictions-
My top five predictions are: P1: Sainz, P2: Verstappen, P3: Alonso, P4: Sainz and P5: Hamilton.
I feel like we all know roughly the four teams that are at the top for this first race, but we won’t get a true idea for race pace until later on.
There’s always some drama on the first race so if some drivers are clever they will optimise on the misfortune of others.
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