The 2024 F1 season is go and the first race of the season was won by Max Verstappen who picks up where he left off in 2023 after an easy race for him. Talking of easy, to cover all the action and so much more with style and attitude is our 2024 Bahrain F1 Grand Prix Result Summary which covers both races and anything else of interest.
This 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix Result, Lap by Lap, Review & Summary gives you just enough to catch up with. With just a hint of cynicism, bias, opinion and colour. The perfect bite sized review for those who couldn’t be bothered, or don’t have enough time.
READ MORE:
2024 Bahrain GP Preview
Our 2024 F1 Calendar & Results
Our 2023 Full Season Reviews
Our 2023 Driver Ratings & Stats
2024 Bahrain F1 Grand Prix Result Race Summary
Didn’t see the race live? Don’t have time to watch the whole race? Here’s where we capture the laps where stuff happened. We write these live as we go, sort of like a minute by minute for the football, but marginally more interesting.
Setting the scene – New season, same result as Max Verstappen takes pole position for the first Grand Prix of 2024. But it seems a little closer. Max Verstappen may be two tenths of a second quicker, but only three tenths of a second cover 2nd to 9th. Tenth was one of the surprises of Qualifying in Nico Hulkenberg. The other surprises were the Visa RB Cash App Whatevers weren’t higher than they ended up, and the Alpines were slowest of all. It’s not a bad track for overtaking, and there’s early season nerves and mistakes and unreliability, so fingers crossed for an exciting race.
GRID (Starting Order) – VER LEC RUS SAI PER ALO NOR PIA HAM HUL
Lap 1 – Max Verstappen gets away OK and makes a beeline for Charles Leclerc on the right, who jinks and threatens to spoil the party into the first corner but relents. Further back Lance Stroll is sideways across the exit of turn one so will wait to see who helped him there. Nico Hulkenberg reports front wing damage so suspect it was him, he never has luck in races. Only moves within the top ten on the first lap was Sergio Perez overtaking Carlos Sainz for highest placed Spanish speaking driver and Yuki Tsunoda moving up to 10th at the expense of the Hulk.
ORDER – VER LEC RUS PER SAI ALO NOR PIA HAM TSU
Lap 3 – Overtaking galore….Lando Norris gets by Fernando Alonso into turn one and Oscar Piastri looks keen to double the misery. Just a little further up the road George Russell overtakes Charles Leclerc for second into turn four. Sergio Perez is threatening too. Ferraris look a little slow. All the while, Verstappen is two second up the road.
ORDER – VER RUS LEC PER SAI NOR ALO PIA HAM TSU
Lap 5 – Replays of the start show it was Valtteri Bottas who nudged Nico Hulkenberg up the back who then nudged Lance Stroll into his spin. All three drivers occupy the final three places. Hulkenberg and Stroll incident is under investigation. As might be Lando Norris who has a warning for track limits (twice) already. Oh, and Oscar Piastri gets by Fernando Alonso for 7th.
Lap 7 – Sergio Perez doing his thing on race day by getting past Charles Leclerc for third. Imagine if he could put it together in qualifying all season. Or interchange Nico Hulkenberg for qualifying and Perez for the race, which Helmut Marko suggested in 2023. It’s not a bad idea. Meanwhile, Max Verstappen is six seconds ahead of George Russell.
ORDER – VER RUS PER LEC SAI NOR PIAS ALO HAM TSU
Lap 10 – Fernando Alonso is down to 9th after Lewis Hamilton goes by. Logan Sargeant is off the track at turn one. Not sure if it is mechanical or a failure in driver ambition. Replays shows a simple lock up. The big question is not if Logan Sargeant has done something, it is if a Safety Car is coming. The answer to that is no.
Lap 11 – Carlos Sainz overtakes Charles Leclerc into turn one as the Ferraris battle side-by-side inches or even millimetres apart for a few corners. The Ferrari team would have been worried for a brief moment. Sadly the drivers were too professional to run into each other.
Lap 12 – The pit stops of the important drivers begin as George Russell and Charles Leclerc pit for new tyres. Russell drops to 12th and Leclerc is 14th in a Stake/Kick/Sauber/Whatever sandwich and still struggling, his car looks rubbish in race trim. A car that is certainly not rubbish in race trim is Sergio Perez and he and Lewis Hamilton pit a lap later.
Lap 14 – Sergio Perez nails George Russell for what will be second position in a great move. Carlos Sainz is the last Non-Verstappen driver from the top ten to pit. He ends up behind his team mate again.
ORDER – VER ALO ALB PER RUS LEC SAI NOR PIA HAM
Lap 17 – Carlos Sainz takes a dive into turn one and gets past Charles Leclerc for fourth. A second Up Yours to Ferrari and their Non-Sainz future. Charles Leclerc says on radio his car is pulling to the right under braking. It doesn’t look great. Meanwhile, Max Verstappen finally pits and his lead is just over six second to his team mate.
Lap 18 – Carlos Sainz makes it two overtakes in two laps and rises to third position after getting past George Russell reasonably easy.
ORDER – VER PER SAI RUS LEC NOR PIA HAM ALO ZHO
Lap 24 – Not much happening really. So this update is almost pointless. Talking of pointless, there’s discussion on the coverage of a very unhappy Pierre Gasly in the Alpine. No surprise, he is 18th after qualifying on the back row. At the other end Max Verstappen is over 11 seconds in front of his team mate and extending the gap. But the race has settled down now, which is a nicer way of saying that it has quickly become boring. The coverage is showing a Williams v Haas battle. Nuff said. Our last hope is the second pit stops.
Lap 30 – Thank god this race is on a Saturday, given the 1am kick off in the Pacific. It’s going to be a battle to stay awake for the second half of this one. Max Verstappen is 15 seconds in front of Perez. Top ten is mostly the same except for Yuki Tsunoda taking 10th back after Zhou pits.
Lap 32 – The first of the top driver pit stops start with George Russell going first. He drops to 9th.
Lap 35 – David Croft’s excitable delivery wakes us up from a mini nap as Lewis Hamilton overtakes Oscar Piastri for 8th. Make that seventh by lap 39 as he passes Alonso. More front runners pit stops come too. By Lap 39 the last pit stops for the race appear to have been taken.
ORDER – VER PER SAI RUS LEC NOR HAM ALO PIA STR
Lap 42 – Fernando Alonso pits for the second time, maybe he will provide some late race excitement. Most of the top ten is 3-4 seconds behind the car in front, except for George Russell and Charles Leclerc who are battling for fourth and Max Verstappen who is battling himself for fastest lap.
Lap 47 – George Russell runs wide and Charles Leclerc finally gets past after pressuring the Mercedes for ten laps or so. That makes it a 3-4 to Ferrari.
ORDER – VER PER SAI LEC RUS NOR HAM PIA STR ALO
Lap 50 – Seven laps to go and looks like the battles are over for now. Max Verstappen holds fastest lap and is almost 20 seconds in front of his team mate. There is a battle brewing between RB Visa Cash App Whatever drivers for 13th to see which driver will be slightly less disappointed with their weekend. It is Tsunoda ahead of Ricciardo for now. Radio banter about a swap is quickly dismissed by Tsunoda. They end up changing position much to Yuki’s sarcastic thanks.
Last lap – Max Verstappen cruises to victory in the first race of the season, and it was dangerously easy for the Red Bull if you were relying on a substantial battle in 2024. Verstappen won by 12 seconds in 2023 and 22 seconds in 2024. Ouch. Behind him Perez does what he does on race day when he is going OK and get second. Behind that it is almost Noah’s Ark as the teams finish two by two.
FINAL ORDER (Across the line) – VER PER SAI LEC RUS NOR HAM PIA ALO STR
Here we go through the field and highlight the very best (Great) of the race, and the plodders, the over-ambitious, the out of luck, and simply hopeless (Grape).
These points get added to our Driver of the Season scores. points for a great nomination, and -5 for the worst or grapest driver in the pack. Then it is +2 /-2 for honourable or dishonourable mentions.
THE GREAT-EST – MAX VERSTAPPEN
Who else? Win, pole position, who cares about fastest lap? The expanded calendar allows Verstappen to dream of winning even more races in 2024. If that’s possible. Which it is.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
SERGIO PEREZ – You’d have to say that 5th on the grid was disappointing, but as happens regularly, Perez shines on race day and made some good overtaking moves to end up second. The gap to Verstappen is still big, but next best is where he needs to be in that car.
CARLOS SAINZ – May have been outdone by his team mate in qualifying but Sainz did the job in the race, grabbing the final podium. Enjoyed two separate overtakes over his team mate.
GEORGE RUSSELL – Solid outing as the best Mercedes driver for the race day.
THE GRAPE-EST – ALPINE
Looks like have a new worst team on the grid. Alpines qualified on the back row and were towards the back all race.
DIS-HONOURABLE MENTIONS
CHARLES LECLERC – Went from second on the grid and likely nearest challenger to Max Verstappen to struggler. Leclerc went backwards throughout the GP and his Ferrari looked terrible in race conditions early, unlike his teammate Sainz who went well. Leclerc did recover to look better in the second half, but the promise of giving Verstappen a title battle appears remote.
NICO HULKENBERG – Another great qualifying turned into a sh!t race after a first corner incident which left him running at the back.
LANCE STROLL – Had a better weekend in 2023 with broken wrists and toes. His 2024 adventures in Bahrain won’t make Netflix.
DANIEL RICCIARDO – Is probably happy to be back on the grid full time in Bahrain. But after topping the first practice session it went downhill from there. Missed Q3, made a bad start and tooled around in 16th for most of the race.
Was it a good race, loads of action, a tense ending, a surprise result or DNF, or just a big, fat, snooze-fest?
We rate the big race itself, so we know which races to go back and watch in the off season or one to simply remember the winner for the post season quiz nights.
ON TRACK ACTION – 5 / 10
First half of the race was a solid 4.5 / 5, with plenty of action at the top end of the grid (except first). The second half of the race was a struggle.
ANY SURPRISES? – 1 / 5
Not really. Max Verstappen won, and Perez made up for qualifying on race day. We guess the one in the 1/5 is Charles Leclerc’s awful race day early, but even that ended up as expected.
SEASON IMPORTANCE – 5 / 5
It’s the first race of the season so the relative performance of the cars and reliability for 2024 is key.
ENDING 2 / 10
The second half of the race was duller than expected. Lando Norris chasing George Russell for 5th was slightly interesting. As were the battling RB Visa Cash App Whatever cars and Yuki Tsunoda on the radio.
OVERALL RATING 13 / 30
Not a classic but it remained interesting enough as the first race of the season.
2024 F1 Season Power Rankings
Stay tuned for our Power Rankings from the race soon as it is currently being calculated and will be ready on Monday.
Why not check out our 2023 Season Driver Rankings and Stats
