the dutch Max Verstappen will seek his third straight Formula One World Championship title, starting this weekend at the Bahrain Grand Prix and where his team, Red Bull -who together with the Mexican Sergio Pérez also won the constructors’ championship- is also the team to lose.
Verstappen, 25, who two years ago had to wait for the last lap of the final race to dethrone seven-time English world champion Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), The last World Cup was scored with tremendous authority.
He broke the record for victories in the same season (15), he won with 146 points advantage over the Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari); and with ‘Checo’ -third in the contest- managed Red Bull to end the longest streak in the constructors’ championship: that of Mercedes, winner of the previous eight years.
‘Mad Max’ and Red Bull will battle it out in a World Cup where Ferrari, a team that had to settle for both runner-up and where Carlos Sainz, 28, achieved his first victory in the premier class last season (at Silverstone, the English track that hosted, in 1950 , the first race in the history of Formula One) wants to win again a championship that has not been celebrated since 2007: when the Finn Kimi Raikkonen did it for the ‘Scuderia’ for the last time.
Mercedes aspires, somehow, to return to the way it was; but due to what was seen in the pre-season tests, which took place last week at the Sakhir circuit -outside Manama, the capital of Bahrain-, where training will begin this Friday for the first of the 23 races of the year , again part Verstappen as a strong favourite.
Before the last World Cup, the young Dutch star and Red Bull – who will continue for three years with a Honda engine, before switching to Ford – announced the extension of their contractual union until at least 2026, so it is clear that the austrian team is looking to repeat or improve on the glorious four-year period (2010-13) where he celebrated four ‘doublets’ (drivers’ and constructors’ titles in the same year), led by German Sebastian Vettel; retired at the end of last year and the seat at Aston Martin will be occupied by the Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who at the age of 41 is experiencing a second youth.
Verstappen topped the timesheets on the first day of testing with his RB23 and he was no less than the time (not quite significant) of the Chinese Guanyu Zhou (Alfa Romeo) in second; while the Mexican ‘Checo’ Pérez -33 years old, with four wins and 26 podiums in F1- signed the fastest lap on Saturday, on the third and last day of pre-season tests. To those who left excited about his new Aston Martin -with a Mercedes engine- Alonso.
The Asturian double world champion -whose new partner, the Canadian Lance Stroll, did not ride AMR23 in preseason, injured after falling off bike– He fell only 29 thousandths behind Verstappen on the first day; and has shown great consistency during race simulations, which is why some point to Aston Martin – the seventh team last year – as a possible great revelation of the campaign.
Both Alonso -who has 32 wins and 98 podiums in F1- and Sainz, who, besides winning at Silverstone, raised his list of drawers in the honorary division to fifteen, will have a new team manager. The Madrid driver, the Frenchman Fréderic Vasseur -who had been with Leclerc at Sauber-, was Ferrari’s replacement for the Italian-Swiss Mattia Binotto; the Asturian genius, the Luxembourger Mike Krack.
If Stroll does not recover in time, Aston Martin has already announced that it will be Brazilian Felipe DrugovichF2 winner and tester for the team -who already drove the tests last week-, will ride in the green car this weekend.
In this way, Drugovich will join the three ‘official’ rookies of the season in Bahrain: the Dutchman Nyck De Vries (Alpha Tauri) -although he contested a race in 2022: he was ninth with a Williams at Monza-; Australian Oscar Piastri (McLaren) and American Logan Sargeant (Williams).
The Sargeant will serve as an additional claim in the United States, where F1 is clearly committed to its expansion; and, apart from the traditional Grand Prix bearing the name of the country (in Austin, Texas) and the one in Miami (Florida), released last year; This season the Grand Prix in Las Vegas (Nevada) will start. It is the former venue for the US GP and will host the penultimate race of a World Cup that closes on November 26 in Abu Dhabi.
In total there will be 23 tests, including the Spanish Grand Prix (at the Barcelona circuit of Montmeló), on June 4; and Mexico, at the Hermanos Rodríguez Autodrome in Mexico City, on October 29.
The seventy-fourth edition of the F1 World Championship starting in Bahrain; a country where Sainz finished second last year; where Alonso won three times (in 2005 and 2006, their title campaigns; and in 2010); and where ‘Checo’ celebrated the first of his four victories; At the end of 2020, when Sakhir ‘doubled down’ to set the calendar for the complicated World Cup due to the covid-19 pandemic.
On the Baireini track, 5,412 meters long and with 15 curves, which debuted in the F1 World Championship in 2004 -and where a year later the Spanish Pedro de la Rosa, new ambassador of Aston Martin, set the lap record- it will be rolled from Friday with tires made of compounds C1 (hard, recognizable by the white stripe), C2 (medium, yellow stripe) and C3 (soft, red).
Practices will be completed on Saturday, hours before qualifying; which will dictate the starting grid for Sunday’s race. 57 laps are planned to complete the 308.2 kilometers.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
