I take precisely no pleasure in tormenting this site’s proprietor, but unfortunately the story of Bahrain this week is Ferrari. At a time when McLaren are fast but incompetent and Red Bull and Mercedes are kinda fast and mostly competent (well, at least Max, George, and Kimi), those parameters are already built into the weekend. We’ll get back to them later, but if Ferrari don’t get their shit together we’re going to have a 4 way fight for pole again and then we’ll see if the dirty air stops overtaking.
Ferrari are the lynchpins of both this race and this season in a lot of ways. Charles has been a Bahrain specialist at times, putting it on pole in 2019 before engine issues cost him an easy win, doing the Pole-Win double in 2022, and being in podium worthy positions if not for car issues the last two years. He seems to fit Bahrain well, and if there is any latent pace in the Ferrari it has to be found here.
Lewis is a different matter – the combination of his sprint performance in China and the fact that it’s a new team means he’s earned slack, but even still this is a track he’s won at many times before. And this is the track they need to find something at. The problem for Ferrari isn’t that they’re supremely slow, it’s that they’re lost in no man’s land. They’re lost in the supermarket, to steal a phrase. It’s depressing in a lot of ways, but between the DSQs and the crap pace in Melbourne and a good not great weekend in Japan they need this. There’s a very good chance that if they can’t find something this weekend they’re going to be in a lot of trouble.
Part of the reason they’ll be in trouble is Mercedes. Depending on your definition – also known as your level of surprise that Max can drag a difficult to drive car with pace to podiums/wins – Mercedes is arguably the biggest positive surprise of the season. Their car is drivable, seemingly on rails, and capable of properly competitive lap times. George’s mistake at Turn 2 on his final lap in Suzuka was so disappointing but also joyous for a reason – it’s one of the first times in this era of car I can look at a P5 and credibly be upset it wasn’t better. I’m not worried about George screwing up again, and there is talk of an upgrade package.
If the upgrade is good, and I’m certainly allowed to hope on that front, then George should be better than Max this weekend because of a superior car. There’s few slow corners in Bahrain, the weakness of this year’s Merc, and George is a better driver than Lando and Oscar, which does put some chance of a big result – a podium? A front row? Fucking hell even a win? – on the table.
I wouldn’t expect much more from Tsunoda this week – while he’s driven Bahrain a lot, this car seems like a terrible drive and he’ll need the tripleheader to get laps under him. If he’s still performing badly in Miami we can talk.
But it comes back to the Ferrari, because this looks like a simple race to handicap – the two McLarens and George at the front, Max a bit behind, and then the Italian Stallions (Kimi and the two Ferraris) fighting for P5/6/7. At least if Ferrari doesn’t get their shit together. Their new floor should have the car more drivable, and maybe even allow them to run a lower ride height, but the good thing with Ferrari is their development is usually fantastic, right? They’ve never developed so badly that they had to go back to their Australia-spec car midway through a season, have they? They’ve never thrown away a Constructor’s Championship on a four race escapade of shit, have they? They haven’t spent the last nearly two decades being a model of inconsistency and failure while still having a stick firmly implanted up their ass, have they?
Then again, Italians have history of rotting institutions being unable to get to grips with their troubles, so it makes sense.
Best Of The Rest
If Williams can continue their form it should be here, where Albon got points in 2023 and where even Logan Sargeant managed a 12th on his debut. The Williams will struggle more when we get to the slower tracks on the calendar later in the year, but Bahrain fits the profile of good Williams tracks. Carlos Sainz better find something this week – and that is both beating Alex Albon and getting in the points – or it’ll be officially time to ask whether Williams screwed up not keeping Colapinto in the car.
It is decidedly unclear how fast the Toro Tauri is, but at some point we have to take them seriously. They’ve had at least one car in Q3 in all four sessions this season. Lawson’s now had a weekend in the car, and if he has any latent pace it kinda needs to be this weekend. (The actual problem with all of this discourse is that Lawson is in so many ways symbolic of the failures of the Red Bull driver program. If Lawson was considered a supreme talent, Marko would have put him in the car instead of Nick De Vries after the 2022 season, where he finished 3rd in F2 in his 2nd season. If he was good enough they’d have put him in the Red Bull for 2024 when Checo was shitting the bed from Miami 2023 onwards, or put Danny Ric in the Red Bull and then put Lawson in the Toro Tauri. If he was actually good enough they wouldn’t be here. But he never was, and they talked themselves into it like a desperate guy at last call at a club.)
I still expect Pierre Gasly to find something but the Alpine might be ass. If he’s going to, this would be a good place, having come fourth in a Toro Rosso in 2018 and 9th in 2023.
Predictions:
Pole: George Russell
Winner: Oscar Piastri
Podium: Oscar, George Russell, Lando Norris
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