Max Verstappen began his title defence by clinching pole position at the Bahrain Grand Prix, the season’s first race. However, the gap in the initial qualifying round was narrower than anticipated.
Verstappen, driving for Red Bull, earned the pole with a margin of 0.228 seconds over Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Interestingly, Leclerc was the sole driver among the top ten who did not better his performance from Q2 to Q3. If Leclerc had matched his Q2 timing of 1:29.165, he would have secured pole position.
Mercedes driver George Russell grabbed the third spot on the grid, trailing Verstappen by 0.306 seconds, showcasing the competitiveness among the top three teams in the season’s first race.
Verstappen seemed to believe he hadn’t performed adequately as the session concluded, yet he finished 0.228 seconds faster than Leclerc.
The three-time world champion claiming his first pole of the season remarked: “Very happy to be on pole. To be honest, it was a little bit unexpected. But luckily in qualifying, I think the car came to us and I felt a bit happier with the whole car.”
“Q1, Q2, of course you can actually go a bit faster with the track ramping up, but then to really get everything out of it in Q3 was a little more difficult,” he explained.
“I said it yesterday: we just needed to fine-tune a few little things on the car to try and get that, let’s say, perfect balance,” he continued. “Even though with the wind, that is not possible today.
“The track had a lot of grip, but with the wind the last few days it has been quite tricky to get the whole lap together and it was the same in qualifying.
“But luckily I think we went in the right direction today. We could really push a bit more with the car and luckily then another step in qualifying,” he said, adding: “It was a lot of fun, actually.”
Sergio Perez of Red Bull secured the fifth starting position, with Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso in sixth. McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will start seventh and eighth, respectively.
Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time world champion, will begin the race from ninth place, while Nico Hulkenberg of Haas managed a surprising tenth place finish for the American team.
