There is no better time to make broad statements about a new Formula One season than in the days following the first race.
Out up front, things appeared to be the same, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen winning comfortably. However, the situation behind is less obvious, with two clubs — RB and Alpine — making unfavorable headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Here, we look at some broad generalizations you could make right now ahead of the second race of 2024, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and whether they are valid.
Ferrari is the closest competitor to Red Bull right now.
Ferrari looked strong for the entire two weeks in Bahrain, with an excellent test followed by a solid race week. Lewis Hamilton struggled to match George Russell’s performance for Mercedes, while McLaren and Aston Martin did not compete for the podium as they had intended. So, excellent news for Ferrari?
Conclusion: OVERREACTION.
Ferrari had a strong start to the season, without a doubt, but there are some essential caveats to consider. The first and most obvious point is that Bahrain represents only one race sample. McLaren and, to a lesser extent, Mercedes have always struggled on the desert circuit, whilst Ferrari has usually performed well there.
George Russell’s ambitions of contesting Carlos Sainz for a podium slot were dashed early on by an overheating issue with his Mercedes, which skewed perceptions of how quick the car is.
The margins between the three teams are so narrow that determining the order will take some time. It may be too close to call for a while, and the Saudi GP may muddy the picture even further.
Jeddah has many of the high-speed turns that McLaren excelled at last year, but Mercedes expressed confidence in a greater performance on the street track. And don’t rule out Aston Martin — despite a poor start compared to a year ago, the Silverstone team cannot be written off in this fight given team owner Lawrence Stroll’s desire and commitment.
The only certainty about the chasing group is that it will be quite tight until one emerges as a clear leader in terms of car development.
Toto Wolff described Red Bull as being in a ‘another galaxy’. Max Verstappen won the first race at a canter, with the closest non-Red Bull vehicle trailing 25 seconds behind. Mercedes chief Wolff predicted a bleak season for Red Bull’s rivals, claiming the team is on a different level than the rest, while George Russell stated that other teams can only hope for the occasional triumph.
Conclusion: NOT AN OVERREACTION.
Let us get genuine now. F1 journalists can occasionally be accused of trying to oversell the product, but there is no way to polish or spin the situation. Throughout the build-up to the race, it appeared that many were urgently looking for a reason — any reason — to believe that Red Bull was closer to the pack than we all anticipated, but Verstappen looked impenetrable from the start. The distance may narrow in other spots, but it is unusual in Formula One to see a large advantage disappear from race to race.
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The RB20 is a terrific car from Red Bull, and in the hands of Verstappen, it is a beast unlike any other. If Sergio Perez can overcome the qualifying troubles that keep him starting races out of position, there’s no reason to believe he’ll always be as near to the pursuing pack as he was in Bahrain.
Most concerningly, given Adrian Newey’s new car represented a drastic departure from the RB19, logic suggests that significant increases are possible. Red Bull will bring enhancements in the same way that its competitors will, and Newey is unparalleled in terms of significantly enhancing vehicles during the season.
Alpine is a team in big difficulties.
Alpine finished last in qualifying following a bad test. It made minimal progress throughout the race. Alarm bells rang across the team as it was revealed that technical director Matt Harman and head of aero Dirk de Beer, who were effectively in charge of the car’s design, had resigned ahead of the season.
Conclusion: NOT AN OVERREACTION.
To quote Edmund Blackadder, the title character from the iconic British comedy: “This is a crisis. A gigantic crisis, a twelve-story crisis with a lovely entrance hall, carpets throughout, 24-hour portage, and a massive sign on the roof reading ‘This Is a gigantic Crisis’.”
We at ESPN couldn’t believe the negative evaluations Alpine received after preseason testing, but things were just as awful at the start. Alpine has delivered an extremely overweight car for the new year, despite already having the most underpowered engine on the field by a significant margin. The news about Harman and De Beer was startling primarily in terms of how quickly personnel changes occurred.
Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly will be disappointed, as they had intended to be moving up F1’s competitive order at this point in their careers, not the other way around. Both issued a rallying cry and asked for patience over the weekend, pledging their faith in the team’s long-term strategy, but nothing on the surface suggests Alpine has much reason to be optimistic at this point in the season.
There is a recent example of the other argument: McLaren was in a similar scenario a year ago, suffering in preseason and the first race before parting ways with technical lead James Key.
An improvement during the Austrian Grand Prix moved the team back up the order, making it Red Bull’s closest opponent in terms of pure pace. One significant difference from how things appear at Alpine now is that McLaren CEO Zak Brown rapidly recruited a new technical staff and had already committed his long-term confidence in team boss Andrea Stella.
Alpine has had a revolving door of driving and technical talent in previous seasons, and it remains to be seen whether team manager Bruno Famin is the appropriate guy for the position or simply the next man for the guillotine.
