Just a one-off? (Bahrain GP Qualifying Report)

When the sun set at the Bahrain International Circuit it was ‘go go go’ for the drivers as they jumped into their cars for the first Qualifying session of the year. With Hamilton grabbing pole position just a few months ago, Valterri Bottas getting it in 2017 and Max Verstappen never starting on the front row at the track, it was the British driver looking most likely to get a fourth.

Q1 started with only the two Haas and Williams drivers heading out for laps, with Nikita Mazepin spun his Haas and both Williams drivers pitted in straight away, this left Mick Schumacher the first man to set a time, it was not the best lap but with the track not rubbered in for Qualifying, the times would improve. We saw Max Verstappen in first near the end of Q1 with rookie Yuki Tsunoda close behind. But at the end of the session, Mazepin was not done with his antics, as he spun under braking into T1. With yellow flags waving in Sector 1 it led to a shock exit out of Q1 for new arrival to Aston Martin, Sebastien Vettel.

The start of Q2 was filled with drivers trying to opt for the alternate strategy, by going onto the medium compound of tyres to get a better strategy for the Sunday race. At the end of the first flying laps for the driver, they knew if they wanted to get into Q3, they would have to secure their places on the soft compound of tyres. But two teams disagreed with that, Mercedes and most surprisingly, Alpha Tauri. The Italian team knowing the pace of their proven race winner, Gasly and debutant Tsunoda, risked it. This risk did work out, but only for one of their drivers. Gasly came across the line first going P4 but unfortunately for new boy Tsunoda, he was not able to make it through.

A team that completely came out of nowhere at the end of Q2, was Ferrari, who managed to get their cars on the top of timesheets at the very end. Leclerc was the first in the team to set a lap, and his lap was good enough for P1. With the fans and Ferrari amazed at this, all eyes were on Carlos Sainz who was able to best his Monegasque teammate by 1 thousandth of a second!

In Q3 though it was back to normal as the two Mercedes, and Max Verstappen battled it out for the first grid slot. Max did not have the backing of his teammate as Perez got knocked out at the end of Q2. In the latter stages of qualifying, everyone started to head out for their out laps.

The Silver Arrows started their laps first, while the Dutchman was fourth to start his lap. They all went through sector 1, one by one, each of them setting faster and faster sector times. The cars were being pushed to their absolute limit. At the end of their laps, the first car we saw was the black Mercedes of Bottas. As he went across the finish line it was only third fastest. Then the camera panned to Hamilton’s car, with expectations high for the seven-time world champion, he crossed the line and he was able to live up to them grabbing the fastest lap of the day. Then with very big anticipation, we saw the RB16B round the last corner. Going into the last seconds of Max’s lap it was looking good, with DRS wide open and his engine cranked up to the highest setting, he was able to snatch pole position away from Hamilton by nearly four tenths!

After Verstappen was able to grab pole position at the Bahrain GP, is the Mercedes dominance over? Or was this just a one-off for the team ran by Christian Horner?