Qualifying Bahrain 01/03/24

First quali of the season held on a Friday this week due to the holy season of Ramadan. The tires for this weekend are the C1, C2 and C3. The best track times seem to be on softs for this track. There is a track temperature of 22 degrees this evening in Bahrain. Its warm but quite windy.

Q1

Top 3 drivers in Q1 were Sainz up front with a lap time of 1:29.9, followed by Stroll and Verstappen.  

The 5 drivers eliminated from Q1 were

P20 - P.Gasly 1:30.948

P19 - E.Ocon 1:30.793 

P18 - L Sargeant 1:30.770

P17 - G.Zhou 1:30.757

P16 - V.Bottas 1:30.756

Very disappointing for Alpine with a lockout on the back row but not overly surprising. The car looked poor in testing last weekend and the team have said they are facing challenges.

Ocons radio at the end of Q1

Q2

During Q2 a few drivers were reporting the track had very little grip and there were a few problems with queuing in the pit lane. Max Verstappen set the lap time early on in the session with Charles Leclerc snatching it from him in the last minutes with an impressive 1:29.165 which was the fastest lap time set in qualifying overall today but he couldn't do it again in Q3.

Knocked out in Q2 were 

P15 - K. Magnussen 1:30.529 

P14 - D.Ricciardo 1:30.278 

P13 - A.Albon 1:30.221 

P12 - L. Stroll 1:30.200 

P11 - Y.Tsunoda 1:30.129

The differences between lap times in today's qualifying were so small. Yuki missed out on Q3 by only 0.007s in the RB. George Russell has been called to the stewards for failing to follow the race directors instructions.

Q3

It was the first time in 3 seasons that Mclaren had both cars in Q3. Track temperature had dropped to 21 degrees by Q3. Uneventful qualifying but with a variety of different drivers getting purple sectors which was nice to see. No further action was required for George Russell from the stewards. So here is our top 10 drivers for the Bahrain Grand Prix tomorrow

P10 - N.Hulkenberg 1:30.502

P9 - L.Hamilton 1:29.710

P8 - O.Piastri 1:29.683

P7 - L.Norris 1:29.614

P6 - F.Alonso 1:29.542

P5 - S.Perez 1:29.537

P4 - C.Sainz Jr 1:29.507

P3   - G.Russell 1:29.485

P2 - C.Leclerc 1:29.407

P1 - M.Verstappen 1:29.179