In Pictures: Bahrain 2019
Contrary to what happened in Australia, Bahrain was dominated by Ferrari, specially a brilliant Charles Leclerc, setting fastest laps in practice 1 and 3, and getting his first ever Pole Position, becoming the second youngest pole sitter in F1 history at 21 years and 166 days old. The youngest is his teammate, Sebastian Vettel, he was 21 years, 72 days old when he qualified in first place for the 2008 Italian Grand Prix.
The race started well for Ferrari, it was Vettel who arrived at turn 1 first, but Leclerc passed him soon thereafter, later, after a magnificent battle with Hamilton he spun his SF90, damaging a rear tire that resulted in a broken front wing due to excessive vibration. After his pit, he was able to recover and finish P5. Leclerc was dominating the race until an issue with on of the cylinders on his Ferrari robbed him of a win. He eventually finished P3, after Valtteri Bottas in second and a very lucky Lewis Hamilton in first.
QUOTES FROM THE PODIUM:
“It’s part of motorsport, we know that. Sometimes it’s not your day to win and today wasn’t ours. In the final part of the race we had an issue with the power unit and I had to slow down. It’s a shame because the race seemed to me to be under control. The team is disappointed and I am disappointed but there are a lot of positives to take home from this weekend. They gave me an amazing car and that is very much to their credit. The car was very easy to drive and was very good. These things happen in motorsport: we took the best out of it anyway. It’s my first podium even if I’m not enjoying it as much as I wanted. It’s life, it happens, we’ll come back stronger”
“This was not an easy race, the car was very difficult to drive and the conditions were very tricky with the gusty winds today which made the car very unpredictable. I had a good start and managed to get to P2, but in the next lap the wind caught me up going into Turn 1, so I lost the position again and ultimately fell back to fourth after a battle with Lewis. After that it was actually a relatively lonely race for me at points, I didn’t see anybody; but I think it was probably very exciting from the outside with many unexpected moments. Ferrari were very strong again in the race as they were all weekend. But luck was on our side today, which was a welcome change for me personally after all the bad luck I experienced last year. On the other hand our car was very reliable which ultimately won us the race today. It was a tough race for Charles, but he did a great job all weekend and I’m sure his time will come. We’re leaving Bahrain with lots of points but also a lot of work to do for China.”
“It was very tricky out there today and I had to give it everything I had. We were very, very lucky to get this 1-2, Ferrari outperformed us all weekend. Ultimately you want to have a real fight and want to pass someone because you’re quicker, so it feels a bit weird and you can’t quite believe your luck in these scenarios. I have been in similar situations and I know how it feels, but Charles did a great job all weekend long and has a beautiful, bright future ahead of him. We’ve only had two races; one where we were rapid and far ahead, one where Ferrari had the upper hand. It’s hard to say how the next races are going to pan out, but I anticipate that it will be a tough fight and that it will be a back and forth between the two teams. We need to keep working hard to see where we went wrong this weekend and to see where we can improve the car. But as we saw again today, reliability also plays an important role, so we need to keep working on all areas. We’ll take the points we got today and move forward to China.”
