F1 | Verstappen, pilot from another galaxy, hides the RB20

We can't say we didn't know. The great favorite of the season, Max Verstappen, won the Bahrain Grand Prix, fully respecting the predictions of the day before. Yet, the feeling was that of having witnessed a demonstration of strength that went beyond expectations, a superiority such as to revive the nightmare of a script already seen twelve months ago. Red Bull emerges from the first weekend of the season with a double, given that Sergio Perez has moved up behind Verstappen, starting fifth and able to overtake Sainz, Leclerc and Russell in sequence.

The Red Bull in the hands of 'Checo' is an excellent car that leaves the light of hope lit in its opponents. Without the brake problems that strongly affected Leclerc's race, it is not certain that Perez would have had an easy life for second place. It's another thing when Verstappen is behind the wheel, an absolute phenomenon that you don't know where to put in the family tree of the great Formula 1 champions. He resembles no one else but himself. Max's pace is the one that triggered the great fear, because the twenty-two seconds that separated him from Perez under the checkered flag, and the twenty-five inflicted on Sainz, are not the real snapshot of the values ​​on the pitch.

Already in the first stint Verstappen confirmed that he had another pace, and this was all expected. Then with the hard set he managed the race giving the impression of controlling the situation and even in the third stint he didn't push as much as he could have, however giving a 'monster' fast lap.

The team asked Max not to overdo it, motivating everything with less stress on the power unit. But perhaps behind the message there is also the desire not to overdo it, to try to contain (as much as possible) the gap on the opponents.

Max Verstappen celebrates with Christian Horner, Red Bull Team Principal after the victory in Bahrain

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Christian Horner tried to downplay it: “I think our race finish was really excellent also thanks to the choice to use the soft tires in two stints, I'm surprised that the others didn't use this compound as much as possible in the race. In the conditions in which the race took place it was clearly the best tyre”. True, but as long as you fit them on a Red Bull, a single-seater on which everything goes, whether they are C1 or C3 in reality the situation changes little.

For the opponents the only theoretical element of consolation was reading some different numbers on the ranking compared to twelve months ago, when the first non-Red Bull single-seater (Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin) finished 38 seconds behind the winner, obviously still Max , but beyond this it cannot be done at the moment. If the conversation shifts to the world title today it is frankly difficult to find even a small motivation that can give hope to the other 19 riders on the starting grid.

However, there is a long season that has just begun, and there is rightly hope that Verstappen's path may be less downhill than that of 2023. Frederic Vasseur believes it, Toto Wolff a little less, as he confirmed after the race. The Mercedes team principal has updated his comment heard exactly one year ago in Bahrain. At the end of the 2023 Grand Prix he defined Verstappen in a championship apart, today he assessed him in another galaxy. Is there a risk of seeing a script like twelve months ago? “Unfortunately yes – admitted Wolff – we must recognize that his performance levels are high, very high indeed”.

The all-Red Bull podium in Sakhir: Sergio Perez completed the double in Milton Keynes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

At the end of a difficult weekend for the team due to the Horner case (a permanent cloud over the entire team), Red Bull celebrated Perez's second place with the same intensity as Verstappen's success. “Checo drove an exceptional race – commented Christian Horner – recovering from fifth position on the grid. He was fast and concrete, and that's what we want from him.” Words that for Perez are pure oxygen…