Never as on the eve of this season is there curiosity to understand what theoutcome of the first race of the year in Formula 1. In fact, to the normal trepidation to see the new cars on the track is added the tension generated by the controversial outcome of the last championship and – above all – the interest in evaluating the actual performances of the various teams. In fact, last week’s tests left observers with more doubts than certainties, with the feeling that practically all the teams have heavily masked their potential. Nobody, of course, wants to show their strength before the moment when it is strictly necessary to do so, but on Sunday in Bahrain all the veils should finally fall.
However, if all the drivers aspire to win the opening race of the championship, even more so this year given that F1 is entering a new era, there is a superstitious component that would advise against those who aspire to become world champion. at the end of the year to be the first to pass under the checkered flag on the Sakhir circuit. In fact, in the last five years whoever won the first race has never been able to win at the end of the championship. The ‘cursed’ streak began in 2017 with Ferrari, capable of winning for two consecutive seasons in the Australian GP with Sebastian Vettel, but never managing to achieve the big target at the end of the year. In 2019 and 2020, however, first in Melbourne and then in Austria, it was Valtteri Bottas who won 25 points at the opening of the World Cup.
In all four of these cases, at the end of the year, the title had ended in the hands of Lewis Hamilton. However, the Englishman extended this unlucky streak 12 months ago, winning the first race of the year in Bahrain after an epic duel with Max Verstappen and then losing the title in an extremely controversial way in the final race in Abu Dhabi. The last pilot to remain ‘immune’ to this curious negative statistic was Nico Rosbergwho in 2016 won all four of the first races of the year and then became world champion resisting the comeback of Hamilton himself in the last races of the season.
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