Max Verstappen He was saved in Thursday's practices and was relentless in the qualifying test of the Bahrain Grand Prix: will start first in Saturday's race, the first of the 2024 season.
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The pilot of Red Bull appeared this Friday to start the path to his fourth world title and, with a time of one minute, 29 seconds and 179 thousandths, he achieved the first pole of the season in the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Verstappen beat the Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)who came second at 228 thousandths, and also the Spaniards Carlos Sainz (Ferrari), fourth, and Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), sixth, while the Mexican 'Checo' Pérez finished fifth by beating the Asturian by five thousandths.
'Mad Max', who last year toured most of the Formula 1 World Championship circuits, thus began the conquest of a new title, after during the three free practice sessions this Thursday and this Friday and the last week's test he hid his pace for one lap and opted to do long runs.
A 'pole' after playing hide and seek
With four minutes left before the traffic light turned red, the Dutchman caught the slipstream of a McLaren to, from the beginning of the lap, have an extra advantage in the first sector, which allowed him to overtake the Monegasque at the finish line Leclerc, that, although he tried twice, he could not reduce the time of the impregnable Verstappenwho wants to continue with the dominance exhibited during the last two years.
The Dutch driver himself commented at the end of the session that he was somewhat surprised by the level shown and that this first position was “unexpected”, but, at the same time, he highlighted that in Q3 the car improved compared to the free practice sessions, in which had not been completely consistent, and above all took advantage of the slipstream of the McLaren to end up leading the qualification.
Sainz also took advantage of the slipstream, who was nevertheless overtaken at the finish line by the British George Russell (Mercedes), who finished third, and for Leclerc, in addition to Verstappendespite the fact that during the tests and even in the third free practice session he seemed to show one point more than the rest of the grid.
Despite setting the first time at the end of Q1 and showing the best time last week in the tests, his two best laps were not enough to be on the front line and the Madrid native will start from fourth place, just ahead of 'Checo' Pérez, who at no time seemed to pick up the pace of the session, and from his friend Fernando Alonso.
The Asturian started with a disadvantage compared to the rest of the drivers, since he only had new soft tires and decided to change the strategy. While the nine remaining drivers took to the track twice in Q3, he took advantage of all of them's rest with five minutes remaining to go out and look for the best time.
He tried and placed third, especially thanks to a great second sector, but the fact of having only one bullet ended up penalizing the Spaniard, who watched from the garage how the other drivers were improving their times while he was dropping down the positions to the sixth place.
Max Verstappen celebrates his fifth victory in Mexico.
In any case, Alonso was ahead of both McLarenWell, the British Lando Norris and the Australian Oscar Piatriwere seventh and eighth, respectively, while the British Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) He did not achieve his best classification and finished ninth, three places ahead of the Canadian Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), who didn't even make it to the last round and finished twelfth.
Behind, the disappointment of the day were the AlpineWell, the French Esteban Oconnineteenth, and the Frenchman Pierre Gasly, last, signed the last two positions and confirmed all the analyzes prior to this weekend, which assured that the French car could be the worst car at the start of the season.
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With information from EFE.
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