F1 Starting Grid 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix

F1 Race Event: Bahrain Grand Prix
Race Track: Bahrain International Circuit

Start time: 17:00 CET | 16:00 UK | 08:00 LA | 00:00 Tokio

Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen had a perfect start of the season. Winter testing went flawless. All Bahrain GP practice sessions Verstappen was on P1 and the Dutch driver took pole in Bahrain for the very first time today.

Despite all rumours about Mercedes being slow this season, both drivers claimed P2 (Hamilton) and P3 (Bottas). Ferrari also seems to have fixed their qualifying problems with Charles Leclerc on P4.

Pierre Gasly showed that their quick lap times during winter testing were no glory runs, as he put the AlphaTauri on the 5th grid slot.

Verstappen's teammate Sergio Perez couldn't make it to Q1 in the Red Bull. This was because his one of his quick laps was delete due to track limits in his first stint. Because the team sticked to the medium compound tyres in his second run and all other drivers pushed to get a quicker lap on soft tyres, Perez just come short by being 11th in Q2.

F1 Starting Grid 2021 Bahrain GP

*Penalty: Car 5 - 5 place grid penalty - Failing to respect double yellow flags

2021 Bahrain F1 GP Race Strategy

In the past, the 57-lap Bahrain Grand Prix has proved to be one of the most strategically interesting races of the year, and this is likely to be the case again tomorrow. An incident-packed grand prix last year, with safety cars and red flags, means that there's little meaningful strategy data from last time and the teams are effectively starting from scratch. The abrasive track surface with high degradation makes a two-stopper the most likely scenario – but the exact two-stopper selected will depend on each driver's tyre availability for tomorrow.

There are many two-stop strategies that are similar in terms of overall time, but the quickest one in theory goes as follows: two stints on the P Zero Yellow medium tyre of 18 laps each, plus one central stint on the P Zero White hard of 21 laps: set to be the strategy for all those who set their best Q2 times on this tyre.
The second-quickest two-stopper instead uses all three compounds: the soft for 14 laps, the hard for 24 laps. and the medium for the final 19-lap stint.

A soft-medium-medium strategy is slightly slower: this would use the soft for 15 laps and then two sets of mediums for 21 laps each.

Another two-stopper uses two 16-lap soft tyre stints and one 25-lap hard stint (probably as the middle stint). This last strategy can be a favourable one with cooler conditions. In terms of overall time, that's similar to the above – and, as always, all permutations are possible.

2021 Bahrain F1 GP Race Notes

After a Q1 session run exclusively on the P Zero Red soft tyres, four teams – Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren and AlphaTauri – elected to start Q2 on the P Zero Yellow medium C3 tyre. Both Mercedes drivers as well as Red Bull's Max Verstappen and AlphaTauri's Pierre Gasly will start on this tyre tomorrow from the top 10 on the grid. Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull set his best Q2 time on the medium but qualified in P11, making him the first of the runners with a free tyre choice tomorrow.

All the drivers used the soft tyre for Q3 as expected, with Verstappen going fastest after the first run. He maintained his advantage during the final decisive run, putting together three fastest sectors to claim his fourth career pole. Verstappen was also fastest in every free practice session held so far.

Track conditions remained warm and dry for qualifying, with ambient temperatures of 30 degrees and track temperatures that were slightly warmer, in the region of 33 degrees.

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