Whether you’re a Lewis fan, a Max fan, or a someone-else fan, you can email me with your thoughts on today’s race and the season ahead.
Via the Mercedes F1 website, some post-qualifying quotes from Lewis Hamilton: “The car is feeling really great, but I just went a little bit in a direction to help my race pace. I wasn’t feeling as comfortable with that yesterday so that was the focus. I’ve definitely sacrificed more single-lap performance than I hoped too but I hope that pays off tomorrow.”
Toto Wolff echoed those thoughts about the changes to the car that Mercedes hope will benefit them in the race: “Yesterday we looked slightly better than today on our single-lap performance. We intentionally tried to set the car up for tomorrow’s race though, so we hope we’re in more of a sweet spot for the Grand Prix tomorrow.
“The set-up changes we made certainly contributed to the drop in our performance today. At the start of Qualifying, we wondered if we had sacrificed too much for tomorrow but in the end, it wasn’t too bad. P3 is a good place to start but we were still three tenths off pole position.”
Max Verstappen has a chat: “Everyone is looking forward to the race … I’m excited. Normally, our car is good in the race. In qualifying the gaps were very small and I think it will be in the same in the race.
“It feels like the top eight, nine cars are a lot closer. I think it will be a really interesting race.”
Christian Horner was on Friday night still fighting for his future in Formula One but remained insistent he was going nowhere as the furore around his exoneration, after a complaint about his behaviour from a female Red Bull employee, continued to dominate the agenda at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The build-up to the season’s opening grand prix has been unusually dramatic. Mercedes displayed surprisingly fearsome pace in Thursday’s opening practice session, with Lewis Hamilton fastest in the team’s new car design. However, order seemed to be swiftly restored by Red Bull and Max Verstappen in qualifying on Friday, with the world champion securing pole position two-hundredths of a second ahead of Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari.
George Russell of Mercedes claimed third on the grid, with Hamilton a somewhat disappointing ninth after his flying start to the season curtain-raiser. But Hamilton explained that while some tweaks to his set-up may have sacrificed a bit of single-lap speed for the Mercedes in qualifying, he is hoping they benefit him in today’s race. “It’s amazing for us to have a car that we can fight with,” Hamilton said. “It reignites the fire and the flame within us drivers.”
Today’s grand prix kicks off a season of record-breaking length, with 24 events, scheduled to finish in Abu Dhabi in December. It is also sure to be memorable – emotional, even – being Hamilton’s final campaign with Toto Wolff’s marque before his switch to Ferrari next year.
There has also been a smattering of controversy and drama off-track, of course, with Christian Horner cleared by an independent investigation into controlling behaviour on Wednesday, only for anonymous emails sent on Thursday to reveal alleged messages between the Red Bull boss and the staff member who made the complaint against him. Horner declined to comment yesterday, apart from saying the next step is to “go racing”. So that is what we’ll do.
Lights out: 3pm GMT (6pm local).