It began perhaps more in hope than expectation, with whispers that Aston Martin was looking strong after its car launch.
But as practice followed testing and anticipation became hype, the growing grin on Fernando Alonso‘s face gave away the sensational leap that the Silverstone-based team had made over winter.
F1 fans have seen plenty of false dawns before, so couldn’t be blamed for doubting the advance of Aston Martin, but having outraced Ferrari and Mercedes cars, Alonso’s podium result in Bahrain was the proof that the team had broken the stranglehold of the top three teams. Or was it?
We’ve looked into the data to understand exactly why Alonso was so fast compared to Ferrari and Mercedes: this is the graphical story of the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Sakhir tough on tyres
Chart 1 Summary of Recommended and Deployed Strategies
Chart 1 summarises the strategies used by each driver, underneath the four options recommended by tyre manufacturer Pirelli. The highly abrasive surface of the Bahrain International Circuit is a challenge for tyre preservation and often results in a multiple-stop race.
This year was no different, despite the new 2023 construction, and most of the grid followed Pirelli’s suggested strategy. Even so, many struggled to stretch the first two stints to the suggested durations.
With the benefit of fuel burn and management, it would be easier to go the distance in the final stint. However the podium sitters were not as challenged by this: both the Red Bull drivers hit their desired first stint length, while Alonso followed the second strategy to a tee.
The gap to Red Bull
Chart 2 Race Pace vs Race Leader
Red Bull’s dominance of the race was largely predicated on its superior performance using the soft compound tyre, displayed spectacularly above.
Chart 2 highlights the massive discrepancy that most in the top 10 had compared to Max Verstappen. Only his team-mate, Sergio Perez, was within a 1% margin on the same tyre. It was a similar story on the hard compound, although Red Bull dominated to a lesser extent.
Ferrari can take some comfort that the next-best competitor for half the race was Charles Leclerc, coming closest (but still significantly off) the Red Bull soft-tyre pace. The gap was greater during the hard tyre stint and before Leclerc could do anything about it, he suffered an electronics issue that put him out of the race. This handed third place to Sainz, who was struggling to lap at the same pace as his team-mate.
Sainz slips away
Chart 3 Soft Tyre Degradation – Ferrari vs Red Bull
Chart 3 shows the effect of tyre degradation on the Red Bulls and Ferraris, corrected for the improvement in lap times due to a reducing fuel load.
Verstappen’s lap times were in a league of their own, followed by a tight contest between Leclerc and Perez. The Mexican’s pace improves in the later stages of the stint, which is down to inheriting cleaner air and going for a few push laps.
Sainz however was greatly detached from the rest of the group. From the start his pace was uncompetitive, and severe degradation only made the situation worse as the stint carried on. This was also a large reason as to why Ferrari didn’t consider putting Leclerc, let alone Sainz, on the soft tyre for the second stint. It had already lost significant ground to Red Bull and needed to try something different to remain in contention.
But the hard tyre wasn’t that kind to Ferrari either, as Alonso would expose.
Red Bull treats its tyres well
Chart 4 First Stint Tyre Degradation
Chart 4 explores the average time lost per lap to tyre degradation across both the first set of soft and hard tyres used by each driver. As we have already seen, Red Bull performs strongly. We also know that Leclerc was the next best on the softs, but his performance on the hards is among the worst, also impacted by his DNF.
The next-best performance comes from Lance Stroll in the Aston Martin on the soft tyre and Lewis Hamilton on the hard tyre closely followed by Alonso. Here, we need to look beyond the data to understand that Alonso’s stint was two laps longer than Hamilton’s and more impacted by running in dirty air.
Considering Stroll’s injuries as well, both Aston Martin drivers put in a solid showing with regard to both pace and tyre management – especially compared to the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes.
Bahrain GP at-a-glance
Chart 5 Race Summary – Cumulative Delta
Putting all of this together and we arrive at the whole race view as summarised in Chart 5 above. The cumulative delta chart shows each driver’s average lap time, updated each lap as the race goes on, and set against an average time.
The previous insights provide the context to understand why Verstappen and Perez ran away from the rest of the field as the gap to their rivals grew.
