Camila Sosa
Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz made it 1 and 2 place respectively for Ferrari in the first race of the 2022 F1 Season, while the two Red Bull drivers , Max Verstappen and Sergio “Checo” Pérez were forced to drop out in the last stretch of the race due to power unit problems.
Ferrari started the 2022 Formula 1 season on the right foot by managing to put their two drivers on the podium after failing to do so in the last three years. From the qualifying stage, the two young drivers of the Maranello team were emerging as favorites.
Charles Leclerc took pole position for Sunday’s start of the race at the Bahrain GP, while teammate Carlos Sainz managed to start from third place. In this way Ferrari won a race again after two years, as the last victory was achieved by the German Sebastian Vettel in the Singapore Grand Prix 2019.
The rival to beat was the Austrian team Red Bull, who has in their ranks the current champion, Max Verstappen and the Mexican “Checo” Pérez, both of whom did a great job on Saturday to qualify second and four, respectively.
Despite Verstappen’s approaches and pressure, the race was dominated almost entirely by the driver from Monte Carlo. Charles Leclerc managed to take distance after the pit stops, but on lap 46, 11 laps till the end of the race, the Safety Car entered after an incident by Pierre Gasly, which encouraged the pace of the race. Even though the Alpha Tauri caught fire, the French driver was unharmed.
On lap 50, the Safety Car left the track and the race continued. At that point, the Red Bull tried to catch up with the Ferrari, but that was not the case. Despite Verstappen got really close to Charles Leclerc, the Dutch driver presented technical problems and ended up leaving the race on lap 55 of 57, which gave Sainz the second position to escort his teammate. Moments later, Checo Pérez was also forced to leave due to engine problems with only one turn left in the race. As a result, the drop-out of the two Red Bull drivers allowed Lewis Hamilton to enter the podium.
Red Bull Defends Checo Pérez
The two Red Bull drivers had failures in the first race of the F1 season and were left without scoring points.
After the race, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko spoke about the problem showing his anger: “The worst thing is, of course, the double failure of both cars. In the end there was something with the fuel supply, but what went wrong, we don’t know.”
Regarding last season’s champion, Marko said: “Something went wrong at the pit stop with Verstappen and something was damaged. He had to give a lot of power when turning and he knew how to handle it, but then he had problems with the battery, or so Max thought.” And as for the Mexican, he added: “With Pérez we thought that the problem had stabilized, but suddenly it no longer had power. It wasn’t his fault.”
