2024 Bahrain Grand Prix Heroes and Zeroes

[Jericoke]

Heroes:

Another season under way!  Hooray!

Modern reliability, every single car finished the race!  Hooray!

Max:  another flawless race, worthy of praise in the archives.

Perez:  second place is good, right?

Sainz:  was given a great big FU by Ferrari in the off season, and demonstrated he's willing to respond in kind.

Stroll:  first lap spin and still finishing in the points.  He may not be the best driver at Aston Martin, but I think he's as good as anyone else available for the seat.

Zeroes:

I understand the rules exist to create 'value' for the teams, and I think it's safe to say they've done that.  However, the rules clearly do NOT exist to provide spectacle.  Picking up where we left off after last season almost exactly isn't anyone's idea of fun.  I don't mind Max winning 24 if he has to fight for each and every one of the wins, but watching him win race after race with a snooze, while the same 4 teams teeter totter the rest of the points isn't going to hold my interest.

Alpine.  Just... what the hell guys?  I get that when things don't go according to plan they just fire people, but maybe they've fired people who would just come up with better plans?  Whatever they're doing with the Enstone team isn't working.  They need to look into finding a Wolff-esque partner to take over the team, take responsibility, but keep the Alpine name on it.  Or just sell to Andretti and begone.

Special mention:

I might not care for Stake as a sponsor, but that bright green really pops on track.  Need to get back to more brightly coloured cars.  (And not whatever mess VCARB has. Yikes)

[Dare]

Strange having a race on Sat morning

I'm hoping this isn't a look at the season to come

I didn't like the ream order in the first race helping Danny
at all.

Max is in a World all his own right now, he just drives away
from the field

[rmassart]

I might not care for Stake as a sponsor, but that bright green really pops on track.  Need to get back to more brightly coloured cars.

That was my only positive take-away from this race. Team colour to brighten up what has become the most boring of sporting series in the world.

If someone can send me a notification when Max next loses a race, I might start watching again. I've followed this sport, in depth, for almost 40 years. It got me so interested in aerodynamics I actually went on to study that at university. But for the first time in all those years, which includes Schumacher's utter dominance, I don't remember ever not being interested after the first race...

Max is almost half a minute up the road from his team mate and lapped half the field, probably without even trying very hard. Where's the competition? Is this even still a competition...

And then there is the genius that is Newey. Just when Mercedes start to copy RedBull he sticks two fingers up at them and shows them that actually the Mercedes concept wasn't bad, they just didn't get it right!

[Willy]

It appeared that the 2023 season just decided to show up in 2024 as well.
The same teams in almost the same order watching Max's ass up the road.
AS mentioned above, as snore-fest to be sure.

If this continues I will be looking elsewhere for racing excitement.

[John S]

Not the best track in the season to judge if this is a shoe in for Red Bull this term, I thought there was some pretty good positives.

Heroes:-
All the teams as they seemed to have found more speed than last year - and crucially all cars finished the race, no retirements. 

Max & Red Bull for taking the next step to keep ahead of the competition. Lets face it F1 has been a tech competition more than a truly driver competition since its inception and Red Bull are simply doing a better job than the rest currently.

Sainz for taking the Red car further up the points than should be possible, he suffered some car issues too. Did he bleat - Nah, he just got on with it and gave Charles a spanking. 

Zeros:-

No breakdowns, crashes or retirements! They're supposed to push the boundaries in F1, have they all gone soft on taking risks??????

Alpine - WTF!!!!!!

Williams - Get that steering wheel problem fixed, one car with an issue is bad luck, 2 cars with a problem looks like pure carelessness. 

[Andy B]

And then there is the genius that is Newey. Just when Mercedes start to copy RedBull he sticks two fingers up at them and shows them that actually the Mercedes concept wasn't bad, they just didn't get it right!

I said this to the Mercedes guys in Bahrain and was told that although they look similar under the covers they are very different and very worrying was that RB are carrying weight higher than the Mercs did.
They did say that there is far more speed in the Merc but due to the overheating and having to coast 200 metres per lap they couldn't show it but it'll not be a problem this weekend.

[cosworth151]

I was surprised to see Williams had moved the dashboard displays back to the steering wheel. Looks like they still need to work out a few bugs.