ROUND 1: 🇧🇭 Bahrain
FORMULA 1 GULF AIR BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX 2024
Circuit stats
- First Grand Prix: 2004
- Number of laps: 57
- Circuit Length: 5.412 km
- Race Distance: 308.238 km
- Lap record: 1:31.447 Pedro de la Rosa (2005)
- 2023 winner: Max Verstappen
Track Map
Imagine getting to know the sport through DTS and this is the first race you watch, talk about a reality check lol
“Who is this Max Verstappen, they did not show him in DTS!”
Wait… Max isn’t in the latest season of DTS at all?
He was, but barely had any screen time since there’s just nothing that interesting to cover.
I went on to do other stuff around lap 35…I get why Max hates 24 races if you only need 12 or so to become WDC.
RBR already miles ahead and getting an update in round 4 (Japan). Grim outlook for neutral fans of the sport.
Congratulations to Max for winning his 4th championship.
Aaaaaaand it looks like a repeat of last season.
If you only look at the winner after the fact, maybe.
I thought the midfield was exciting last year, but other than a few reliability issues which are expected in the first race, I felt like this race was much less interesting than Bahrain last year. It’s only the first race so hopefully it gets more interesting.
Bahrain last year was mostly better because we had Alonso magic. And the race wasn’t great I wasn’t saying that either. But I’m fucking tired of comment after comment after comment after comment after comment after comment after comment after comment after comment after posts of super high effort and creativity about how “seasons over” since the first day of testing. Everybody was expecting Max on top he’s just dominant. But the midfield seem very tight, most teams seem to have stepped it up. All of the good stuff from last season happened in f1.5 anyway and this year looks like it’s going to be even closer and involve more drivers.
Yeah I hope you’re right. There’s just not a lot of data points yet and there’s frankly not a lot to talk about in that race so far so I can only compare to last year, and I remember it being a much better race last year when ignoring Max. Don’t worry, I’m sure the conversation will have more things to talk about as the season progresses, but you can’t expect diverse conversation based on the little we’ve seen so far.
Copium
If my copium is not having a memeish early conclusion after 1 race.
Go watch DTS then.
I wonder how many races in a row Max will win. If someone from the future time traveled to today and told me he ended up winning every race until 2026 I would not even be surprised.
Hell, if you told me he would win every race until his contract expired in 2028 and he leaves for WEC I would not even question it.
Every race is still a crazy thing. A touch here or an engine blow up there and he doesn’t win. Perfectly normal.
I keep waiting for something like this happen but the RB is a pretty solid car, doesn’t feel like that is going to happen. Feels like it’s more likely that he makes contact with someone and that’s what causes him not to win.
The cars are more reliable than ever (Max finished every racing lap last year), the FIA are prone to red flagging every hint of serious rain and we don’t have any crazy reckless drivers on the grid prone to crashing out competitors. Max also faces zero competition from his teammate, and Red Bull has no interest in having a second driver that can seriously challenge him.
I’m not saying it will happen, but the odds are more in favour of it in the current era than in any previous era of dominance.
Man that was boring. Barely anything happened even in the midfield. At least last year there was more action behind Max. Hopefully it’s not indicative of the rest of the year. At least F2 was exciting.
Boooooring… I really hope things shake up a bit so there is at least some competition for the first place
The fights of the rest of the spots were entertaining… Love to see Sainz with elbows out
RB team orders to swap Ricciardo over Yuki was complete BS favoritism… Daniel had not shown any dominance over Yuki in the entire race, and even if he had, the call came too late and predictably accomplished nothing but poison the team… What a stupid thing to have done
They were on different tire strategies. Yuki held up the swap long enough that Daniel lost his tire advantage.
Half a lap? Lol
Riccardo said at the post race interviewed that it was discussed before the race that he will be on the softs and if he is faster than Tsunoda that order will come in. It seems like BS during the race, but it was discussed beforehand and Tsunoda probably should’ve let him pass before the order.
Well Daniel was not faster than Yuki in quali or the through the race… So it made no sense to me the call either.
It was BS during the race anyway because the call came in waaaaay too late to make any difference… Daniel would not have been in the point unless there was a crash in front of him
Well Daniel was not faster than Yuki in quali or the through the race…
He literally closed a 4 second gap to Tsunoda from lap 41. He was clearly faster than Tsunoda at the end of the race.
So it made no sense to me the call either.
The call was irrelevant because they wouldn’t have scored points, but not nonsensical. Ricciardo could’ve had a real shot at passing KMag if that call had been done at the right time. It was agreed upon beforehand so it’s nonsensical to not agree with the order when it comes.
He literally closed a 4 second gap to Tsunoda from lap 41. He was clearly faster than Tsunoda at the end of the race.
Well Yuki was either in the dirty air or struck behind slower cars which allowed Ric to catch up. He might have faster around lap 50 but between verstappen coming to lap them and the softs degrading, it was a stupid swap. By the end of the race, the soft to hard crossover was reached and Yuki was the same pace/marginally faster.
It was agreed upon beforehand so it’s nonsensical to not agree with the order when it comes.
Yeah making calls based on pre race agreements without taking the race situation into context is stupidity. It is the kind of stupidity we have mocked repeatedly when we have seen it from ferrari
It was a full lap
Pretty sure it wasn’t… And it would have made no sense to expect Daniel to pass and keep the advantage over Haas with literally 1 lap of tires left
In the post interview Danny said it was a full lap and that he lost the tire advantage in that lap. He thought he could have gotten around KMag, but not Zhao, so it’s really kinda immaterial as no points were lost.
You don’t need to take Daniel’s word for it, you can see the race… It wasn’t a full lap
And more importantly, it made no sense… Even if Daniel could have passed Kmag, which I doubt since he did not show any pace during quali or the race, it would mean nothing. Therefore, it was an incredibly stupid call to make which only serves to drive a wedge in the team
He had a bigger tyre advantage and thus at that point in time more pace than yuki
I assume I will need to focus on inter team drama and silly season to find something interesting to focus on. It’s looking like a tough year
Max did not look very tired at all when he got out of the car.
He sounded like he just finished a leisurely drive
I think you can set the audio to international.
Thank you, I will take a closer look next race.
With F1 TV you can yes
For me it’s even the default. Surprised it isn’t for you.
The downside is that their audio is super low so in races like this I almost fall asleep. Sometimes I switch to the Sky broadcast because it’s a bit more hyped up but then they drool all over Russell and the like and I switch back.
For FPs and qualis their broadcast is the best. Or on races with interruptions. You get quality segments instead of ads.
I guess it depends on where you are watching? I’m in Germany so the german audio is always selected by default but I can’t listen to those guys for a hot minute. Last year I could only select them or the international stream with the f1.tv audio I like very much. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to the settings. But good to know that it still exists, thank you.
For me, if I go to the account settings, I can pick which language I want. If you set that to English, I would guess you’d get the F1 commentary as your default audio stream.
Watching in Switzerland but I have my account in English
Maybe that’s why.
Would love for the grid to be actually competitive to Max. For once.
Better yet just give max the title and tell him to take a hike for the rest of the season. It seems pretty close behind him. Last
32 seasons would have been crazy fun if max was not there. There has always been a great melee for P2Don’t you mean the last 2 seasons? Because 2021 would definitely not have been good without him
Fuck I unconsciously included this season into my statement because of the expectation that verstappen will dominate.
Purchasing 1 year of F1TV was a mistake.
But if you close your eyes…
I guess the battle for 1st is still non-existent. At least the battle after Max is getting closer and closer
Tbh I’m no longer watching F1 this year. I watched the qualification summary on YouTube and saw that it’s going to be more of the same of what we had in 2023…Red Bull far ahead and everyone else fighting for 2nd and 3rd. …
Booooooooring!!!
Might as well give Max the title and let him stay home so we don’t have to see him. And just let everyone else race for positions 2 - 10… .
Another “sport” I watch (Age of Empires II) did this, where someone hosted a tournament and banned the top player to find out who the second best player was. The top player had been dominating and won every tournament for years at that point.
Brilliant. F1 should seriously do this. Who wants to see Max win all the time and tell us how great the car is?
