As Crofty says, “It’s lights out and away we go!”

We went back to racing on March 28th, starting off the 23 race season at Bahrain. Unfortunatley, due to school I couldn’t upload this post until today, but now that I am done the semester I have more time to dedicate to this blog.

It was a thrilling race with the fight between Mercedes and Red Bull starting off strong! The race was an absolute nail bitter all the way through, and that’s a great way to start off the season. I think that the fight between Mercedes and Red Bull is starting to get closer and should produce some amazing racing this season. Granted, it was only the first race of the season so it isn’t enough to fully predict right now.

Of course, no one was surprised to see Mazepin spin off the first corner, but I don’t want to focus on him because that’s a lost cause. His spin brought out the safety car on lap one until lap four.

There were three other DNFs which were Alonso, Latifi and Gasly. Alonso retired on lap 33 due to a brake issue which was not the best way to start off his return to the sport. I was sad to see Gasly retire because the Alpha Tauris look like they have some serious pace. Yuki Tsunoda, did such an amazing job in his first race, even finishing in the points. We are going to see great things from him this season.

Another person who did quite well was Sergio Perez. Despite having to start from pit lane, he fought his way up to finish in fifth place. Bahrain does both terrible and great things for him, and he dominates on this track. There will be a lot of pressure on him this year to see how he handles the Red Bull second seat. Some say the seat is cursed, let’s see what Checo can do with it.

Both Aston Martins seemed to have dropped in pace over the winter, but again it is still early in the season. However, Sebastian Vettel had a disappointing start to the season. Before the race even started he was given a five place grid penalty and three penalty points for ‘ignoring yellow flags during qualifying’. From there the race only got worse for him as on lap 44 he ran into the back of Esteban Ocon at turn 1. From that incident he was given a ten second time penalty and another two penalty points for causing a collision. He finished the race in 15th, only followed by Mick Schumacher.

Now, I know there was a lot of hubbub about the track limits. Personally, I think it was just organized badly and there needs to be much more consistency. I am glad to see that for this upcoming race week in Imola, there are very clear track limits.

Now, I know that is not everything that happened in the race, but I don’t want this post to be hours long so we will cut it there. Overall, it was a great way to start the season and I am very excited to see what Imola brings this weekend!