Verstappen insists F1 field is closer despite Bahrain dominance

Max Verstappen says the field is closer in 2024 than last year despite dominating the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.

The Dutchman led from pole and was never threatened as he beat teammate Sergio Perez by over 22s in Bahrain, with Carlos Sainz keeping the second Red Bull honest. Verstappen’s pace advantage was over three quarters of a second per lap in the early stages, but he says the performance at the first race was due to the team executing perfectly.

“I think that, in general, other teams are closer,” Verstappen said. “I just think that today, everything just worked really, really well, and I don't expect that to happen every single grand prix in the near future. So still, we take it, we look back at it, of course, we analyze it, and we'll try to improve further.

“I don't know how they approach their long runs, you know, with fuel loads and whatever. But from our side, it was definitely not expected to be half a second ahead. But yeah, it was probably a bit better than I thought today.”

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Verstappen had taken pole position on Friday night but was closely challenged in that session -- with Charles Leclerc’s Q2 lap the quickest of the session -- and he believes that shows how conditions can make a difference.

“I do think that we are just not that great on one lap performance for whatever reason with the car, but luckily it's very good in the race for most tracks," he said. "Of course you focus a little bit more on the race, but it just seems like other teams can maybe extract a little bit more over one lap than us for whatever reason, so that's what we'll look at for the coming races.

“But I really think that also just the circumstances today with the wind helped us out a bit more compared to the last two days, so probably it was not in our favor with how the car is responding at the moment.

“I think today everything just went really well. The balance, the feeling for myself and the car is not always like that. I mean, sometimes you win races, but you may be not very happy with how you were feeling with the car or the balance of the car. But today that was all very good.”