Leclerc: Did used tires cost the pole?
At least the Monegasque is annoyed that he only had a fresh set of tires in Q3 and therefore had to drive the first attempt with a used tire. That threw him a little out of his rhythm.
“I’m a little disappointed,” he admits and emphasizes that overall it was a “good qualifying” for Ferrari. But he’s still annoyed because he thinks the pole was stuck in the car.
In fact, he drove faster in Q2 than Verstappen did in Q3. His own Q3 attempt was more than two tenths slower than his Q2 best time.
Mercedes: Focused too much on the race?
This is what team boss Toto Wolff suggests Sky at. He explains that the set-up “perhaps took away a little too much performance in one lap.” So he’s not really happy.
“Third place was probably damage limitation,” said Wolff, who also emphasized: “I hope that we understand the car so far now that we have done something good for tomorrow.”
Because there was too much tire wear in training on Thursday, which is why the set-up was changed again, “and that of course makes the car one lap slower,” explains Wolff.
33rd pole for Verstappen
In the all-time Formula 1 best list, the world champion moved into the top 5 in another category today. With his 33rd pole he has now drawn level with Jim Clark and Alain Prost.
Only Sebastian Vettel (57), Ayrton Senna (65), Michael Schumacher (68) and of course Lewis Hamilton (104) now have more poles.
You can read everything in our large database!
Open session ticker now!
The first qualifying of the year begins in ten minutes and we’re moving the action back to our session ticker. Here at this point, after the end of the qualification, the votes for the day continue as normal.
And if you want to know how you can watch Formula 1 in Bahrain in the live stream, then you will find out here!
Who could it be tight for?
In FT3, Williams, Sauber and Alpine were at the back of the field. So these three teams are the “favorites” when it comes to exiting Q1.
Before that there was an incredibly tight field, with just 0.847 seconds separating P1 and P14. Let’s see if it’s that tight.
It starts in 15 minutes!
Technology images
Please use the minutes before qualifying to quickly click through our technology gallery again. Our photographers on site really stepped up their game!
times
Incidentally, Hamilton set the fastest qualifying lap ever on the current layout in Bahrain. The record champion drove a 1:27.264 in 2020. It is unlikely that this time will be broken in 2024.
But: The pole time last year should be beaten. Verstappen drove a 1:29.708. And since we saw a 1:30.824 in FT3 earlier, we should definitely be faster there.
Because last year the pole time was a whopping 2.6 seconds below the FT3 best time.
Lots of variety on the pole
The first qualifying of the year begins in less than an hour and we’ll take a quick look at the history books. In recent years there has been quite a bit of variety on the pole in Bahrain!
In the last four years we have had three different pole sitters: Lewis Hamilton (2020), Max Verstappen (2021 & 2023) and Charles Leclerc (2022).
If you add the second Bahrain race in 2020 on the “Oval”, where Valtteri Bottas was on pole, then there were even four different pole sitters in the last five races.
By the way, Fernando Alonso was also on pole here in 2005. That would also be a crazy story if he were to do it again 19(!) years later…