Sebastian Vettel gave Ferrari a rare back-to-back victory, McLaren have almost amassed their 2017 points tally and Pierre Gasly took Toro Rosso’s second best ever result. Here are all the key stats from the 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix weekend!
After two races in 2018, McLaren have now scored 73% of the points they scored in total during the 2017 season. In 2017, with Honda power, they scored 30 points. So far this year, they’ve amassed 22 points.
Until this weekend, the same driver had won the first two rounds of an F1 season on only two occasions this decade. In 2011, Sebastian Vettel won in Australia and Malaysia for Red Bull, while in 2016, Nico Rosberg won back-to-back races in Australia and Bahrain. On both occasions, the driver went on to win that year’s championship. In 2018, Vettel has now won the first two rounds of the season. Will history repeat itself with this statistic?
Before the Bahrain Grand Prix, Nico Hulkenberg had qualified in seventh for the past four races. In Bahrain, he qualified eighth, but started seventh once again, thanks to Lewis Hamilton’s grid penalty.
Pierre Gasly had a weekend to remember in Bahrain. On Saturday, he successfully made his way through to Q3 for the first time in his F1 career. With fellow Frenchman Esteban Ocon joining him in the top ten shootout, it marked the first time two Frenchmen had been in Q3 since the 2017 British Grand Prix. After lining up fifth on the grid, Gasly drove magnificently to finish fourth, scoring his first ever points in Formula One. The result was Toro Rosso’s best result since Carlos Sainz’s fourth place finish in the 2017 Singapore Grand Prix and equal to the team’s second best ever result.
Ferrari took their first pole in Bahrain since 2007. It was their 214th start from the front of the grid.
Sebastian Vettel took his 51st pole position, and his first pole since the 2017 Mexican Grand Prix. He’s the first driver to take three poles in Bahrain, and the first non-Mercedes driver to take pole in the country since himself in 2012, when he was driving for Red Bull.
The margin by which Sebastian Vettel took pole (0.143 seconds) was below the average margin at this track, but was also the largest pole margin in Bahrain since the 2015 event.
The 2018 pole time for the Bahrain Grand Prix was 0.811 seconds quicker than the fastest time in Q3 last year.
Kimi Raikkonen and Marcus Ericsson have been the most consistent qualifiers in 2018, and have qualified in the same positions for both 2018 races so far.
With Esteban Ocon qualifying in ninth place, the grid on Sunday marked Force India’s 150th top ten start.
Williams endured their worst qualifying result since the 2011 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. In that event, their two cars lined up on the back row of the grid. In Bahrain, Sergey Sirtokin qualified eighteenth, while Lance Stroll lined up at the very back of the grid. Williams are now the only team not to have scored a point in 2018.
The largest gap between team-mates in qualifying was between the Haas pair, where Kevin Magnussen out-qualified Romain Grosjean by 1.172 seconds. The smallest margin was at Williams, where Sergey Sirotkin qualified 0.089 seconds faster than Lance Stroll.
Lewis Hamilton took his 119th podium finish. It marks his 70th podium with Mercedes. As it was his 100th start at the team, this means that Hamilton has finished on the podium in 70% of the races in which he has been a Mercedes driver.
It was all looking good for Kimi Raikkonen this weekend. He topped two practice sessions for the first time this decade, before qualifying on the front row for the first time in Bahrain. The race ended in disaster though, and Raikkonen recorded only his second DNF at the Bahrain track. The result means that Raikkonen remains on eight podiums in Bahrain without having won a race here. That’s equal with Fernando Alonso’s record of eight Brazil podiums with no victory.
Vettel’s victory in the Bahrain Grand Prix marks the first time he has won two races in a row since his streak of nine wins in the 2013 season. It was his 49th win in F1. Meanwhile, Ferrari took their 230th F1 victory and their first consecutive win since the Italian and Singapore Grands Prix in 2010. It’s also the first time they’ve won the opening two rounds of a season since 2004.
Red Bull had a torrid weekend. After showing good pace on Friday, their race was over within just a few laps as both cars retired. It’s the first time the team have had a double DNF since the 2010 Korean Grand Prix. The result also ends Red Bull’s streak of 38 consecutive points-scoring races.
Valtteri Bottas scored his 23rd podium in F1 and set the fastest race lap for the fourth time in his career. His fastest lap, a 1:33.740, was still some way short of Michael Schumacher’s lap record in Bahrain from 2004.
Carlos Sainz finished the Bahrain GP for the first time. After three retirements, Sainz finally finished the race on his fourth attempt.
Valtteri Bottas’ late race charge on Sebastian Vettel meant that this was the closest ever finish to a Bahrain Grand Prix. The gap between the Ferrari and the Mercedes at the end was 0.699 seconds, compared to the next closest 1.085 second gap between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in their epic 2014 duel.
Kevin Magnussen’s fifth place finish in the Bahrain Grand Prix marks his best result for the Haas team, and the Danish driver’s best result since the 2014 Russian Grand Prix, where he also finished fifth.
Marcus Ericsson’s ninth place finish meant that he scored points for the first time since the 2015 Italian Grand Prix. It’s also the first time Sauber have scored since the 2017 Spanish Grand Prix.