This Week in F1: Bulls in Bahrain, Alpine's Apocalypse & Horner's cleared - or is he...? [06]
In this week of F1 the Bahrain grand prix kicked off the new season, marking the start of the longest season in history. In other news, Horner's situation may have just got a whole lot worse...
Hi everyone, welcome back to ‘This Week in F1’. There’s plenty to cover in this weeks issue so lets get straight into it…
This week we’ll go over;
Christain Horners confusing situation
The Bahrain Grand Prix, same again?
Alpine’s Vulnerable Position
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Christian Horner’s Debacle:
Christain Horner was cleared this last week as a result of the end of Red Bull’s internal investiagtion into allegations surrounding him. His innapropriate behaviour allegations were seemingly forgotten about, until a few days later…
Earlier this week, a google drive link was sent out, annonymously, to several news publications containing several (approxiamtely 70-80) images and files of private screenshots etc.
Unsuprisingly, these images were leaked to social media within a matter of hours, leaving the public to have access to this sensitive information.
Whether or not all of the pictures in the leak were of, or had anything to do with Horner is not entirely known. But this is surely damning evidenece against the Red Bull team boss, who was only just recently cleared, but is now incredibly likely to be entering more external investigations after this leak.
For privacy reasons, no links will be shared of this leak, whilst it is in public hands, it does contain private photos/files of people that don’t necessarily deserve to be exposed in this way to the internet.
Many major news outlets took the same approach, as this is a matter that affects the privacy of several other people, not just Christian Horner.
The Red Bull team priciple has made it abundantly clear that he is devoted to his wife, Geri Horner (aka. Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls). Many photos of him and his wife together have been taken throughout the Bahrain GP weekend, perhaps in an effort by Horner to calm the rumours.
What are your thoughts on Horner’s sticky situation, let me know in the comments below:
Bahrain Race Recap; The Bulls Are Back:
Suprise, suprise; Max Verstappen is back in full force. The Dutchman won the race triumphantly with a comfortable 20+ second lead, in the rocketship of a car that is the RB20.
If you were expecting a shake-up this season, then lower your expectations because we’re either being decieved by every other team on the grid or Red Bull have already secured their 4th Championship with Max.
The Bahrain race was ultimately pretty lackluster, Verstappen started in 1st, remained in 1st and finished in 1st - all without challenge. Are you getting deja vu? Because this seems very much the same as 2023, doesn’t it?
However, looking on the brighter side, almost all the other teams seems to have closed down their gaps, making for some more entertaining mid-field battles.
Mercedes and Ferrari were cetainly looking very close, leading to Sainz and Russel having their fair share of scraps throughout the race. Even Perez got involved, before settling into P2 for the majority of the race.
But technical issues also plauged Mercedes and Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton struggling with his seat allegedly breaking mid-way through the race and Charles Leclerc suffering brake-overheating issues that caused him to lock-up all too often.
The Mercedes Power untis seemed to be hurting the most, with a few of the Mercedes powered teams struggling to keep their engines cool enough, despite the relativley cool 18 degrees celcius track conditions.
These cool conditions are what makes Leclerc’s brake issues all the more confusing…
Leclerc’s position in the race fortunately didn’t suffer all too badly, the Monogasque managing to bring his car home in P4. Hamilton, however, seemed to particullarly struggle out on track, sitting in P9 for a majority of the race and eventually bringning his Mercedes home in P7.
These were hardly the catastrophic results, but they certainly aren’t what these teams and drivers will be expecting for the season ahead. One team who did have a rather catastrophic weekend, was Alpine… (more on that after the race facts)
Here’s all the essentials from the race:
FASTEST LAP - Max Verstappen (1:32.608)
PODIUM POSITIONS - [1st] Verstappen, [2nd] Perez, [3rd] Sainz
WHO CAME LAST - Logan Sargeant (Williams)
DHL FASTEST PIT-STOP - Tied between Verstappen and Sainz (2.27s)
DRIVER OF THE DAY - Carlos Sainz (Ferrari)
DIVER’S STANDINGS - Verstappen, Perez, Sainz, Leclerc, Russel
CONSTRUCTOR STANDINGS - Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, Mclaren, Aston Martin
Alpine’s Apocalypse:
Perhaps the title is a little dramatic, but there’s no doubt that Alpine are in utter turmoil for the 2024 season. Earlier this weekend it was announced that their Technical Director, Matt Harman, and Head of Aero, Dirk de Beer had both resigned.
Alpine have started the season with, arguably, the slowest car on the grid, and clearly a team that is crumbling from beneath their own feet. The team failed their crash-tests, leading to their car being extremely over-weight and lacking any sort of points-challenging pace. It’s going to be a long season of struggle for Alpine, unless they can bring upgrades that will turn them around during the mid-season.
The only positive is that they still have plenty of money rolling in from their celebrity investment scheme. This will give the team a level of stability that other smaller teams may have had to battle with…
Bahrain proved to be just as chatastropic as they had anticipated, with their 2 drivers; Gasly and Ocon finishing P18 and P17 respectivley.
Do you think Alpine can turn it around in 2024, or is all hope lost after last year’s loss of Team Principle; Otmar Szafnauer and Sporting Director; Alain Permain. Let me know in the comments…
And that’s all for this week!
Thanks for reading FastTrack F1, if you enjoyed the quick recap of this week’s news, be sure to subscribe for more weekly recaps and leave a comment if you have anything to discuss (or correct me on). I’ll see you next week for some more news :)