2024 Bahrain Grand Prix: Full results explored as Max Verstappen starts on a winning note

Max Verstappen carried his victorious triumph from the earlier F1 season into the 2024 season, winning the Bahrain Grand Prix and clinching maximum points for the team with Sergio Perez behind him.

With Red Bull now leading the pack after the end of round 1, Ferrari will chase them from second place in the championship as Carlos Sainz in P3 makes up the podium. Fans also voted him the driver of the day with 31% of the vote. Charles Leclerc finished P4 to clear up the competition at the top.

Here are the complete results of the race:

Position	Driver	Team
1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull
2	Sergio Perez	Red Bull
3	Carlos Sainz	Ferrari
4	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari
5	George Russell	Mercedes
6	Lando Norris	McLaren
7	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes
8	Oscar Piastri	McLaren
9	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin
10	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin
11	Guanyu Zhou	Sauber
12	Kevin Magnussen	Haas
13	Daniel Ricciardo	RB
14	Yuki Tsunoda	RB
15	Alex Albon	Williams
16	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas
17	Esteban Ocon	Alpine
18	Pierre Gasly	Alpine
19	Valtteri Bottas	Sauber
20	Logan Sargeant	Williams

So far, Red Bull is still at the top in terms of race pace, and following them are Ferrari. Mercedes, although split by McLaren during the race, is seemingly third fastest. It was reported during the race that both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell faced some issues with their energy store, or were asked to conserve the battery.

McLaren has carried their momentum from the earlier year to be the fourth fastest car on the grid. Aston Martin, however, who were the second-fastest in Bahrain in 2023, finished in P9 and P10 with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, respectively, closing out the top 10 in round 1 of the 2024 F1 season.

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Max Verstappen describes his perfect race in Bahrain in 2024

Speaking after the end of the race with David Coulthard, Max Verstappen revealed that there was no issue he faced with the RB20. The car that had been in question because of the different sidepod design Red Bull had implemented, was seemingly perfect for all the tire compounds and "had a lot of pace."

Verstappen stated (in the post-race interview):

"Yeah, unbelievable. I think today (we were) even better than expected, I think the car was really nice to drive on every compound. I think we had a lot of pace and uh, yeah, it was just super enjoyable to drive today. We really stayed out of trouble."

"Yeah, great start to the year. I mean it could have been better."

Max Verstappen won his third consecutive world championship in the earlier season with an extremely dominant car. At the start of this season, it seems that he will carry the momentum forward.

His teammate Sergio Perez was relatively slow. While Verstappen went on to win the race with a 22-second lead, Perez was only ahead of Carlos Sainz by 2.6 seconds.