Verstappen, 25 years old, that two years ago had to wait for the last lap of the last race to dethrone the English seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), HE scored the last World Cup with overwhelming authority. He broke the record for victories in the same season (15), he won with a 146-point advantage over the Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari); and together with ‘Checo’ -third in the contest- managed Red Bull to put an end to the longest streak in the constructors’ championship: that of Mercedes, winner of the previous eight years.
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‘Mad Max’ and Red Bull will be the pieces to beat in a World Cup in which Ferrari, a team that had to settle for both runners-up and with which the Spanish Carlos Sainz, 28, achieved his first victory in the premier class last season (at Silverstone, the English track which hosted, in 1950, the first race in the history of Formula One) wants to win again a championship that has not celebrated since 2007: when the Finn Kimi Raikkonen did it for the ‘Scuderia’ for the last time.
Mercedes aspires, at least, to look like what she was; but seen what was seen in the preseason testswhich took place last week at the Sakhir circuit -on the outskirts of Manama, the capital of Bahrain-, where training for the first of the 23 races of the year will begin this Friday, Verstappen starts again as a great favorite.
Before the last World Cup, the young Dutch star and Red Bull – which will continue for three more years with a Honda engine, before switching to Ford – announced the extension of their contractual union until at least 2026, so it is clear that the Austrian team aspires to repeat or even improve the glorious four-year period (2010-13) in which it celebrated four ‘doublets’ (drivers’ and constructors’ titles in the same year), led by the German Sebastian Vettel ; retired at the end of last year and whose seat at Aston Martin will be occupied by the Spanish Fernando Alonso, who at the age of 41 is experiencing a second youth.
Verstappen topped the timesheets on the first day of testing with his RB23 and he was nothing short of the time (not entirely significant) of the Chinese Guanyu Zhou (Alfa Romeo) in the second; while the Mexican ‘Checo’ Pérez -33 years old, with four wins and 26 podiums in F1- signed the fastest lap last Saturday, on the third and last day of the pre-season tests. Of which he left excited with his new Aston Martin -with a Mercedes engine- Alonso.
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The double world champion from Asturias -whose new partner, the Canadian Lance Stroll, did not ride with the AMR23 during the preseason, injured after falling off a bicycle – was only 29 thousandths behind Verstappen on the first day; and he showed great consistency during the race simulations, which is why there are those who point to Aston Martin – seventh team last year – as a possible big revelation of the campaign.
Both Alonso -who has 32 victories and 98 podiums in F1- and Sainz, who, apart from winning at Silverstone, raised his list of drawers in the honorary division to fifteen, will have a new team manager. The Madrid driver, the Frenchman Fréderic Vasseur -who coincided with Leclerc at Sauber-, Ferrari’s substitute for the Italian-Swiss Mattia Binotto; the Asturian genius, the Luxembourger Mike Krack.
If Stroll does not recover in time, Aston Martin has already announced that it will be the Brazilian Felipe Drugovich, F2 winner and tester for the team -who already drove in the tests last week-, will get into the green car this weekend.
This way, Drugovich would join the three ‘official’ rookies of the season in Bahrain: the Dutchman Nyck De Vries (Alpha Tauri) -although he contested one race in 2022: he was ninth with a Williams in Monza-; Australian Oscar Piastri (McLaren) and American Logan Sargeant (Williams).
Sargeant will serve as an additional claim in the United States, where F1 is clearly committed to its expansion; and, apart from the traditional Grand Prix that bears the name of the country (in Austin, Texas) and the one in Miami (Florida), released last year; This season the Grand Prix in Las Vegas (Nevada) debuts. It was once the venue for the US GP and will host the penultimate race of a World Cup that will close on November 26 in Abu Dhabi.
KNOW MORE: Sainz, the fastest and Alonso, third, in the first session on Friday
ANDn total there will be 23 events, including the Spanish Grand Prix (at the Barcelona circuit of Montmeló), on June 4; and that of Mexico, at the Hermanos Rodríguez Autodrome in Mexico City, on October 29.
The seventy-fourth edition of the F1 World Championship kicks off in Bahrain; a country in which Sainz finished second last year; where Alonso has won three times (in 2005 and 2006, his title campaigns; and in 2010); and where ‘Checo’ celebrated the first of his four victories; At the end of 2020, when Sakhir ‘doubled’ to set the calendar for the complicated World Cup due to the covid-19 pandemic.
On the Baireini track, 5,412 meters long and with 15 curves, which debuted in the F1 World Championship in 2004 -and on which a year later the Spanish Pedro de la Rosa, the new ambassador of Aston Martin, set the lap record- will be shot at starting Friday with tires made of compounds C1 (hard, recognizable by the white stripe), C2 (medium, yellow stripe) and C3 (soft, red).
The practices will be completed on Saturday, hours before the qualification; who will order the starting grid for the Sunday race. Planned to 57 laps to complete 308.2 kilometers.
