2024 Bahrain GP Race Review: Red Bull's Baseline Is Everyone Else's Ceiling

Verstappen Won by 22 Seconds and Nobody Was Surprised

The 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix set the tone for what became another Verstappen-dominated season. [Max Verstappen](/drivers/max_verstappen) took pole, led every lap, and won by 22.4 seconds from [Sergio Pérez](/drivers/perez) in what was essentially a time trial against himself. The RB20 was so far ahead of the field that the most interesting battle all race was for third place.

This was Verstappen's 55th career win. He would add 15 more by season's end, finishing 2024 with his fourth consecutive world championship — matching [Sebastian Vettel](/drivers/vettel)'s run with [Red Bull](/teams/red_bull) from 2010-2013.

The Strategic Story: Tyre Degradation Was the Differentiator

Red Bull's advantage was not just peak pace — it was how little the RB20 degraded. Verstappen's stints were operationally simple: drive to a target, pit on the planned lap, drive to another target. No offsets, no emergency stops, no strategic gymnastics. Meanwhile, the rest of the grid was reacting to problems rather than executing plans.

[Charles Leclerc](/drivers/leclerc) brought [Ferrari](/teams/ferrari) home in third, 35 seconds behind Verstappen but ahead of where anyone expected the SF-24. The Ferrari's race pace was the most significant positive of the weekend relative to expectations. Over one lap, the SF-24 looked cleaner at corner entry than late 2023, and in race conditions both Ferraris sustained competitive lap times without the thermal drop-offs that had plagued them the previous season.

[Carlos Sainz](/drivers/sainz) finished fourth, confirming Ferrari had two genuinely competitive cars rather than one quick driver and one struggling teammate.

Mercedes and McLaren: Works in Progress

[Mercedes](/teams/mercedes) looked like a team still searching for its mechanical platform. The W15 had flashes of pace in medium-speed sections — [Lewis Hamilton](/drivers/hamilton) was briefly the fastest car through Turns 5-7 in the first stint — but the inconsistency over full stints was concerning. Hamilton finished fifth, [George Russell](/drivers/russell) seventh after a scrappy race with a slow pit stop.

[McLaren](/teams/mclaren) brought genuine pace in clean air but the MCL38 was vulnerable in traffic. [Lando Norris](/drivers/norris) qualified well but lost positions in the opening laps and spent the race recovering rather than racing. He would not find consistent form until the Miami upgrade package three races later — but when he did, McLaren became the car to beat for the rest of the season.

The Midfield Picture

[Haas](/teams/haas) overperformed relative to qualifying — a pattern that would continue through 2024 as Kevin Magnussen consistently extracted more race pace than Saturday results suggested. [Aston Martin](/teams/aston_martin) looked operationally tidy but the AMR24 lacked the development trajectory that had made the 2023 car a front-runner in the opening races. [Alpine](/teams/alpine) exposed a larger aerodynamic deficit than anticipated — a deficit they never fully resolved before the 2026 regulation reset.

What Bahrain 2024 Told Us About the Season Ahead

One race never settles a championship. But it establishes the direction of travel. Bahrain indicated that Red Bull had carried over the RB19's technical stability into the RB20, Ferrari had made meaningful race-day progress, and the chasing teams needed to solve degradation before they solved outright speed.

As it turned out, McLaren solved both. Norris's rise from midfield frustration in Bahrain to world champion 23 races later remains one of the most remarkable in-season transformations in recent F1 history.

See the full [2024 season standings](/seasons/2024), or compare Verstappen and Norris's careers on our [Compare tool](/compare?d1=max_verstappen&d2=norris).