Image via r/formula1
The outcome of this year’s World Championship may already be decided, but Fernando Alonso brought life to the season’s opening Formula 1 race, which was won by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
Alonso turned in a standout performance, including two really brilliant overtaking maneuvers, to move up from eighth in the early going to claim the final podium spot behind Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez.
The Bahrain Grand Prix was defined by Alonso and his Aston Martin team’s astonishing ascent to the front.
Most people anticipated Verstappen’s victory, even though the magnitude of it left Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, his title contender from the previous year, in a dejected state. Even Alonso did not anticipate Aston Martin to be as excellent as they turned out to be, despite the fact that they had shown impressive in preseason testing.
Alonso disclosed last Thursday morning that he was considering qualifying in the lower reaches of the top 10 and possibly finishing in the top five or six before the cars turned a wheel on the race weekend.
But, his car was arguably the second fastest in the field on Sunday at Sakhir, and the wonderful maneuvers he executed on Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes and Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari in the closing moments brought life back into a race that, up front, had long since descended into somnolence.
“We didn’t expect to be that competitive,” Alonso said. “The aim in 2023 was getting in the mix in the midfield, leading that midfield and getting close to the top three teams. But even a podium was maybe not on the radar.
“And we found ourselves second-best car today in Bahrain, or the whole weekend, just behind Red Bull. So this is a little bit of a surprise.”