Bahrain- First race of the season

What an amazing first weekend of racing! Lewis Hamilton and Max Vertsappen keep us on our toes for the first to cross the finish line. RedBull's Sergio Perez achieving driver of the day, Mercedes winning the extra points for the fastest lap of the season after Bottas changes to a fresh set of tires on his last lap and the first rookie to win points since 2016. I feel mercades will have RedBull breathing down their neck this season and I can't wait to see how these two will face off over the rest of the season.

Lets start at the start... No actually we will start on the formation lap or should I say laps. Sergio Perez had the whole RedBull pit team and the fans with their hearts in their throats. Will he or will he not be able to take part in this race. We saw the cars go round for a second formation lap meaning this race went from 57 to 56 laps. Technical difficulties with the car left him unable to complete his first warm up lap. It wasn't all over for him though after a brief talk with the team he managed to get the car up and running again but starting from the pit lane and not on the grid with the rest of the cars.

Finally its "lights out and away we go" with Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton battling right from the green lights. But unfortunately it only took until turn three of the track before we saw a driver bowing out. Nikita Mazepin losing control of his car a spearing off into the barriers. Not a good start for Haas. Mazepins incident brought out the safety car until lap 4 of the race and we saw Verstappen control the front of the race.

It didn't take long again for the next yellow flag to be seen - in lap four we saw Mick Schumacher just putting on too much throttle and losing control of his car. The Haas rookies just haven't learnt how much they can push their cars yet. Luckily for Haas no damage to Schumacher's car so they still had one car in the race but now so far behind the leaders. Seconds after Schumacher's spin Pierre Gasly lost his whole front wing from just touching the back of Daniel Riccicardo's McLaren. Gasly of course had to pit on his fourth leaving him at the back of the group.

Hamilton and Verstappen battled the whole race, both going between first and second place. With 16 laps to the checked flag things got even hotter for these two drivers. Hamilton was on a different strategy meaning his tires were older and losing grip every lap that went by, Verstappen even gained a couple of seconds as Hamilton went out wide on a corner. Talking of going wide, Verstappen took back first place position. However, all four of his tires left the track meaning that the 1st place position had to be given back to Hamilton with less than 3 laps to go. The final battle was good but Verstappen just couldn't get back on top with the cars tires wearing and Hamilton doing everything in his power to keep the position. This battle wasn't the only battle worth talking about as Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc battled most of the race until Sergio Perez earned his driver of the race title coming all the way up from the bottom of the group to finish 5th with Leclerc just seconds behind.

Now for driver of the race. My personal choice for driver of the race goes to Yuki Tsunoda - his first race in Formula 1 and he managed to bag himself some points. Coming 9th the rookie gave his team AlphaTauri 2 points. He had some smooth overtakes during the race. Alonso definitely noticed. Qualifying in 13th place Yuki managed to fight up 4 places overall. What a great start to his career and he is a driver I will be keeping my eye on in future races.

From the best to the worst. Lets have a little talk about Sebastian Vettel. Poor guy. The former 4 time champion finished 18th during qualifying but then got the news he was being penalised 5 places at the start grid for failing to respect double yellow flags during qualifying. Nobody wants to see that. But it only got worse for the driver. After trying to fight his way up the leader board the driver just couldn't catch a break with his new Aston Martin. Etiban Ocon came and really shat on his cereal. They had a collision at the first corner which Vettel claimed Ocon came into his driving lane but after going under investigation by Formula 1 Vettel received a 10 second penalty for causing a collision. He finished the race in 15th Position but the race had 4 DNF's (did not finish).

Its going to be an interesting season indeed for all involved. I would love to hear everyones opinions on this season. So please leave comments and let me know what your predictions are.