Another season is starting, and while masks will still be slipping off people's faces and crowds will be minimal at least until the latter parts of the season, we have a full fat 23 races on our hands! According to Testing Experts, Red Bull is the best, Mercedes is doomed to be only second best, and Haas is the worst. Everyone else will be fighting for the third place. Exciting, I think! Surely Mercedes won't walk away with it again? Anyway, what better way to start the season than having the third race in the span of four at the Bahrain Circuit.
Circuit
Not much has changed in 4 months. Free Practice sessions will only be 60 minutes this season, which should alleviate some of the boredom. Pirelli continues to allocate the tyres due to covid related logistics issues, and the drivers will each get C2 (hard), C3 (medium) and C4 (soft) tyres this weekend, with a fixed allocation of two hard sets, three medium sets and eight soft sets for each race in 2021.
No pictures of cargo arriving at the cicuit this year, as that already happened weeks ago at the aforementioned winter test.
Will we beat last year's pole time with the new regulations?
Schedule (Sky)
26th Mar
Practice 1 ON AIR 11:00 START 11:30
Practice 2 ON AIR 14:45 START 15:00
27th Mar
Practice 3 ON AIR 11:45 START 12:00
Qualifying ON AIR 14:00 START 15:00
28th Mar
Grand Prix ON AIR 14:30 START 16:00
Race starts on the hour, like it should.
Don't get fooled by daylight savings time!
Europe changes to summer time on Sunday, but apparently Bahrain does not!
Full schedule (local times)
The Grid
Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen
7 Kimi Räikkönen
99 Antonio Giovinazzi
Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda
10 Pierre Gasly
22 Yuki Tsunoda
Alpine F1 Team
14 Fernando Alonso
31 Esteban Ocon
Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team
5 Sebastian Vettel
18 Lance Stroll
Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow
16 Charles Leclerc
55 Carlos Sainz Jr.
Uralkali Haas F1 Team
9 Nikita Mazepin
47 Mick Schumacher
McLaren F1 Team
3 Daniel Ricciardo
4 Lando Norris
Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team
44 Lewis Hamilton ♔
77 Valtteri Bottas
Red Bull Racing Honda
11 Sergio Pérez
33 Max Verstappen
Williams Racing
6 Nicholas Latifi
63 George Russell
New drivers
Yuki Tsunoda, Alpha Tauri
Mick Schumacher, Haas
Nikita Mazepin, Haas
Fernando Alonso, Alpine
New teams
We are happy to welcome the new Russian F1 team, Haas F1.
Renault is now Alpine
And Racing Point is now Aston Martin
Let's get this season going! If someone had an actually witty thread ready, plese feel free to delete this one. But it is almost time for FP1 and we NEED a thread.
Are you excited? I am!
Edited by Topsu, 25 March 2021 - 15:05.