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A second place but a potential success.

A bitter pill for Red Bull that because of a small imperfection by Verstappen lost the opportunity to open the season with a boisterous win.

The Adrian Newey project has anyway completed an improvement in quality which is almost unbelievable considering the big development restrictions imposed by the FIA on both the aero and chassis side.

Beyond the engine and the aero the SF21 of Sakhir shares the same speed with Mercedes and Red Bull but in the competition of racing the tyre degradation pushed Leclerc down to sixth position.

The work map has been enlarged to different areas and the first GP data give a priority scale starting with front/rear suspension that being brand new has higher margin of development.

With the 2021 season the Mercedes platform reached its end point.

McLaren and Aston Martin are the main allies of a factory team managed by Toto Wolff that, in sharing a technical common base to reduce design and cost and gain an advantage in terms of budget cap.

Fernando Alonso’s second debut with Alpine sees him racing for 34 laps before being forced to retire due to brake problems.

A good qualifying ended in ninth position, he was able to reach even seventh place in the first stint of the race.

With great surprise, Ferrari was not the only single-seater to suffer from these problems in the Bahrain tests, but

Mercedes itself experienced exactly the same problems.

Andrew Shovlin and James Vowles tell us about the difficulties highlighted in the tests in Bahrain!

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