This week marked the first official week of the 2021 season, with an intense Bahrain Grand Prix race weekend. A new director has been appointed to the GPDA to fill the spot left by Romain Grosjean, Williams has a new technical directory and new predictions claim that F1 could reach the 1 billion fan milestone by 2022.
F1 drivers will be allowed to continue taking a knee on the grid for the 2021 season. It was an action that garnered some criticism. Despite agreeing with the ‘We Race as One’ campaign, 6 of the 20 drivers opted not to take a knee before the race. The topic was discussed in a meeting between drivers and F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali in Bahrain, where management said that drivers will be free to take a knee and that “there will be no requirement for them to make a specific gesture”.
The Williams F1 Team has recruited Francois-Xavier Demaison as the team’s new technical director. Demaison was previously working at Volkswagen on their electric ID.R racer and he was involved in other successful projects, such as the Polo R rally car that won the World Rally Championship title four consecutive seasons. For Jost Capito, who is also an ex-Volkswagen employee, this was his first major appointment since taking over as Williams CEO.
George Russell has been announced as a new director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, the organization that represents the interests of all F1 drivers on the grid. He will work alongside Sebastian Vettel and former F1 driver Alex Wurz (the association’s chairman). Russell is filling the seat left vacant by Romain Grosjean, who stepped down from his position following his exit from F1. Grosjean will remain with the association for 2021, serving as an advisor.
Although Grosjean is no longer driving the Haas F1 car, he will still be connected to the team in their Esports efforts for 2021. His Esports team, R8G Esports, will be managing Haas’ F1 Esports Pro Series entry. Grosjean formed the R8G Esports team last year and it now consists of 17 professional sim racers and has competed in various competitions.
Nico Hulkenberg will take on a dual reserve role with both Aston Martin and Mercedes for the 2021 season. The German, who has been without a permanent F1 seat since the end of the 2019 season, became a bit of a meme last season for always being ready to step up and fill vacant seats. He raced in three events last season, filling in for Racing Point drivers in both races at Silverstone and the German Grand Prix.
Sports industry analytics company Nielsen Sports has predicted that F1 could reach 1 billion fans by 2022, as the series sees increases in the number of fans. The increase comes largely from the 16-35 year old demographic and has been linked to the series’ focus on streaming, OTT content like the Netflix Drive to Survive series and their Esports efforts. Nielsen reports that F1’s popularity grew by more than 73 million last year.
Of course, this weekend officially marked the long-awaited start of the 2021 season in Bahrain.
Max Verstappen topped the first practice session of the weekend on Friday, with a time that was more than 2 seconds slower than the fastest FP1 time last year. Valtteri Bottas was 0.3 seconds behind the leading Red Bull, with Lando Norris splitting the two Mercedes. Charles Leclerc rounded out the top 5.
Verstappen also topped the second practice session, making it a clean sweep Friday. Norris continued to show the pace of the McLaren finishing the session just under 0.1 seconds behind the fastest Red Bull. Lewis Hamilton led the Mercedes, with Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari splitting Bottas.
Verstappen also swept the Saturday sessions, first topping the final practice session and then earning the first pole position of 2021. Hamilton was second in both sessions, with Bottas taking P3 on the grid followed by Charles Leclerc in P4 and Pierre Gasly in P5, having finish the final practice session in P4. Sebastian Vettel had a terrible debut qualifying session with his new team, qualifying the Aston Martin down in P18. He started the race from the back of the grid after receiving a 5 place grid penalty for ignoring yellow flags in qualifying. Sunday didn’t go much better for the German, who picked up a 10 second time penalty in the race for rear ending the Alpine of Esteban Ocon.
Sergio Perez had some poor luck in his first race for Red Bull, suffering an electrical issue on the formation lap. He was eventually able to get going again, but had to start from the pit lane, losing his P11 starting place. He eventually recovered to a strong top five finish. The issue forced the drivers to make an additional formation lap. The start of the race was marked with two incidents. The first being caused by Nikita Mazepin, who spun into the barriers on only the third corner of his F1 debut, bringing out the safety car. The virtual safety car was deployed a few laps later to clear the debris from Pierre Gasly’s front wing after the AlphaTauri driver collided with an overtaking McLaren.
It was very much a race between two drivers: Hamilton in the Mercedes and Verstappen in the Red Bull. Red Bull’s pit strategy gave Mercedes the lead for the tail end of the race, but Verstappen had the fresher tyres. In the closing laps the two dueled, with Verstappen able to get by the defending World Champion with just a few laps left. But Verstappen didn’t keep the lead of the race, being told by his team to give the position back to Hamilton because Verstappen had exceeded the track limits in turn 4, where most drivers had been doing the same thing for most of the race. Verstappen was not able to make a second overtake attempt and it was Hamilton that took the first win of the season, beating Michael Schumacher’s record for most career laps led. Bottas was on the bottom step of the podium, more than 37 seconds behind the leading cars.
A full summary of what turned out to be a very thrilling race, can be found here.
This week, F1 fans remembered the life Johnny Dumfries, who passed away this week at the age of 62. He raced for Lotus in the 1986 season alongside the legendary Ayrton Senna. After a year in F1, he moved on to sports car racing, entering in the 24 Hours of Le Mans 5 consecutive years. In 1988, he won the event with co-drivers Jan Lammers and Andy Wallace.
It can be challenging for even the most avid fans to keep up with the fast-paced world of Formula One. The Weekly F1 Recap is a series published each Monday that breaks down the action, both on and off the circuit, into bit-sized pieces. It's perfect for casual and experienced fans alike.
