Kevin Magnussen qualified in a strong sixth position for tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix for the Rich Energy Haas F1 Team, with teammate Romain Grosjean qualifying in eighth but will unfortunately serve a three-spot penalty for an incident in Q1 and will therefore start in 11th. Charles Leclerc secured pole position in his Ferrari, setting a new track record with a qualifying time of 1:27.866 and out qualifying his team mate Sebastian Vettel, who is in second. The Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas lock out the second row of the grid. Pierre Gasly had another poor qualifying session in his Red Bull, being dropped out in Q2.
Qualifying for round two of the 2019 FIA Formula One World Championship took place today in hot conditions on the 3.363 mile (5.412 km) Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir.
Having also secured sixth position in qualifying in the opening round in Australia two weeks ago, this was another strong qualifying performance for the Haas F1 Team.
After qualifying in sixth place, Kevin Magnussen said, “I’m happy and proud of the team today for delivering the car that I had in qualifying. To be sixth, and only a few thousands of a second from the fastest Red Bull is pretty good, and maybe a little unexpected. We were on par with them, and I hope we can give them a hard time in the race. I’m in a good starting position, so that’s the first box ticked, we’ll take it from there. Our race runs weren’t as good as our qualifying runs on Friday in practice, but I hope we can change that tomorrow and have a good race.”
Romain Grosjean commented, “I think we can be happy with qualifying both cars in the top 10, it’s very encouraging. It looks like we’re the most stable, in terms of performance, in the top 10, which is good. You always hope for a bit more, but I was happy to take eighth. It should be a fun race tomorrow. It’s going to be long, it’s going to be hot, there’s going to be a lot of tyre degradation. I think it’s a cool track for racing, hopefully we’ll bring some good points back home.”
The line up for tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix sees Charles Leclerc on pole, being the second youngest pole-sitter of all time at the Bahrain Grand Prix. He beat his experienced team mate Sebastian Vettel, who will be along side him in second place. The second row of the grid has the two Mercedes drivers, with Lewis Hamilton in third and Valtteri Bottas in fourth. Max Verstappen is fifth on the grid in his Red Bull alongside Kevin Magnussen. Carlos Sainz secured a strong seventh place for MacLaren, with Romain Grosjean in eighth in the other Haas. Kimi Räikkönen is in ninth in his Alfa Romeo alongside Lando Norris in the second McLaren.
Tomorrow’s race gets under way at 18:10 local time and the forecast is for dry conditions.
Author Bio:
Simon Burrell is Editor-in-Chief of Our Man Behind The Wheel and Our Man On The Ground Travel and Lifestyle Magazine.
Photographs courtesy of Haas F1 Team
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