The 2019 Bahrain GP was, in hindsight, a tale of Ferrari's struggles to come. Three years later, they are back on top.
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When Charles Leclerc took the chequered flag at the end of the 2022 Bahrain GP, he became the first Ferrari F1 team driver to win a race in over two years.
The last of those wins came at Singapore in 2019, when Leclerc finished second behind then-teammate Sebastian Vettel.
Back then, few could have predicted that Ferrari would go over two years without a race win. In hindsight, 2019 was a troubled season for the Scuderia in more ways than one.
And the first signs of it were seen – ironically – at the 2019 Bahrain GP, the second race of the year. There, Leclerc had claimed pole and led through the race but an engine problem saw him lose power.
Lewis Hamilton picked up the pieces and kickstarted his successful title defence. But for Ferrari and Leclerc, it was a case of what could have been.
And after the 2022 race, the driver from Monaco admitted afterwards that he even made a joke referencing his radio message of 2019 towards the end of the race.
Also read: Bahrain GP – the takeaways from an exciting F1 2022 season opener
“I think I did a bit of a joke on the radio on the last lap saying there was something strange with the engine, which gave a heart attack to some of the engineers… but everything was fine,” he revealed. “So, very happy this time we brought it home.”
Ferrari’s route back to the top, however, has been no laughing matter. Indeed, it’s taken two years of graft to ensure they became a race-winning team again.
Two years might not seem like a lot, but it can be an eternity in a sport like F1. Regulations forever change, and teams come up with new ideas at the rate of knots.
Once a team falls off from the top, there’s no guarantee of a return back – just look at Williams as a key example of this.
And it might seem strange, but Bahrain was indeed a sign of things to come for Ferrari. It was the closest they got to a race win all the way up to the Belgian GP, which was the 13th race of the year.
By then, a championship tilt seemed unlikely. But the team got their act together and won three races on the trot – Leclerc at Belgium and Italy, Vettel at Singapore.
Yet they were dealing not only with infighting, but also an engine that, while speedy, was eventually deemed illegal in some ways by the FIA. As such, they could not use the same power unit for 2020.
And the fall was steep thereafter. From finishing second in the constructor’s championship in 2019, they slumped to sixth in the table by 2020.
The team knew that change was needed – and fast. Out went Sebastian Vettel, in came Carlos Sainz from McLaren. And work began on a new power unit that could rival the top teams.
2021 saw a marked improvement, as the Ferrari F1 team finished third in the constructor’s standings. However, they were still some ways off Mercedes and Red Bull.
But signs of a renaissance were there. Their new power unit upgrade, introduced in the middle of 2021, brought a notable improvement. But 2022 was always going to be the make or break year.
This is because there is now a freeze on development for power units until 2026, when the sport will introduce a new generation of engines.
Changes to the existing units can be made, but only for reliability purposes. Thus, getting the engine right for this year was a necessity.
And that is exactly what happened. Ferrari had a good driver line-up in place, and now they have a car with which to challenge for race wins.
They’ve waited a long time for this!@ScuderiaFerrari let the emotion out after their first 1-2 since 2019 ?#BahrainGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/ap5vFbWI26
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 20, 2022
The new power unit’s efficiency can also be seen in customer teams Haas and Alfa Romeo. Kevin Magnussen finished a stunning P5 for Haas, whereas Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu both finished in the points for the Alfas.
But Bahrain was more than just a Ferrari redemption story; it was also that for Leclerc. In 2019, he drove a near flawless race but saw victory snatched away cruelly towards the end.
There was to be no repeat of the same at 2022 and it’s clear that Ferrari are back. How they stay there is up to them, but one thing is for certain – the sport of F1 is always better with a strong Ferrari.
