2021 Bahrain GP – Top speeds – AlphaTauri leads the way as Ferrari struggles

During qualifying for the 2021 Bahrain GP drivers were separated with 12 km/h on the main straight, with both AlphaTauri and Williams drivers in the top five and Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz among the four slowest drivers.

The Bahrain International Circuit is a track that uses medium downforce settings, and due to the three long sraights, top speed is very important, as well as acceleration from slow corners leading to those straights.

Vettel achieved the highest speed in qualifying (323.1 km/h), which is almost 8 km/h faster than the speed of teammate Stroll, which can be explained by different levels of downforce or the fact that Vettel at some point took advantage of the slipstream effect of the car in front of him.

The second fastest was Mazepin in his Haas who was almost 10 km/h faster than Schumacher and the third was Tsunoda in AlphaTauri (318.9 km/h) who was very evenly matched with teammate Gasly in fifth place (317.8 km/h), which is expected for drivers who drive the same cars.

AlphaTauri was, as expected, faster than Red Bull which uses the same Honda engines because the Red Bull RB16B has more downforce than the AlphaTauri AT02 although different scenarios are possible if one of these teams opts for radically different aerodynamic settings.

2021 Bahrain GP Verstappen Red Bull leads Hamilton Leclerc Bottas Gasly Norris Photo Red Bull — Verstappen leads Hamilton, Leclerc, Bottas, Gaslyj and Norris during the 2021 Bahrain GP (Photo: Red Bull)

Latifi and Russell took fourth and sixth place for Williams with a difference of 0.6 km/h, and Williams is expected to be the fastest car with a Mercedes engine because they have much less downforce than Mercedes, McLaren and Aston Martin.

The top speeds on the main straight were fairly even as the speed difference between the fourth and 16th positions is only 4.4 km/h.

The second column shows the speeds at the start and finish line, the third column the speeds at the end of the first sector (between the fourth and fifth corner), and the fourth column shows the speeds at the end of the second sector, before braking for the Turn 13.

AlphaTauri took first place on three of the four speed measurements (in the first and second they were first and second).