The 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix (officially known as the Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix 2021) was a Formula One race which was held on 28 March 2021 at the Bahrain International Circuit, a motor racing circuit in the west of Bahrain. It served as the season opener of the 2021 Formula One World Championship, and was the seventeenth running of the Bahrain Grand Prix.
In Saturday's qualifying, Max Verstappen, having led all three practice sessions in his Red Bull, took pole position for the fourth time in his career. In Sunday's race, Hamilton claimed victory over Verstappen, who had tried to overtake him previously but only managed to do so by exceeding track limits, and who was told to give the position back. Valtteri Bottas, Hamilton's teammate, rounded out the podium, giving their team Mercedes a large lead in the Constructors' Championship. The race was marked by controversy on the rules surrounding track limits, with leading figures from both teams criticising what they saw as unnecessarily complicated regulations.
Background
Pre-season testing had indicated that Red Bull Racing had closed the gap on the dominant constructor, Mercedes. The team's engine supplier, Honda, had announced that it would not be supplying engines beyond , and had brought forward the lower, more compact, and more powerful engine which was previously intended for . Mercedes had been adversely affected by the season's regulation changes, with their "low-rake" aerodynamic floor design, being impacted more than the "high-rake" design of their competitors.
Further back on the grid, there was excitement about the closeness of the chasing midfield pack, with the relative speeds of Ferrari, AlphaTauri, McLaren, Alpine and Aston Martin all uncertain. McLaren, Aston Martin, and Alpine (formerly Renault), third, fourth and fifth in the Constructors' Championship, had replaced outgoing drivers with proven race-winners in Daniel Ricciardo, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso respectively, but the first two had also significantly modified their aerodynamics, with McLaren changing from Renault power units to Mercedes, and Aston Martin's having issues with their "low-rake" philosophy. Alpine, meanwhile, had shown decent but not spectacular pace in testing. AlphaTauri, with a new driver in Yuki Tsunoda, looked to progress upwards from a year which included a win for Pierre Gasly at Monza, and Ferrari sought to recover from their previous season, which had been their worst in forty years.
Haas had announced before the start of the season that development on their 2021 car had already ceased, and that the team's sole focus was on the 2022 technical regulation changes. Their two rivals, Williams and Alfa Romeo Racing, last and eighth in respectively, had privately taken a similar approach by gradually stopping development of their uncompetitive cars, although no public comments were made until after the race.
Lewis Hamilton, the defending World Champion, was also the defending race-winner, having won the previous two Bahrain Grands Prix (although Sergio Pérez had won the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix, held on a different layout at the same circuit).
Entries
The drivers and teams were the same as the season entry list with no additional stand-in drivers for the race. Three drivers made their debuts in Formula One. Yuki Tsunoda, who had finished third in the 2020 Formula 2 Championship, had impressed in pre-season testing for AlphaTauri. Two rookies debuted further down the grid for Haas: Mick Schumacher, son of seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher, made his debut alongside Russian Nikita Mazepin (competing under a neutral flag, due to his country's role in a doping scandal). Schumacher had won the previous year's Formula 2 championship, while Mazepin had finished fifth.
This was the first race since the 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to feature a Japanese driver, the last being Kamui Kobayashi.
Tyre choices
Tyre supplier Pirelli brought the C2, C3 and C4 tyre compounds (designated hard, medium and soft respectively) for teams to use at the event. These were the same tyres as had been used in the previous year's event, but one step softer than those which had been used in 2019, when the C1, C2, and C3 compounds had been used. Ferrari and Alpine tested the 18-inch tyres intended for the 2022 cars in the three days after the event.