Not only did he start from pole, he also led every lap, drove the fastest lap and won 22.4 seconds clear of his team-mate, Sergio Perez.  Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz ended in third place.  Ferrari’s Charles le Clerc and Mercedes’ George Russel rounds out the top 5 finishers.

After the race, Verstappen told Reuters that the race went better than expected.

“It was a lot of fun, I felt really good in the car. It's special to have these kinds of days where it all feels perfect and you feel at one with the car,” he said.

The 26-year old also won last year’s Bahrain season-opener from pole.

The Brit and former World Champion Lewis Hamilton had a difficult race after poor qualifying had him start in the ninth place. However, both Russel and Hamilton agreed that the Mercedes drives better than last season.  Hamilton told the BBC that the car simply lacks performance.

"Red Bull are going to win everything for a while, but what I feel is that for the past two years we have had all these problems and we have spent several races undoing all the problems. "As opposed to now, we have a platform we can start adding to. Now it's a building process and we're a great team," he said.

The next race on the calendar will be the Saudi-Arabia Grand Prix on the 7th of March in Jeddah.

OFM Sport/Ilse Smalberger