New regulation cars were front and centre

Ocon soon found himself with his teammate Fernando Alonso for company, too, as the Alpine drivers got a little too close for comfort in an intra-team scrap for bragging rights at the Enstone team. Eventually, Alonso prevailed, leaving Ocon to fall into the clutches of Valtteri Bottas behind.

With Leclerc closing in on Perez for the lead, the Monegasque driver wanted to head into the pits for new Pirelli tyres to take P1 through the undercut. However, Red Bull got there first, and Perez peeled into the pit lane for a new set of hards. The timing couldn't have been worse for the Mexican, though; moments later, the Williams of Nicholas Latifi found the wall to trigger the safety car.

As expected, all runners, aside from those already on the hard tyres, dove into the pits to equip themselves with the Pirellis they'd look to finish the race with. Perez tumbled to third, which soon became fourth after incorrectly overtaking Sainz on the pit exit. His hopes for a win were, unfortunately, over.

The drivers who began the race on hard tyres had benefitted through the safety car period but would need an additional slowdown later on for their plan to come together. Hamilton had found himself up to P6 and right behind his teammate by staying on track while most runners took their stops.

Their dreams came true on Lap 37 when a blitz of retirements triggered the Virtual Safety Car. Alonso started it off as he lost drive halfway through the lap before McLaren's Daniel Ricciardo also had no power and stopped on the pit entry. Valtteri Bottas also retired but had the good manners to do in the safety of his pit box. Hulkenberg and Magnussen immediately pitted, while Hamilton's radio message came seconds too late, and the Brit lost all the places he had gained as the pit lane closed due to Ricciardo's stranded car.

The slowdown did see Verstappen come out of the VSC period noticeably closer to Leclerc, and as the race entered its final eight laps, the reigning champion pounced into the final hairpin. His move gave him the lead but also handed DRS to Leclerc, who immediately reclaimed his P1 into the first corner. An entertaining situation arose one lap later where both drivers locked up trying to be the slowest car and thus benefit from DRS down the main straight.

The final laps had the two constantly within a few car lengths of each other as they found that they could follow much closer than in years before. However, Verstappen finally took the decisive blow on Lap 48 with a DRS pass down the main straight, leaving Leclerc unable to fight back, try as he might.

The Formula One circus now packs up from their Middle Eastern adventure to race at the returning Australian Grand Prix in two weeks. The teams now better understand their cars and the new 2022 Pirelli tyres with a couple of Grands Prix under their belts. Still, with mechanical gremlins affecting every engine manufacturer this weekend, there's a lot of learning to be done over the upcoming fortnight.