Seven-times Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton won the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix for Mercedes after an epic, knife-edge battle with Red Bull's Max Verstappen over the final laps.
Lewis Hamilton Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Verstappen, who passed the Briton with four laps to go only to have to hand back the lead for exceeding track limits, finished a mere 0.745 seconds behind after starting on pole position.
Hamilton's team mate Valtteri Bottas was a distant third but gained a bonus point for fastest lap.
"Wow, what a difficult race that was," said Hamilton, who started second on the grid and took another of Michael Schumacher's all-time records with his 5,112nd race lap led.
"Max was all over me right at the end, but I just about managed to hold him off. It was one of the hardest races I've had for a while."
The win was a record-extending 96th for Hamilton, continuing also his record of winning in every season of his career since his debut with McLaren in 2007.
Lando Norris finished fourth for McLaren while Verstappen's new Mexican team mate Sergio Perez went from starting in the pit lane, after his car had stopped on the formation lap, to fifth place.
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc was sixth and Australian Daniel Ricciardo seventh on his McLaren debut with Spaniard Carlos Sainz, the man he replaced, eighth in his first race for Ferrari.
Japanese rookie Yuki Tsunoda scored on his F1 debut in ninth for AlphaTauri and Lance Stroll took the last scoring place for Aston Martin in the marque's first race as a constructor since 1960.
Stroll's team mate Sebastian Vettel, the four-times world champion who has joined from Ferrari, had another of his nightmares.
The German collected a five-place grid drop for not respecting warning flags in qualifying and went to last on the starting grid.
He then collected a 10-second penalty in the race for causing a collision with Alpine's Esteban Ocon and two penalty points -- taking his tally for the weekend to five with 12 in one year incurring a one-race ban.
Ocon's team mate Fernando Alonso, returning after a two-year absence at the age of 39, retired from the race after debris was trapped in a brake duct, causing it to overheat.
Mick Schumacher, F2 champion and rookie son of seven-times champion Michael, was lapped and the last finisher in 16th for Haas.
The debut of his Russian team mate Nikita Mazepin lasted only seconds before he spun off coming out of turn two, triggering the safety car.
Liam Lawson leads F2 field Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Meanwhile New Zealander Liam Lawson is second overall in the F2 standings after a succesful debut weekend in Bahrain.
Lawson won the opening sprint race, spun off in the second and then finished third in the feature race.
The Hitech GP driver is 11 points behind Guanyu Zhou of China.
19 year old Lawson was happy with his debut event.
"We were just saying last year when I was in Formula 3, one of the most exciting parts of the weekend was sitting down to watch the F2 race so it's crazy to now be a part of it and feel what it's like for all of these guys. I am enjoying it so far, learning a lot and there's still a lot more to be learnt as we go on."
Fellow New Zealander Marcus Armstrong is 10th in the standings after finishing fifth in the feature race.
The next round is in Monte Carlo next month.
-Reuters/F2