F1: Hamilton wins the Bahrain Grand Prix
Whilst Ferrari seemed like a genuine challenger to the Mercedes pace-wise at certain points of the weekend, it was the Stuttgart firm that finished ahead of the prancing horse when the flagged dropped. Hamilton, who pretty much led the race from start to finish bar the couple of laps after his first pitstop, won his 3rd race of the season. His teammate Nico Rosberg had a decent start, but was overtaken by a hard charging Kimi Raikkonen into turn 1. Rosberg drove like a completely different person in the race, making 5 extremely aggressive overtakes on both the Ferraris. Raikkonen, the higher placed of the 2 Ferrari drivers, finished on the podium for the first time since Korea in 2013. He managed to make his prime tyre middle stint work, closing down the 16 second gap to Vettel at about a second a lap. By ¾ distance, Raikkonen was just 3 seconds behind the struggling SF15T piloted by the 4 time world champion Sebastian Vettel, when the German decided enough was enough, and pitted for fresh medium rubber. Unfortunately for Vettel, he had to pit the next lap again, after running wide at the last corner and damaging his front wing support pillar. Raikkonen, now on fresh option tyres, set qualifying lap after qualifying lap, managing to pass the W06 of Rosberg before the checkered flag. The Bahraini Grand Prix is a mixed bag for Williams. Apart from the last 15 laps or so, where Bottas had Vettel for company, the Williams driver spent most of the race alone. He initially expected to be battling with his teammate, but as Massa’s car stalled on the grid, he had to be pushed back into the pitlane and started from there. Massa finished 10th, Bottas 4th. Both Red Bull finished in the points. Not unlike Bottas, Ricciardo spent most of the race alone. Danii Kyvat had to push past a few cars to get up into points, and push past he did, producing some top quality entertainment as he muscled his way past lesser machines. Ricciardo crossed the finish line in a huge smoke show, as his Renault motor gave up the ghost.
Lotus looked set for a double points finish, but a botched pitstop as a result of a stalling Mercedes powerplant, meant that only Grosjean could hang on to his points finish. Maldonado, post pit-stop scare, was a lap down, and stayed there till the checkered flag.
Perez brought his Force India home in P8, with his teammate finishing in 13th. Whilst they may have Mercedes power behind them, they relatively lacklustre aero package meant both cars were struggling to keep up with the leaders. Their subpar performance will continue until the ‘B’ car is introduced at the start of the European leg.
It’s brilliant news for McLaren Honda, as Fernando Alonso finished just 1 place shy of the points. Fernando forced his way through a couple of cars with superior powerplants, and even attempted to unlap himself from the leading pack of Raikkonen and Hamilton. But the Honda power proved to be inferior to those manufactured by the Germans and Italians, and as such, he failed to get past them. It is a different story for his teammate though. Whilst Alonso had a drama free weekend, Button’s was plagued from FP1. He suffered a mechanical fault in every session except for FP3. The fault was eventually traced to an ERS failure, and the mechanics were unable to repair that in time for the Briton to start the race.
Sauber seems to have been outpaced by cars they are competiting against, with both Nasr and Ericsson finishing outside of the points in P12 and P14 respectively.
The Manors finished last 2 again, with Stevens once again outracing Merhi. The team is rumoured to have agreed to a new deal with prodrive, which should give the team access to machinery, funding and equipment to make them genuinely competitive. The team is currently preparing their 2015 challenger to be introduced during the European leg.
None of the Toro Rosso cars finished. Sainz’s front left wasn’t attached properly, which meant he could go no further than a sector post pitstop, and Verstappen retired with mechanical problems.
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