Formula 1: Bahrain GP Review

Despite all of the controversy about government protests and the like there was actually a grand prix in Bahrain at the weekend, and a pretty good one at that.

Yes Sebastian Vettel may have strolled to victory without having to break sweat but there was plenty to keep the fans entertained.

Nico Rosberg started on pole and made a decent start but as the majority of the paddock predicted he was going to need a miracle to stay and sadly for the German driver that miracle didn’t arrive. The Mercedes has built a bit a reputation for being quite hard and so it proved here as Rosberg spent most of the race defending his position and going backwards than trying to challenge those at the front. Vettel’s closest challenger was expected to be Fernando Alonso, and he may have pushed the reigning world champion had it not been for a faulty DRS system which caused him to make an extra early stop, this issue also meant he had to drive the rest of the race without DRS. And now that DRS is such a major factor on tracks with long straights like the start/finish straight in Bahrain he was at a big disadvantage, so his 8^th place needs to be put in perspective.

The final 2 steps on the podium were filled by the 2 Lotus ‘with Kimi Raikonnen and Romain Grosjean finishing 2^nd and 3^rd respectively, which strangely meant that the podium looked exactly as it did at this race last year.  Paul Di Resta did alright and brought his Force India home in 4^th while after apparently sleep walking through the 1^st half of the race Lewis Hamilton eventually woke up and pulled his Mercedes up to 5^th position, which considering the tyre issues is a pretty good result.

But it seems that the biggest story to come from yesterday is that Jenson Button is less than enamoured with teammate Segio Perez. Button and his young Mexican teammate clashed on more than one occasion, with Button appealing the team over the radio to call Perez off. Funnily enough it was only last week when McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh was calling for Perez to be more aggressive, I’m guessing he didn’t think it would work out like that. But for me this is what I want to see a bit more of from Perez, at least he was close to Button this week and let’s be fair the Britton also gave as good as he got. It’s been reported today that the 2 of them have cleared the air, but frankly I’ll wait until the next race before deciding whether I believe them or not.

So overall not a bad race at all, there was some good racing and a bit of incident. Mercedes fell back a bit this weekend because their tyres were being destroyed by the heat, so hopefully when the series comes to Europe next time out we will have 4 teams battling for supremacy once more.  Bring it on.