Round 4 - Bahrain 2015 - Race

Greetings Internet

Well, I suppose it was too much to ask for the race to live up the marvellous spectacle we were treated to this time last year because it did fall quite a bit short. But then again anything less dynamic than Spa 1998 or Canada 2011 would struggle to be more entertaining than Bahrain 2014 - so on that note the bar was set almost impossibly high for this afternoon's race. Yet that doesn't mean it was a dull Australia style affair to any extent it was just that attention was focussed a little further forward than we have seen in the past this season - the mid-field was a little more strung out than we are used to, which seemed a little odd considering how close the gaps were between cars were in qualifying. To illustrate just how close things were at the very front of the field, if the race was only one lap longer it is highly likely we would have seen a change of lead and and change the number of points Red Bull would be taking home - and how angry they would be at their beloved engine manufacturer.

The Race

I suppose it was too good to be true, the idea of starting a race with 100% of the entrants actually sitting on the grid... it happened once last time out in China but wasn't be to replicated this weekend. This time it was Jenson Button sitting out the race as the ERS problem couldn't be repaired and so we were down to 19. As the grid cleared in preparation for the formation lap there were some personnel a little late in stepping away from Felipe Massa's Williams, as the cars left the grid the Brazilian was left stranded and had to be wheeled into the pit-lane. So we were down to 18 on the grid.

Off the line it was a reasonably conventional start for Hamilton and Vettel had to defend from Rosberg and as the second Mercedes looked for a way past the Ferrari he didn't notice Raikkonen on the outside. Kimi stole third place demoting Rosberg down to 4th. It got very busy on the short straight almost five wide in the middle of the pack, somewhere in the midst of it all Maldonado apparently went into the back of Mad Max Verstappen without lasting effects for either car. Pastor had a couple of adventures on the opening lap in his battles with the Toro Rosso's and Alonso. To make matters a little worse Maldonado also had a 5 second pit time penalty for not stopping in his grid spot on the grid for some reason. Carlos Sainz also had an early penalty picked up for driving too slowly on the installation lap before the race.

With things settling down a little - Rosberg went on the attack aiming to recover the places he lost to Ferrari off the line and in Qualifying yesterday - but today Nico appeared to have started his morning with a brave pill. The German in the Mercedes launched a decisive attack on Kimi Raikkonen - leaving the Ferrari no room on the exit and very firmly claimed third place, the Mercedes clearly had a pace advantage quickly leaving Raikkonen behind and closing the gap to the other Ferrari in second. Hamilton on the other hand was disappearing ever so slightly off into the distance. Because there was something happening at the front of the race we saw nothing of what was happening behind them aside from a brief shot of Massa carving his way through the pack after being forced to start from the pit lane taking on Daniil Kvyat in an out of position Red Bull. This was a bit of a shame because Hulkenberg was starting to collect a train of cars towards the lower end of the points including Mad Max, the Saubers and Maldonado. 

Nico Rosberg proved that the effects of that brave pill had not worn off as he made another forceful pass on a Ferrari - this time the one containing Sebastian Vettel. Sebastian attempted to defend the position but Nico was having none of that - both cars producing huge rooster tails of sparks as the new skid-blocks were working really well under the nights. So we had the default Mercedes 1-2 - on a normal day we'd say it was game over and pay some attention to the rest of the field... today was not going to be a normal day.

Felipe Massa's recovery drive caused a bit of a predicament as he was up to the Saubers - first dealing with Marcus Ericsson without too much difficulty but then he caught the Hulkenberg train and the second Sauber. I suppose it had to happen at some point this season when Felipe Massa gets involved in a battle with Felipe Nasr...Massa vs Nasr which quickly converges into a blur of confused pronunciation. But to solve any future problems Martin Brundle came up with a good way of differentiating between the two in commentary - by renaming Nasr as Fred. So with that in mind Felipe Massa eventually passed Fred and continued after Hulkenberg. Meanwhile the first round of stops were underway, and at the front an earlier stop for Vettel forced Mercedes to reverse their strategy by brining Rosberg in before Hamilton. As Vettel rejoined he jumped the race he had jumped Nico in the stops forcing Rosberg to rely once more on his brave pill. Nico had to pass Vettel again this time the Ferrari driver defended even harder - almost pushing Rosberg into the pit-lane as the Mercedes was on the inside. Both cars were chased to turn one by a tsunami of sparks - and to make things even more interesting Lewis Hamilton was exiting the pits following his stop as Nico and Vettel were charging two wide down to turn one. All three cars almost converged in turn one but avoided contact as Nico took the place from Vettel. The top three cars all running within a couple of seconds... a brief moment it looked as if we could have a repeat of 2014 but they started to separate after a few corners... no fun

In the middle of the round of stops the fastest lap was taken by Pastor Maldonado as soon as the Venezuelan switched onto a new set of medium compound tyres. You'd think that one of the other teams might have noticed that the prime tyre was performing better than the softer option compound. By virtue of staying out a little longer Kimi Raikkonen was able to benefit from this information and change onto the prime tyres at his stop. When he rejoined he started reeling in the top three, fuelling the idea of a four-way challenge for the lead of the race. Tyre conservation messages to the Mercedes drivers which had all the hallmarks of the situation that caused so much grumpiness only a week ago in Shanghai. Further back Massa and Fred were back on the same piece of track once more, now with the attentions of Pastor Maldonado in the Lotus closing in rapidly from behind. This time Fred took the position away from Massa after the Williams' tyres were stating to fade. But after Fred gain the place all three cars dove straight into to the pits - turning a battle on track into a duel between the pit crews. It was Lotus who did the better job and jumped both Fred and Felipe as he raced wheel to wheel with Fred on the pit exit... I do get a slight sense of trepidation when Pastor exits the pit-lane in the region of a Sauber in Bahrain, but this year no-one ended up upside down.

Just past the half way point in the race and Vettel seemed to forget how to drive his Ferrari as a couple of errors started to creep into his traditionally impervious driving style. Firstly he ran wide in turn one, allowing Raikkonen to close in on his Ferrari team-mate, then he made a second error in turn 11, just running off the circuit again bringing Raikkonen right into contention. Kimi radioed in at Ferrari saying that he was faster than Vettel and would pass if the opportunity presented itself. Even if there is a number one driver clause at Ferrari as Hamilton intimated mid-week Kimi frankly couldn't care for it. Fernando would probably rather he still had one of those Ferraris and some of that preferential treatment because life wasn't so comfortable at McLaren, his current strategy placed the car in the middle of a battle between Perez, and Kvyat. The Red Bull, even with the unfavoured Renault engine made light work of overtaking the Honda powered McLaren. Perez on the other hand made it look like Alonso was stuck in first gear as the Force India effortlessly breezed past on the main straight almost completing the pass before crossing the DRS line. 

While we did have a brief glimpse of Daniil Kvyat's recovery drive from his less than ideal qualifying it was time to check out how well the other Renault powered cars were doing... and it wasn't exactly promising. Carlos Sainz Jnr was parked up at the side of the road after apparently one of the wheels wasn't fitted properly. Normally that would result in a penalty, but so far these season Ferrari have proven that it is perfectly legal to do so these days, so I don't foresee a penalty there. As for Mad Max Verstappen he was having a very anonymous race outside the points before eventually running into technical difficulties and another retirement. Ricciardo however was comfortably inside the points, being the flag bearer for the French manufacturer. 

At the second round of stops it was a case of deja vu at the front of the field as Ferrari were able to get Vettel in front of Rosberg for the second time, while Raikkonen stayed out on the harder compound tyres. Rosberg didn't need to use more of that brave pill power because Vettel escorted himself off the circuit once more in the final corner. Sebastian just brushed the edge of the gravel trap on his latest excursion but it proved to be the most costly as he incurred front wing

damage in the process forcing an impromtu stop for a new nose dropping him down behind Valtteri Bottas in 5th place. A couple of other unfortunate pit stops thinned the mid-field out somewhat - Marcus Ericsson was held for 25 seconds as the team struggled to fit a front wheel and then Maldonado creeped down the lane with an apparent loss of power. As the team inspected the car in the pit box the front brakes caught fire, but eventually the Lotus rejoined the race but was severely compromised from then on. Combine that with the demise of both Toro Rosso's and there were huge gaps in the middle of the pack... it's just as well things were heating up at the front. 

Raikkonen finally stopped to switch back onto the soft tyre despite the Finn's like of the opposing compound during the preceding stint - but in the later stages of the race it seemed to be right call. Kimi was considerably faster than both Rosberg and Hamilton in front - meanwhile Vettel struggled to make any form of influence on Bottas. Valtteri drove almost as if the recovering Ferrari wasn't there - and there were times when Sebastian got very close, at one point the German almost drove straight into the back of the Williams. Vettel was not having a particularly good day. Raikkonen's charge for the grand finale was temporarily interrupted as the top three cars had to negotiate clusters of lapped cars - none of which quite elicited the same strained response from the Ferrari driver. It was only really Rosberg who seemed a little grumpy on the radio after his engineer updated him on the decreasing gap to Raikkonen. The German who had been demanding more information in the race back in Malaysia and China suddenly didn't want it any more - he knew the Ferrari was approaching at speed and all he could do was keep going as fast as possible. At one point things got a little messy as Rosberg and Raikkonen were lapping Alonso's McLaren, because Perez in the Force India exited the pits at the same time almost making it three wide in turn one.

With only a few laps remaining Raikkonen had brought the gap down from 19s after the pit-stop to next to nothing and was staring at second place. On the penultimate lap things started to go wrong with both Mercedes cars, as they ran into difficulties with the brake-by-wire systems. Rosberg couldn't slow the car down in turn one and ran off the circuit, gifting the place to the Ferrari, releasing Raikkonen to try and get to Hamilton. Lewis' brakes had also started to fail, but he had just enough of a gap to be able to back off without giving Raikkonen the win. If the race was just one lap longer the Finn would have taken the win. As it was Lewis crossed the line to take his third win of 2015 just ahead of Raikkonen and Rosberg. Bottas put up a steely defence against Vettel to maintain 4th place ahead of the second Ferrari. As Ricciardo approached the finish line his Renault engine erupted, unleashing a volcanic cloud of smoke as it just managed to crawl across the line to claim 6th place. Grosjean finished as the last car on the lead lap in 7th, ahead of Perez and Kvyat. Felipe Massa claimed the final point after his recovery drive from the pit-lane and post race discussions also revealed that Felipe was driving a damaged car following an unseen collision with no-one other than Pastor Maldonado. The only running McLaren finished 11th, so close to the points, Spain looks promising for the gradually improving Honda power unit.

The Bonus Points Championship Points Winners

After a whole host of motorsport action today, including a colossal amount of action in the BTCC series and support categories there are so many people deserving of bonus points. Most of the Ginetta GT4 Supercup grid deserve points after their second race at Donnington because it was several shades of awesome. The same could be said for the Clio Cup grid and many drivers in the final BTCC race - so magnificent. But in Bahrain there were also plenty of points worthy drives.

• 25pts - Nico Rosberg - That's more like it, took a brave pill and pulled off some forceful moves, a world apart from the hesitant low risk Sepang race
• 18pts - Kimi Raikkonen - Despite a slightly too long middle stint the Finn still recovered with some very quick laps... still no Kimi happy face on the podium however...
• 15pts - Felipe Massa - Pit-lane to the points with a damaged car deserves some points
• 12pts - Daniil Kyvat - After being knocked out in Q1, the Russian made good ground back into the points 
• 10pts - Valtteri Bottas - Remained completely indifferent to the pressure of Sebastian Vettel in the final phase of the race
• 8pts - Felipe 'Fred' Nasr - Some good overtakes today, particularly on Massa before the pit-stops
• 6pts - Daniel Ricciardo - Again the best of not only the Renault collective but the Mid-field as a whole, and for that spectacular finish
• 4pts - Romain Grosjean - More points for Lotus while Maldonado continues to run into difficulties
• 2pts - Team Lotus - The team have to score some points for that pit-stop when they jumped both Massa and Fred
• 1pt - Will Stevens - Finishing a whole lap ahead of your team-mate is a notable achievement

Looking to Spain

And so looms the start of the European season, where car development switches into top gear - without being suspended - as hordes of upgrades are brought from the factories to the paddock. Renault hope to bring a new fuel composition to extract more power from the engine while Ferrari and Mercedes probably will be making changes to their chassis along with everyone else. It will be interesting to see whether the relative performance between the teams changes as the upgrades take effect, as some teams may get it right and others may not. On of the focal points will be to see if returning to Europe allows McLaren to make some significant steps towards competing for points on pace without the reliability issues they've faced thus far.