GP Bahrein – THE POINT

In the most exciting GP since the beginning of the 2013 F1 Championship, one of the main protagonists, Fernando Alonso, didn’t manage to achieve a good position because of a technical issue. The GP was featured by battles, overtaking on the borderline of regulations.

Perez’s behaviour towards Button was really uncontrollable. Button didn’t want to lose his leadership inside McLaren team and Rosberg was unfortunately penalised by tyres degradation. His qualifying lap was almost perfect, running ahead of two world champions such as Vettel and Alonso. The team was aware that the situation would have been upside down during the race, because of rear-tyres over degradation. The battle at the beginning of the race didn’t help him. On the contrary, Lewis Hamilton delivered an excellent race performance; the Englishman managed to jump up to the fifth place, as he made the most of Pirelli tyres. Running 2/3 more laps before pitting in the last phase of the race allowed him to finish the race on less consumed rubber, managing to get the better over Webber and Perez.

It was a lively weekend since Saturday; all top drivers crossed the line within few tenths. Unfortunately it was a bitter race for the Italian team, as Alonso was slowed down by a DRS failure and Massa was penalised by two tyres punctures which have to be deeply analyzed. The Spaniard delivered an excellent performance: despite pitting in advance and lacking the DRS, he ran an extraordinary race being only 37’’ behind Vettel.  He scored 3 points, which is a very good result considering the unlucky start, even if I think the Italian team would have deserved more than it achieved. Besides an excellent performance and the win scored, I find it hard to consider Vettel as the author of a “lonely” and smooth race, after Alonso and Rosberg’s overtaking. Anyway I think he still has room for improvement, despite his team suggests him not to push on track and the lap times set during the race. On the contrary Webber didn’t rise to the occasion. It’s difficult to judge his performance, as he had tyres issues. Unfortunately he was involved in several on-track battles which caused quicker tyre degradation.

Raikkonen and a recovered Grosjean complete the podium. Lotus scored precious points and preserves top positions, showing to be the third team in the constructors and drivers’ standings. After suffering a very performing Kimi, who always makes the most of an excellent car, Grosjean got back to the right direction, thanks also to chassis change. The E21 racing car delivered excellent performances on these tyres and scored much more points than in the past season.

We have to clap our hands to Force India and Di Resta who finished at the foot of the podium. He’s always in Q3 and he’s entering the struggle to get the sixth place. If Sutil hadn’t had a clash in the first phase of the race, he would have taken home important points. It’s good that he’s able to struggle against top drivers.

Now, we’ll have three weeks before the world championship will be raced in Europe. At this point of the season teams and drivers have a complete picture of tyres behaviour, since they test them under different weather conditions. Next race will be held on a well known track such as the Barcelona circuit, where pre-season tests took place. Red Bull remains the reference car, even though Ferrari is closer to it also in qualifying. There are also many outsiders striving for the title: Mercedes, which is usually so fast on a single qualifying lap and Lotus, always at the top of the standing. According to performance equalization, every single mistake will be paid off twice. So much attention should be paid. There are still 15 GP to be raced, so everything could happen. In Spain we’ll see several upgrades.