Double podium for Mercedes AMG Petronas in enthralling Bahrain Grand Prix, with victory for Lewis Hamilton and third place for Nico Rosberg after a tense and hotly contested battle in the desert.
Lewis took his 36th career F1 win and the 32nd for Mercedes-Benz in F1 tonight in a thrilling Bahrain GP. Lewis ran an Option/Option/Prime strategy from pole, stopping on laps 15 and 33. Nico ran the same Option/Option/Prime race, stopping on laps 14 and 34. Both cars suffered unrelated brake-by-wire problems in the final laps, which cost Nico P2 to Räikkönen.
Mercedes leads the Constructors Championship by 52 points, with a total of 159 points from four races - five points more than at the same stage in 2014.
Toto Wolff: That was not an easy afternoon for us today but we must be happy with P1 and P3 after we had a number of big challenges during the race. First of all, we saw that the changes we made to the car after a tough Friday practice seemed to be the right ones: we were the quickest car on both types of tyre and Nico had the performance to battle past both Ferraris on pure pace. Out front, Lewis drove a very controlled race: he was pushing hard but able to pull out the gaps he needed at every point to take the win. A third win in four races and a super job. And tonight, we saw Nico at this best: this showed any doubter what a fantastic, aggressive driver he is. He did everything right today but it was clear that it would be a big fight in the final laps, after Kimi ran a long and competitive middle stint on the Prime tyre. Then just as we were getting to the decisive moment, he suffered a brake-by-wire failure into Turn One on lap 56. That meant he was basically a passenger as he ran wide and Kimi was able to sneak past. Without that, I think he was driving so well that he would have kept the Ferrari behind - but he had no weapons to defend. Overall, that is our eighth podium from the first four races and a super job from the team. We have three weeks to the next race and we will get our heads down, use them wisely and come to Barcelona in even stronger shape.
Paddy Lowe: A great result but a disappointing one at the same time, as the one-two was within our grasp. Lewis had a fantastic race - pushing at all times and leaving nothing on the table. On Nico's side, he drove superbly with several great manoeuvers on the Ferraris. P3 doesn't reflect how well he drove today but unfortunately, at the end, the traffic didn't fall well for him and then there was a problem with the brake-by-wire system which sent him deep into Turn One. It had been a concern for a while in the race and it just didn't quite hold off until the flag. It was a shame for Nico and for the team and, of course, we'll be looking at the reasons behind it. Overall, though, a double podium is never an easy thing to achieve, so a good day although not a perfect one.
Christian Horner, Team Principal: "I think both drivers got the absolute maximum out of the cars today. Daniel drove a very clean race; his engine seemed to join the firework party in the end, but he finished a strong sixth. Daniil made a good recovery from his P17 start to finish in ninth. It's good to have both cars finish in the points today."
Thierry Salvi, Renault: "It was a quiet race for us and as much as we could have expected results-wise. We got to the end with the fixes we put in place after Shanghai, and got the points, which was the main objective."
Valtteri Bottas finished fourth and Felipe Massa tenth in today's Bahrain Grand Prix. After a sensor issue on the final fire up caused Felipe's power unit not to start he was forced to start from the pitlane. Felipe fought his way back up to eighth but, struggling for pace due to damage sustained after being hit in the early stages, he dropped back to tenth in the final laps. Valtteri made a clean getaway from the grid and after holding P5 for the majority of the race, he was able to capitalise on Sebastian Vettel's unplanned pitstop for a new front wing, holding off the Ferrari successfully for 17 laps to take fourth.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It was a race of two halves today for us. Felipe had a sensor issue on the grid and we struggled to return from that. In the end Felipe drove a great race to fight back and bring the car home with a point. Valtteri had a great race as we managed to capitalise on Vettel's mistake and he did a brilliant job to hold off the Ferrari for 17 laps in the closing stages. Overall, our targets are being met in terms of Championship position but we need to develop the package quicker to catch the cars in front.
For Kimi Raikkonen this is the first podium since his return to Ferrari. During the race he recovered 19 seconds on Rosberg. This is Scuderia's 684th podium finish. Today the team consolidated second place in the Constructors' Championship with 107 points.
Maurizio Arrivabene: "I am really happy for Kimi: today I can officially state that he's back. He showed what a race animal he is, and if he had had a few more laps perhaps… Also, I am happy for the team, because they worked really well. Sebastian made a couple of mistakes today, one at the beginning, which forced us to change his race strategy, whereas in the case of Kimi we followed our plans. He was not totally convinced about it at a point, but showed a great deal of discipline in following instructions from the pit-wall. As for Seb, he actually made something wrong, otherwise we could have had two drivers on the rostrum; but he's a human being as we all are. He's a fantastic driver and let's not forget now what he has already achieved so far. I wish to thank everybody back at Maranello, because they were able to work on the engine development, but also on every single component, achieving over three months what normally would have required twice as much. I can't tell if we are going to catch the Mercedes, but I do like the idea of putting some pressure on them. Today we were aware of the gap between them and ourselves, and that required an aggressive strategy. Having said that, with regard to the Friday log runs where we had showed a good pace, the temperature was much lower today, and we had to react accordingly."
Eric Boullier, Racing director: "Fernando drove hard and well all afternoon, in difficult and frustrating circumstances, and almost scored our first world championship point of the season.
"In the end he finished 11th. Although that isn't an achievement that's likely to tempt us to start popping champagne corks, nonetheless, following our first appearance of the year in Q2 yesterday, it clearly demonstrates that things are going in the right developmental direction.
"Having said that, we'd love to have been able to put on a better show for our Bahraini colleagues and friends, whose Grand Prix has been as resounding a success as ever.
"As for Jenson, his wretched luck continued today. The team had worked prodigiously hard to try to ready his car for the race after his technical issues yesterday, but, sadly, during the fire-up we noticed data that indicated an unresolved issue originating from the electrical glitches that had struck during the practice sessions yesterday and the day before.
"We believed that there was a significant likelihood that the issue would recur in running, and would indeed eventually scupper Jenson's race. We tried our best to fix it but, sadly, we weren't able to find a remedy in time for the start.
"That's disappointing for all of us, and particularly for Jenson, but that's racing; these things happen, and we'll live to fight another day.
"As we enter the European season, it seems a good time to take stock of our state of play generally. During the first four fly-away races of the year - Australia, Malaysia, China and Bahrain - we've steadily improved our car via a series of developments, the result of which has been a palpable and linear upward trend in performance. The next race, the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, is three weeks hence, which affords us time sufficient in which to prepare further upgrades. We'll make no predictions as to where they'll place us, pace-wise, relative to our chief current competitors, but we expect that upward trend in performance to remain linear and palpable.
"Clearly, we aren't satisfied with our level of competitiveness - our team exists to win - but we've made gargantuan strides since the Australian Grand Prix and that's been a result of a tremendous effort by a large number of people, all of whose passion and commitment I hereby take the opportunity to salute.
"I believe the way we've approached the task in hand has been characterised by honesty, humility and hard graft, and that's how we'll continue to approach it.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: we still have a mountain to climb, but climb it we will; of that you may be 100 per cent certain."
Yasuhisa Arai, Honda R&D senior managing officer - chief officer of motorsport: "Today, Fernando was so close to finishing in a points-paying position, which is another positive step forward for us.
"Day by day, I can truly see the progress being made, and I'm confident in the continuing work we're doing. Of course, it was extremely unfortunate that Jenson's car had electrical issues this weekend and he was unable to race, but we're confident we can resolve them.
"Now that the first four races of the season are complete, we have a short break to further improve. We'll be preparing fiercely for the first European race, in Spain. And in particular we'll be concentrating on competitiveness and reliability."
Sahara Force India scored four points in today's Bahrain Grand Prix as Sergio Perez raced to eighth place ahead of teammate Nico Hulkenberg in P13.
Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal: "Finishing with some points is always a good result, especially considering the way in which Sergio and the engineers executed the two-stop strategy. We needed Sergio to preserve his tyres to make our strategy work and he did this perfectly. When there was the need to pull a decisive move, he did so without compromising tyres or car and that proved to be the key for tonight's result. Nico had a busy race and he always seemed to be in the middle of some battle. He suffered with high degradation today and the extra pit stop compared to Checo dropped him outside the points. Overall, though, we feel very positive leaving Bahrain - it's a solid result to wrap up the first round of fly-away races and adds four important points to our tally as we head to Europe."
Romain Grosjean drove a strong and measured Bahrain Grand Prix to finish seventh whilst Pastor Maldonado endured an eventful race to finish an eventual fifteenth in the first night race of the season. Romain started from tenth and worked his way up to seventh without incident. Pastor started from sixteenth on the grid, served a five-second pit stop penalty then experienced engine-kill activation when entering the pits for his final stop. The subsequent reset and restart process cost Pastor considerable race time, translating to his fifteenth-position finish.
Romain started from P10 on the grid on his qualifying soft compound tyres, changing to scrubbed soft tyres on laps 12 and new medium tyres on lap 31. Pastor started from P16 on the grid on new medium compound tyres, changing to new soft tyres on laps 10, 24 and 41. Pastor served a five second penalty in the first stop and had an engine restart on his final stop.
Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal: "Congratulations to Romain once more for a strong race and thank you to the race team for some great pit work as well as engineering over the weekend to get the car to Romain's liking so he could deliver today. It's thanks to the hard work of everyone at Enstone that we can score points like we did here in Bahrain. Pastor had a difficult race and we need to investigate exactly what went wrong so we can improve for our next time out."
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: "That was an excellent, straight-forward copybook race from Romain. Unfortunately, we didn't have the pace to challenge the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo today but we were ahead of the rest of our near rivals. We were able to complete some very quick pit stops, which helped both drivers during the course of the race. For Pastor we ran with a different strategy to most of the field, with a three-stop strategy, starting on the harder medium compound Pirellis. This looked to be working very well and Pastor should have finished around the same position as Romain however a five-second pit stop penalty and the engine-kill activating when he entered the pits extinguished any opportunity of a strong result."
The Bahrain Grand Prix, the first night race of the season, ended in disappointment for the Sauber F1 Team. Despite competitive lap times the drivers only managed to finish in 12th (Felipe Nasr) and 14th (Marcus Ericsson). Both drivers were hindered by technical problems. Marcus Ericsson lost a lot of time during his second pitstop due to a mechanical issue when changing the front left wheel. Felipe Nasr was slowed down by a temporary loss of power. So, despite good lap times, the team was not able to convert the good performance into points.
Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: "There is no doubt that today we missed a very realistic chance of finishing in the points, particularly as our lap times were competitive. On Marcus' car we had a technical issue during his second pitstop, where he lost a lot of time. We are sorry for that. Felipe lost time due to a temporary loss of power. The engineers were able to fix this after some laps, but the time lost was too big, and so he was also not able to fight for points like his team mate. Both drivers fought impressively, but we didn't get any rewards today."
Giampaolo Dall'Ara, Head of Track Engineering: "Obviously this is a disappointing result. On Marcus' car we had a mechanical issue during his second pitstop when changing the front left wheel, which delayed him by 24 seconds. He was then simply not able to recover from this and couldn't get the points he would have deserved. Felipe was hindered by a temporary loss of power, which was able to be fixed after some laps, but this cost him 12 seconds. Both drivers drove strongly, and it's just a shame that we were not able to convert that into points."
The Manor Marussia F1 Team delivered another solid race performance and its second consecutive two-car finish in today's Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix at Sakhir. Will Stevens ended the race in 16th place, while Roberto took the chequered flag in 17th position, bringing the opening round of long haul races to a generally positive conclusion.
John Booth, Team Principal: "After a really smooth weekend here in Bahrain, another two car finish is exactly how we wanted to close out the first round of long haul races. That achievement really cannot be underestimated when you see the difficulties being experienced up and down the pit lane through the weekend. So we head back to Europe feeling justifiably proud of how far we've come in such a short space of time, albeit we are very aware that the challenge kicks up a notch from here. Our two drivers have done a very commendable job to cope with everything that we've thrown at them with the minimum of preparation and the team have worked so hard to get us back to a very strong operational level. The three week break from racing gives us the chance to reflect and evaluate all the data we've been able to gather, then come back stronger still for Barcelona."
The spectacular Bahrain Grand Prix, held under lights in the evening with falling track and ambient temperatures, provided a high-speed tactical battle, during which drivers chose an assortment of two-stop and three-stop strategies.
Two stops were expected for most of the drivers (even though a three-stopper was theoretically faster) due to the problem of passing cars in traffic. But the pace of the medium tyre, which worked extremely well in the falling track temperatures, allowed more drivers to make use of the faster strategy and opened up several options.
The top four finishers still chose a two-stop strategy, with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen making use of a strong middle stint on the medium tyre to claim second place from Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg on the penultimate lap and close in on the lead during the final lap. Raikkonen's pace on the P Zero White medium tyre was such that he felt more comfortable on it than the P Zero Yellow soft tyre, but the Finn used the softer compound to set the fastest lap of the race in the closing stages. This was the 41st fastest lap of Raikkonen's career, which means that he has now equalled Alain Prost to lie second overall in the all-time fastest lap rankings, behind Michael Schumacher.
The race was won by Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, claiming his third victory of the season and the 36th of his career, with a soft-soft-medium strategy that was also adopted by his team mate Rosberg in third and Williams driver Valtteri Bottas, who finished fourth.
Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel was the highest-placed driver to visit the pits three times, ending up in fifth despite his final unscheduled stop to replace a nosecone. Further behind him, there was a mixture of two and three stop strategies all the way down the rest of the field.
Paul Hemberyr: "It was a very competitive race with plenty of overtaking and good pace from both compounds. There was a big mixture of strategies, featuring both two and three stop options, with a highlight being the alternative two-stop strategy chosen by Kimi Raikkonen, using the medium tyre during the middle stint. This opened up the question of which tyre he should use for the final stint, with some people thinking that the medium tyre would be better suited to the falling temperatures. However, the way he drove his final stint, and the fastest lap that he set on the soft compound, fully justifies the decision and contributed to a very exciting finish."
Truth-O-Meter
We predicted a two-stopper as the most likely winning scenario for the 57-lap race, and this is what Hamilton chose. Our prediction said that after starting on soft, it would be quickest to stop for softs again on lap 19 and then mediums on lap 38. In the end, Hamilton stopped a bit earlier than we expected, on laps 15 and 33.
