Advertisement

Bahrain Grand Prix: Ferrari's win shows there's nowhere to hide for Hamilton and Mercedes

It’s good, this F1 malarkey, isn’t it?

Three races into the 2017 season and we’re already getting used to the idea of F1 being consistently entertaining – without the need for crazy qualifying rule changes, tyres made of cheese, or spraying water on circuits to simulate rain.

The post-Ecclestone era is turning out to be encouraging. Mind you, even though Bernie was still moaning this weekend that no one was listening to him any more, the changes that are making this season so riveting were decided on under his watch.

Good effort, Bernie. It must rankle that others are being given the credit (snigger).

The Bahrain Grand Prix didn’t disappoint – though there was a distinctly familiar feel to the result.

Is there a pattern? You bet

Bottas may have nailed pole and Verstappen may have been forced out with brake failure, but compare the result in Bahrain with the result from the first race of 2017, in Melbourne.

Same winner (Vettel). Same driver in second (Hamilton). Same in third (Bottas). Same in fourth (Raikkonen). Same car in fifth (Red Bull, though Ricciardo this time rather than Verstappen); same in sixth (Massa); same in seventh (Perez).

The racing this year has been more exciting, the overtaking more spectacular, the cars more evenly matched at the front of the grid.

READ MORE: Vettel at his best as he equals Sakhir win record – Bahrain Grand Prix in numbers

READ MORE: Ferrari president – We aren’t going anywhere in title race

And yet, at two very different circuits, the results have been verging on identical.

In China, last week, things were a little more mixed up and so, thankfully, we are still looking at a classic season ahead of us.

But, if you’re a fan of statistics, Bahrain and Melbourne will have you sticking a fiver on Vettel (pictured, dancing like an Egyptian even though he’s in Bahrain) to take this championship.

Actually, if you’re a fan of statistics, there are a couple of others that might have you nipping down to the bookies for a flutter on Ferrari.

For example, Bahrain is a bellwether circuit. Since 2012, every winning F1 driver in Bahrain has gone on to become champion that year (Vettel twice, Hamilton twice, Rosberg once).

The same happened in 2004 (Schumacher), 2005 and 2006 (Alonso), and 2009 (Button). That’s nine out of 12 races.

The flip side of this statistical coin is that, in the other three years there was a race here, when the winner didn’t go on to become champion, it was won by a Ferrari driver (Massa twice and Alonso once). So perhaps Vettel shouldn’t count his 2017 chickens just yet.

But here’s another stat off the back of the German’s victory at the Sakhir circuit this weekend: Vettel has never lost a championship in a year when he’s led the table at any point.

That fiver bet is starting to look very enticing.

Merc make mistakes … but this season they’re getting punished for it

When you’re as dominant as Mercedes have been for the past few years, it’s easy to give the impression that you make only minor mistakes, because the points keep mounting whatever hiccups you have.

But this season, with Ferrari keeping Mercedes honest, there’s nowhere for Merc to hide when things go wrong.

So, with Bottas on pole position, Merc had a generator problem that meant they couldn’t adjust his tyre pressures on the grid and so he set off on rubber that was slightly over-inflated, over-heating and under-performing.

READ MORE: Hamilton thanks ‘gentleman’ Bottas for letting him pass

At least, that’s what they said. Maybe they were protecting him with this excuse – if truth be told, it looked like his car had been optimised for qualifying but at the expense of race pace. Rear tyre management is crucial at this circuit and, while Bottas’ set-up helped him to his maiden pole, it looked to be destroying rear grip throughout the race.

As a result, he had to move over and let team-mate Hamilton past, and it now looks likely that his status as a No.2 driver is confirmed, whatever team boss Toto Wolff says in public.

It was a hugely disappointing Sunday for the Finn and he will never have been more unhappy to finish a grand prix in third place.

On the other side of the Mercedes garage, Lewis Hamilton was having his own dramas.

Having missed out on pole position, he started on the dirty side of the track and lost second place to Vettel.

READ MORE: Vettel revels in rewards of Bahrain ‘Easter hunt’

Showing no signs that he could pass the German on track, Hamilton looked to have got a lucky break when Ferrari gambled on an early stop for Vettel, on lap 11, and then the Safety Car was deployed two laps later, potentially giving Hamilton a great chance to pit under the Safety Car and gain a big advantage over Vettel.

Mercedes opted to pit both their drivers, stacking them in the pitlane… Hamilton would be delayed.

And so he slowed on his approach to the pits, holding up Daniel Ricciardo and compromising the Red Bull driver’s pitstop.

Hamilton was handed a five-second penalty – a penalty which, ultimately, kept the pressure off Vettel and doomed Hamilton to finish no better than second.

In recent seasons, Mercedes could have shrugged off both Bottas’ and Hamilton’s problems and gone on to take the top two places.

But not this year. This year, fraction of a second are as important to Mercedes as any other team and they have no room for error if they hope to beat Ferrari, and Vettel in particular.

While that’s stressful news for Toto Wolff & Co, it’s cracking news for F1 fans.

That Ferrari fire is definitely back

The Prancing Horse is on the front foot, or hoof, and even team principal Maurizio Arrivabene (pictured) is looking confident and giving interviews.

Ferrari are taking risks and, in the process, are finding that it is possible to trump Mercedes when it comes to strategy this season.

Bear in mind that Ferrari and strategy have, in recent years, featured in the same sentence usually alongside words such as ‘incompetence’ and ‘incomprehensible’.

Pitting Vettel early in Bahrain meant not only that the German would finish ahead of Bottas (and Hamilton) … it also meant that Ferrari were setting the race agenda.

Max Verstappen was quick to spot what was happening and radioed his pit to mirror Vettel’s stop. Mercedes stayed out … and that’s why their cars ended up stacking in the pitlane during that Safety Car period, and it’s why Hamilton felt the need to slow on his pit approach, triggering that penalty.

With hindsight, Merc could have pitted Hamilton to keep him in touch with Vettel, while leaving Bottas out in the lead – and slowing everyone down.

While many post-race questions to Wolff were about Bottas’ position with the team, the truth is that Mercedes could certainly have had a better result had they had the balls to split their strategy in, potentially at least, Hamilton’s favour.

Expect better from them as the season progresses – and expect Bottas to play ever more of a supporting role.

Likewise, at Ferrari, Raikkonen is already seeing what could be his final Maranello season turn into a support act for Vettel.

Best of the rest

Max Verstappen looked to be having another belter of a race, starting spectacularly and passing team-mate Ricciardo quickly before retiring, dramatically and angrily, with brake failure.

Yet again he was the most exciting driver on track and, yet again, he looked to have the measure of his team-mate. Indeed, despite failing to finish in Bahrain, Verstappen remains three valuable points ahead of Ricciardo in the drivers’ table.

There won’t be any No.1 or No.2 drivers at Red Bull this season…

In the midfield, Sergio Perez played a blinder, dragging his Force India up from 18th on the grid for a well-deserved seventh-place finish.

You have to wonder if Mercedes, who supply the Force India power units, fancy cutting a deal that swaps Perez for Bottas. Stranger things have happened.

Massa, quickly becoming the 2017 season’s enigma, had another strong race in the Williams, keeping it at the business end of the race and scoring another invaluable sixth place for his team, as fellow driver Lance Stroll again failed to finish, having been thumped out of the race by Sainz.

Pascal Wehrlein also had a strong weekend – returning from a back injury, he left his team-mate Ericsson for dust in qualifying and then finished just outside the points in 11th, keeping his Sauber ahead of superior machinery from Toro Rosso and Renault.

The battle for 11th was, in fact, captivating. Fernando Alonso, Danii Kvyat and Jolyon Palmer all added to the action throughout the race proving, yet again, that there’s more to an F1 race than the fight for first place.

LOL Alonso. Alolso, even

F1 chooses carefully which radio broadcasts to release for public consumption and, as a result, we hear Alonso spitting nails about the Honda donkey in his McLaren but little of other McLaren types also venting about the lack of power.

Alonso knows this full well, of course, but does it stop him?

Nah.

Lap 25, for example, this (not exactly) coded little message to Honda, via F1’s global audience: ‘I have never raced with less power in my life.’

Maybe he forgot about last year’s Honda engine.

Or this nugget on lap 38, after being asked how his tyres were: ‘Do whatever you want.’

READ MORE: Alonso, McLaren and the Indy 500 – Will it be a success?

Alonso’s speed was a full 10mph off the fastest cars – and, remember, getting a car from 195mph to 205mph requires far more power than getting from 10mph to 20mph. Drag, innit.

Still, the Spaniard’s misery was eased on lap 56 when – yet again – he was forced to retire with mechanical issues.

It was an appalling weekend for McLaren, even by their recent standards, and they only got one car to make the start of the race, Vandoorne being sidelined with an MGUH failure. That’s the second time in three years they haven’t managed to get both cars racing in Bahrain.

Take Alonso’s public grumbling out of the McLaren package and there wouldn’t be much left to report on.

Perhaps Alonso and McLaren have adopted the old mantra that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Wonder what Honda think about that..?