Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

maanantai 7. huhtikuuta 2014

Bahrain GP: Awesome battle between the Mercedes team-mates!

This was an exceptional GP weekend in many ways. Many unexpected things happened. One of them was the fact that I didn´t see the qualifying live on TV, which was quite a shock to me! I had driven to a hotel on Saturday to spend time with my twin sister. I was 100 percent sure that the qualifying was going to be shown in a pub nearby. But when we went there it turned out that they showed a national hockey league match instead of Formula 1! I was absolutely devostated, couldn´t believe my eyes! So I ended up following the qualifying on my tablet on the official Formula 1 app, which made me even more nervous than usual, hahaha! What didn´t help my anxiety anyhow was the fact that Sebastian got knocked out of Q3! Kimi instead got an impressive P6, which was clearly higher than I expected to see.

On Sunday I was home in time to watch the race on TV. So it was another front row lock-out for Mercedes GP but this time Rosberg had managed to conquer pole. Ricciardo had been 3rd quickest in the qualifying but the Australian suffered from the grid penalty due to the unsafe release at Malaysia so he had been dropped down to P13. Bottas in his FW36 started from P3, Perez in his Force India (!) from P4, Kimi in his Ferrari from P5 and Button at the wheel of his McLaren from P6. Unfortunately both Finns took lousy starts and Bottas dropped down to P6 and Kimi even more further down to P9. Bottas´s team-mate Massa instead took a stunning start and made his way from P7 to P3!

Hamilton managed to steal the lead from Rosberg right at the start and soon after that the Mercedes duo vanished into the horizon. They were overwhelmingly dominant, totally in a class of their own! No one could challenge these two drivers, not in a slightest way! During the race it turned out that against the odds there wasn´t such a huge difference between the two tyre compounds. The softer tyre had been supposed to be even 2 seconds faster but in the race that wasn´t the case, however. So tyre tactics didn´t play as impressive role as expected.

On lap 41 we saw a frightening-looking incident where Maldonado at the wheel of his E22 was exiting the pits and crashed into Gutierrez´s Sauber, which caused the Mexican to flip in the air! Luckily Gutierrez didn´t get hurt. The accident could have had more serious consequences. Due to the collision Maldonado was handed a 10-second stop and go penalty and in addition to that a 5-place grid penalty for the upcoming Chinese GP. Safety car was deployed due to this incident and the Mercedes duo lost their impressive lead.

What happened after the restart was absolutely stunning to watch! Both Mercedes drivers had been told on the team radio to bring their cars home safely. But luckily we didn´t see any team orders but these two guys were allowed to race each other in a fair way! Rosberg didn´t want to settle for the second place and he did everything to overtake his team-mate. The German succeeded a couple of times but Hamilton always snatched his position back.

On lap 50 we saw something exceptional happening, something that we certainly haven´t seen for a while. I mean Ricciardo managed to overtake Sebastian Vettel and made his way up to P5! Although I´m a huge fan of Sebastian Ricciardo gets full respect from me. He has done a fantastic job and he really deserves his success. I don´t know what happened with Sebastian, on the team radio he told that he was extremely slow on the straights. I hope this pressure coming from Ricciardo will make Sebastian fight even harder in the next races. He must be gutted to get beaten by his team-mate!

Hamilton and Rosberg made it a sweeping 1-2 for Mercedes GP. Perez at the wheel of Force India made staggering job as well by completing the podium! Force India showed stunning performance yesterday. Ricciardo finished in P4, Hulkenberg in P5, Vettel in P6, Massa in P7, Bottas in P8, Alonso in P9 and Kimi in P10. Ferrari´s performance was such a crushing disappointment! They seem to be going nowhere compared to their rivals. The Italian team seems to be in a deep crisis and something needs to be done extremely quickly!

How will any team be able to catch up Mercedes GP in the championship fight? If it gets done by any team, I consider it a massive miracle! But the fact is that things can change in Formula 1 rather quickly. And the other teams will do their very best already at the two test days in Bahrain this week to improve their performance. What will happen at Shanghai in a fortnight is a mystery. But I do hope to see Sebastian beating his Aussie team-mate and Kimi fighting at the very top! I love watching F1 races, it makes me feel so much alive! :)


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