Bahrain GP Race Report

I thought the most exciting thing about going into this race is how close Qualifying was but the race showed that (apart from McLaren), it's close all round.  However, Wolff has written off the Mercedes as a championship winning car.

Albon messed his tyres up going to the grid but that didn't stop him winning a point in the race.  LeClerc chose tyes over grid position and the race was to prove whether that was a good shout or not.

The start was fairly textbook with LeClerc taking Perez and Sainz staying in 4th. Hamilton overtook a few cars including his team mate.  Then Stroll nudged Alonso; he didn't do any damage so his pocket money won't be docked.  Williams also made up a few places and would barely be commented upon.

The Mercedes and Aston Martins battled hard, although it is hard to tell the cars apart from their livery.

McLaren had a dire race with a problem resolved at the pit stop for Norris's engine and a problem with Piastri's gear box resulting in the same, then retirel.

After the first round of pit stops, which came fast and frenetically, the order at the front remained the same.  The top 10 had the two Red Bulls and 2 Ferraris at the front, then, in a random order, the Mercedes and Aston Martins with Bottas and Albon in the mix too.

Halfway through, DRS gave Perez the chance to overtake LeClerc for a Red Bull 1 2.

Norris and Ocon battled it out to see who could spend the most time in the pits.  Norris had to visit regularly to top up the air in his hydraulics.  Ocon got a 5 second penalty for being out of place on the starting grid plus some more time to change his front wing, then a 10 second penalty for not taking the first penalty correctly, then 5 seconds for speeding in the pit lane to take a penalty.

The best battle of the race was between old foes Alonso and Hamilton.

Just when he was comfortably in third, LeClerc's engine failed.  This brought out the Virtual Safety Car, which would allow Alonso to cool his tyres to better hold off Hamilton.  At least an engine failure cannot be blamed on recently arrived team principal Vasseur.

With 12 laps to go, Alonso overtook Sainz for the podium place I had predicted.  With 4 laps to go Alonso radioed back to the team that this is a "lovely car", a dangerous move which could have seen him jinx his podium place.  As everyone crossed the finish line, there was no attention on the winner Verstappen but all eyes and coverage on Fernando.

Looking elsewhere on the grid, ff Hulkenberg is this much better than Magnussen, how bad must Mick Schumacher have been...and Mazepin!  (Although Hulk did sustain some damage to his front wing).  Zhou scored the fastest lap although I still say the rules are unfair as he won't be awarded the extra point because he did not finish in the top 10.