After missing out on pole by 0.077s to his teammate yesterday, Nico Rosberg charged back to take his fist win at Bahrain International Circuit for his fifth race victory in a row. A better start off the line and Lewis Hamilton getting tangled in a first corner incident with Valtteri Bottas allowed the German to pull away and control the race from the front of the pack. He finished 10.2 seconds clear of second-placed Kimi Räikkönen with Hamilton recovering well to take the last step of the podium.
It was a messy start into the first corner as Bottas, who was trying to defend from behind, took the inside line colliding into Hamilton’s side pod and putting damage on both cars. Hamilton suffered front wing damage but it wasn’t too extensive and he managed to get back onto the podium, letting Rosberg only go seventeen points ahead of him in the Championship fight.
Romain Grosjean again put in a magnificent performance for the “new team on the grid” Haas and managed to one better his Melbourne finish with fifth place. He completed three stints on the supersoft tyre before finishing the race on the soft compound one place behind Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo who also had a great race finishing P4.
Max Verstappen had an incredible surge through the field during his last stint of the super soft compound to end up sixth. Daniil Kvyat mirrored the strategy of Verstappen in the last stint, giving him enough pace to pass a struggling Massa on the penultimate lap for seventh and his first points of the season.
Two stints on the medium compound in the middle of the race saw both Williams drop down the grid with no means of fighting off the field on the softer compounds. After Bottas received a drive-through penalty for his incident with Hamilton going into the first corner he managed to recover to ninth, behind his teammate Felipe Massa in eighth.
Stoffel Vandoorne had a dream debut as he stepped in this weekend for injured Fernando Alonso picking up McLaren’s first points of the 2016 season. He rounded off the top ten ahead of Renault’s Kevin Magnussen.
The Saubers struggled again at this race although Magnussen and Ericsson had a thrilling battle towards the end of the race for P11, with the Dane coming out in front. Ericsson’s teammate Nasr ended down in fourteenth, complaining that the car was “terrible to drive”.
Wehrlein had a great second race with Manor finishing P13 whilst the two Force India’s had a torrid day after qualifying so well finishing 15th and 16th, Hulkenberg just beating his teammate to the line. Haryanto finished off the running cars in 17th.
Along with Vettel, Jolyon Palmer was lost before the start of the race due to a hydraulics issue on his Renault. Jenson Button made a stellar start before a power unit failure brought his day to a premature end. An early race puncture for Carlos Sainz Jr, inflicted by close running with Sergio Perez, put extensive damage on his car. As much as the team tried to keep him out on track the damage was too much and eventually the car had to be retired. Esteban Gutierrez had a much worst day compared to his teammate when a brakes failure saw him depart the race before the chequered flag.
Racing returns in a fortnight’s time as the grid heads to Shanghai for the third round in China.
