Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix - 17th to 19th April 2015

KIMI FINALLY HAD A GOOD RESULT. 2nd place! Good job Iceman!

Now we've got that cleared up. Onto everything else.

The main thing I took from the Bahrain Grand Prix was that the Ferrari's are nothing but annoying for Mercedes. Sure, they come out with fighting talk like, "We want the competition" and, "It's nice to have the challenge" Yeah yeah, I've heard it all before.

Really, all Mercedes want is to turn up, lockout the front row, claim the 1-2 and come home again. Then repeat. All through testing they worked on reliability, almost overconfident that they inherently had the pace over the field. It was almost smug, when they announced they'd basically used one engine throughout entire testing. The team were on a high, they won the constructors and drivers championships last year. I think everyone was under the impression we were in for another year of Mercedes blitzing the field.

We went to Australia and that was all but confirmed. Mercedes looked clear of the field. It was going well. 

Then we got to Malaysia where Ferrari shocked the entirety of the F1 paddock and viewers by snatching victory from the silver arrows. ON PACE. 

Ferrari didn't really challenge Mercedes in China, which was easily latter's territory. They had the grunt on the straight without sacrificing anything through the corners. Maybe Ferrari's challenge was just a one-off.

Now here we are, at Bahrain and all through practice and qualifying it's looked much closer than previously has. And what a race we had. 12 months ago we had a personal 1 and 1 duel between the Mercedes for the win. And it was brilliant, proper wheel-to-wheel, going at it hammer and tongue. Whilst still lapping considerably faster than the competition.

This year though, we had a bit more strategy, but that's not to say we were lacking in battles. Rosberg was on it this race. He was so aggressive yet fair against the Ferrari's. But once again he just didn't quite have the pace to challenge his championship leading team-mate.

But this is the thing, Ferrari are just a headache for Mercedes. Take the first stint. In most cases, the leading driver gets choice on when to pit and racing etiquette suggest the car in front stops first, thus, not allowing the undercut, but because Vettel was closer to Rosberg, when the Ferrari pitted, Mercedes had to pit Rosberg first in order to cover him. However that meant they both had the undercut on race-leader Hamilton. So Hamilton had 5 second lead over second place, after the first round of stops, he came out the pit-lane to see Vettel and Rosberg duelling it out in a flurry of dust and sparks.

The contradictary strategy worked well for Raikkonen and if the race was one lap longer, he could've won it taking advantage of Mercedes' braking issues.

If it's going to be like this for the rest of the season, then I look forward to it.

Cheerio,

Stevie.