F1 LOOKS TO SHIFT GEARS IN BAHRAIN
Formula One returns to the track this weekend carrying a trunkful of déjà vu.
Sure, the Grand Prix of Bahrain is only Race No. 2 of the season. But if Race No. 1 two weekends ago is any indication, the 2018 campaign is already looking all too familiar.
Like last year, Ferrari struck first in Melbourne, snatching an unlikely win courtesy of Sebastian Vettel and raising hopes that perhaps Mercedes might finally be forced to loosen its stranglehold on the planet’s premier racing series.
Well, we know how that turned out in 2017. In the end, Lewis Hamilton cruised to his fourth F1 drivers’ crown — with two races to spare — while Mercedes picked up its fourth straight constructors’ championship.
So much for a tight race to the finish.
Ominously, Ferrari’s performance this time around at the Albert Park circuit was far from convincing, despite Vettel’s victory.
Ferrari capo Sergio Marchione was not wrong to say his team “used a perfect strategy to take advantage of the way the race evolved.” But, to his credit, Vettel was more succinct and closer to the truth when he said: “We got a bit lucky.”
A lot lucky, in fact. A conveniently timed virtual safety-car period combined with a rare miscalculation by Mercedes allowed Vettel to leapfrog Hamilton as the Ferrari exited the pits, and to stay ahead on a track where passing is notoriously difficult.
Hamilton sounded remarkably cool on the team radio given the magnitude of the flub by team strategists.
“What just happened, guys?” Hamilton can be heard saying. “Why didn’t you tell me Vettel was in the pits?”
“Um, we’re just reviewing, Lewis.”
“Was it my mistake?” Hamilton asks, in reference to the speed he was instructed to follow to ensure he remained ahead.
Well, we now know it was not his mistake. As team boss Toto Wolff explained, “the gap that we needed was wrongly calculated.”
Oops.
If not for that, Hamilton surely would have romped to victory, just as he dominated qualifying the day before, securing the pole position 0.664 seconds ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in the other Ferrari.
There were other déjà vu moments that don’t bode well for the immediate future.
Valtteri Bottas entered the new season promising to put up a better fight against teammate Hamilton, which is not an unreasonable ask given that both drivers are at the wheel of a Mercedes and the Finn is no longer a newbie with the team.
In other words, if the Silver Arrows are to dominate again in 2018, the hope is that at least the two teammates can slug it out between themselves.
In Melbourne, though, the only impression Bottas made was the one he left on the wall where he crashed during qualifying. That put him out of contention in the race, where he finished eighth.
As for Montreal-born Lance Stroll, he spent much of Grand Prix weekend where we grew accustomed to seeing him last year — toward the back of the grid.
Sadly, any hopes that the Williams team might have taken a step forward during winter tests appear to be badly wide of the mark. If anything, the car seems even less competitive now.
At least Stroll made it to the finish line in the season opener; last year, it took four races before he got to see the checkered flag. Still, there was little cause for celebration. Of 15 finishers in Melbourne, he placed 14th.
Qualifying wasn’t much better — though, crucially, Stroll stayed comfortably ahead of rookie teammate Sergey Sirotkin. His top lap time put him 13th on the grid, while the Russian’s best was 0.692 seconds slower, slotting him 19th out of 20 drivers.
While it’s all too typical among drivers — especially young ones — to try to put a positive spin on a negative result, Stroll, 19, mercifully resisted the temptation.
“We’re not racing out there at the moment,” he was quoted as saying. “We’re surviving.”
More generally, Melbourne provided more of the same in terms of the number of overtakes on the track. Aside from the usual opening-lap jostling, you could count the number of passes on one hand. There were five the entire race.
Though Albert Park is particularly stingy, F1 officials were concerned enough to call a meeting with team technical directors in Bahrain this weekend to discuss ways of increasing overtaking opportunities.
Don’t hold your breath, though. Any tweaks affecting car aerodynamics — the main area of exploration — won’t come into effect before the 2019 season, we’re told.
Funny. For a sport that likes to go fast, it seems that change of any kind is agonizingly slow.