Qualifying

What sorcery was this? Could it be that the paddock presence of Bernie Ecclestone, that ghost of F1 past, on the very weekend that Liberty Media revealed an outline of its plans for the sport’s future direction, had been enough to conjure his always-favourite red cars to P1 and P2?

No, alas, the truth was rather more prosaic. Mercedes’ W09 had encountered a tendency to overheat its tyres around the Sakhir circuit, while the Ferrari SF71-H, though still not as ‘dialled’ as either Vettel or Kimi Raikkonen might wish, was nonetheless proving to be a wieldy machine in which both drivers were beginning to feel more confident and in tune with its particular nature.

Melbourne, two weeks earlier, had been ‘one of those tracks’ particularly suited to Lewis Hamilton’s special kind of manipulative deftness on a bumpy, little-used surface in cool conditions. And even there, despite Hamilton’s 0.6s qualifying advantage, Ferrari had fumbled a win.

At the Bahrain International Circuit – altogether warmer, smoother, more predictable – Ferrari looked consistently strong through practice and into qualifying. Vettel’s 51st pole had been the result, he said, of a better front-end feel and the completion of a race distance in Australia that granted deeper insights into his chassis’ behaviour. “I was very happy with my first run in Q3,” he said, “but I tossed it away in the last corner. The car had been excellent all weekend until then and we really wanted it to peak in Q3 – which it did, it came alive. When a car is responding to what you want it to do it’s a pleasure. It’s not easy to make the tyres last but the car is quick and that usually helps.” There was substance to his words: Vettel’s 1m27.958s was the only tour in the 27s.

Raikkonen, who’d also been quick throughout the session and who held provisional pole until Seb’s final flyer, mumbled something about “traffic” and “disappointment” and ended up one-and-a-half tenths shy of Vettel, having been unable to improve on his first Q3 run.

Valtteri Bottas led the Mercedes charge, happily shunt-free after his Melbourne qualifying misdemeanour, with a 1m28.124s, almost a tenth clear of Hamilton’s 1m28.220s best.

Lewis would be further hindered by a five-place grid penalty incurred after a pre-race gearbox change. So a Ferrari front row with the Mercs third and ninth… who’d have predicted that postBarcelona testing?

“The laps were OK,” said Bottas, “but these guys with the red car were quick. They’ve made some progress and we had some overheating issues with the tyres. We have work to do, like we have been saying.”

No surprise to see Dan Ricciardo next up in fifth, though still another 0.178s from Hamilton and almost half a second from pole. MIA, though, after a Q1 shunt on the exit of Turn 2, was Max Verstappen. It appeared he’d overcooked the exit on an early flyer then half-spun his RB14 into the barriers, crunching the left-front suspension. He’d just split the Mercs for what was then fourth-best time, and later blamed his off on a “150bhp power surge” that lit up his rear tyres. His boss Christian Horner had earlier called the spin “a mistake”. Either way, he would start P15. At least Ricciardo would enjoy the presence of another Red Bull-liveried car alongside, thanks to a remarkable qualifying performance from Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly. This car, remember, has power by Honda – the same Honda which was dissed then dumped by Mclaren, forgoing not only Japanese power, but $100m-worth of Japanese investment.

Team-mate Brendon Hartley was P11 and could have made it into Q3, but for a last-corner error on his best Q2 run.

Bitter, that, for Mclaren, which were the slowest Q2 runners in P13 and P14. Only Williams and Sauber set slower times than Mclaren with both cars, prompting claims of “astonishment” from team Woking at its poor performance. Sporting director Eric Boullier was later said to be in an “emergency debrief”.

Kevin Magnussen underlined the competitiveness of the Haas chassis, with P7, although team-mate Romain Grosjean languished in P16 having massively outbraked himself during Q1. He’d been unable, he lamented, to warm up his tyres properly.

Both Renaults made the top 10 – Hulk P7, Sainz P10 – and there was relief for Force India as Esteban Ocon secured P9 (ahead of Sergio Perez, 12th).

Their former benchmark for Mercedes-powered indie-team performance, Williams, could only look on in anguish as their pay-driver pair Sergey Sirotkin and Lance Stroll wound up P18 and P20, divvying up the lowest slots with Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson (P17) and Charles Leclerc (P19). Gloss it how you will, there’s not much spin to be put on being slowest.

bounce now Vettel has conjured victory somewhat against the odds.

In Melbourne a Mercedes strategy error allowed Vettel to mug Hamilton; in Bahrain he was again able to profit from a Mercedes failure.

Ahead of the race Merc announced it would have to change the gearbox on Hamilton’s car – which incurred a mandatory five-place grid penalty. That left Lewis languishing in P9 at the start and with a race-long charge ahead. Vettel, meanwhile, was able to command and control from pole and – just –contain the challenge of a Bottas-driven Mercedes.

His final advantage was a scant 0.7s after 57 laps on a chancy supersoft-soft strategy. By Pirelli’s own modelling Vettel had pushed his second set at least eight laps beyond their useful life and had it been Hamilton chasing him down, not the less aggressive Bottas, surely Lewis would have made more of any late opportunity.

Bottas’ last victory shot came into Turn 1 on the final lap. With DRS deployed, he feinted for the inside into the right-hander, but half-heartedly. He was neither committed enough to make the pass, nor was his line sufficiently optimised for the perfect exit that might have allowed him to outdrag the Ferrari through Turns 2, 3 and into 4.

Vettel, breathless and on spent rubber, was off the hook and able to hang on for a famous, tense and stunningly mature win.

There are those who maintain that Vettel is not quite worthy of the F1 elite class that includes Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen. Indeed, say those critics, his four consecutive Red Bull titles were somehow fortuitous, resulting as they did from clear hardware advantages.

But wins like this, his 49th, in a still imperfect Ferrari, are the fullest riposte to the knockers. The 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix was Seb’s and Ferrari’s to lose – yet they didn’t.

By Vettel’s own admission his tyres were “done for the last 10 laps” and he joked his radio message three laps from home that “everything was under control” was “a lie.”

“I thought Valtteri was going to catch me with his pace,” he said and perhaps Bottas should have done, given his closing laps speed advantage of almost one second per lap. The extreme sensitivity of modern F1 cars to the aerodynamic wake of cars ahead conspired against Bottas’ cause, however, and left him in a valiant, though unconsummated, second place.

That result will nonetheless have been a confidence boost for Bottas, after his largely abortive Australian GP performance, not least because he out-paced Hamilton in qualifying. But the thought lingers that a Dan Ricciardo or an Esteban Ocon, both of whom are tipped as possible Bottas replacements for 2019, would have made more of any last-gasp lunge for victory.

“I could see Seb was struggling,” Valtteri said, “and to be so close, but by such a small margin, is very disappointing.”

Another lap might have been enough for Bottas; another five would have brought a stampeding Hamilton into the victory fight.

Regardless, the result left Vettel with a perfect ‘50’ at the top of the drivers’ championship, the first Ferrari driver since Michael Schumacher in 2004 to have won the opening two races of the season.

The trio were in a race of their own at the head of the field, after Raikkonen had been eliminated during his lap 19 pit-stop. Confusion over the switch of the left-rear soft to a supersoft left the wheel unchanged as Raikkonen was released and an unfortunate Ferrari mechanic with a broken leg. He’d still been trying to complete the tyre change as Kimi blasted from the pits.

Kimi – unusually – showed fist-banging frustration at the failure. He has a competitive machine at his disposal once again, in the twilight of his career, and some of the old panache and hunger has returned to him.

Red Bull was also out of the equation. Max Verstappen did for himself with a too-bold lap-two passing move on Hamilton that resulted in a clash of his left-rear with Lewis’s right-front. Result: puncture, a broken driveshaft and retirement. Team-mate Ricciardo, meanwhile, was also out on lap two having suffered a total electrical failure at Turn 8. “This sport can rip your heart out sometimes,” he said.

Both had shown strong long-run pace during practice and were likely podium battlers. “That was a brutally harsh race for us today,” summarised team boss Christian Horner. “We were definitely capable of challenging Ferrari and Mercedes.”

The toll was all to the advantage of the remarkable Pierre Gasly and the Toro Rosso team.

In only his seventh grand prix, the 2016 GP2 champ delivered brilliantly on the promise of his P5 starting position and suggested that the STR13 might well be the fastest car outside the big three. Aero upgrades for Bahrain had over-delivered on expectations, prompting Gasly to comment that he “didn’t understand how we’re so fast”.

Should STR show similar performance over the coming races, it’ll be quite a thorn in the side for the likes of Haas, Renault, Mclaren and Force India. And with Honda appearing to have finally cracked what it takes to be competitive in hybrid-era F1, expect covetous glances to start being cast down the pitlane by the big-brother team.

Further notable drives peppered the top 10. The ever-ballsy Kevin Magnussen eased Haas’ Melbourne woes with fifth, while Alonso – always combative for seventh – now lies an unlikely fourth in the drivers’ table. Then oft-lamented Marcus Ericsson was a deft, single-stopping ninth place for Sauber.

Quite a race then, all-in-all. It looks like being quite a championship. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 R R R