Bahrain Grand Prix Review

Whatever you think of Hermann Tilke's sterile autodromes, he does understand one thing about modern Formula One; that is, long straights followed by heavy braking zones into a tight, 90-degree-plus corner is conducive to overtaking (even if he doesn't always follow his own formula). So too is ensuring that the cars are not running around on rails. A bit of a crosswind at Sakhir affecting the aerodynamics, and blowing sand onto the track and thus reducing grip, and voila! All we need now is a wet race ...

It is rare for a season to start with three different victors in the first three GPs; rarer still for all three of them to be genuine championship contenders. Arguably the last time that happened was in 1999, when the first three races were won by Eddie Irvine, Mika Hakkinen, and Michael Schumacher. However at the time, no-one expected that Irvine would be a title challenger, and Schumacher would not. Before that, you could cite 1990, when Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, and Riccardo Patrese took out the first three GPs.

But everyone knew that Patrese in the 1990 Williams was hardly going to be regular competition for McLaren and Ferrari. Before that there was 1986, when the opening winners were Nelson Piquet, Senna and Prost, but again, Senna's Lotus was not really a match for the Williams and McLarens. In the 1980s there are several more examples where one of the three winners was a potential race-winner, but not really a title prospect. Like a BMW compared to a McLaren and Ferrari this year, if you will.

And so, arguably, the last time three different drivers won the first three GPs, all of whom were clearly standout title contenders at the time, was 1981, when Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann won the first two events in the conquering Williams FW07B, followed by Piquet winning in the Brabham (and eventually the drivers title as well). In 2007, with Ferrari and McLaren clearly ahead of the rest, no doubt Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Massa have all already established their title credentials.

All of a sudden, the question marks are starting to linger on the other side of the Ferrari garage. Raikkonen had no engine excuses this time. Now he's blaming his qualifying efforts of late and the heavier fuel load that left him on the second row. That may be fair enough, but what about his ill-advised lunge on Hamilton at turns 1 and 2 on the first lap that left him vulnerable to being passed by Alonso at turn 4? Why was he asleep at the restart after the safety car, for which Ferrari bosses have already publicly chastised him?

Nick Heidfeld showed that Alonso could be overtaken on the track. Raikkonen didn't even look like making a move during the first stint, when Massa and Hamilton ran away with things, content instead to rely upon strategy. Such is the lot of a modern F1 driver. Does The Iceman, the supposed fastest man in F1, lack racecraft? Australia showed what he could do when he's driving at full potential and full confidence, but here his driving was missing those last few percentage points, and that is a concern.

Hamilton became the first man to score three podiums in his first three GPs. Before the season started, everyone said that if only Lewis can match Alonso's pace or just be slightly shy of it, that would be impressive enough. In his third race, Hamilton has trounced the double-champion in practice, qualifying and race. The superlatives are flying in thick and fast, with Sir Frank Williams calling him ÒsuperhumanÓ and Martin Whitmarsh already declaring that Lewis can be one of the greatest drivers of all time.

Hang on a minute. No doubt Hamilton has starred, but there is also no doubt that the McLaren and Ferrari are way ahead of the rest, and seemingly near-bulletproof as well. He has made some stunning starts but no other passing manoeuvres. His first three races have gone by swimmingly without a glitch. In other words, his Grand Prix career has been born with the proverbial silver spoon. Jacques Villeneuve all but won his first Grand Prix, and look what became of his career.

Indeed, his team-mate proved that even the best have their disappointing days. Fernando was rather below par in Bahrain and seemingly powerless to do anything to combat or match Hamilton's pace. Again, fuel loads explained the qualifying differential but the sight of the Spaniard holding up Raikkonen and Heidfeld in the first stint was quite staggering. And he seemed utterly defenceless against Kimi at the first stop, and against Nick on track.

For all his talent and ability, Fernando does have his off races during the season, and when he's off he really can look quite average. Even last year, there were his efforts at Indianapolis and Hockenheim when team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella well had his measure. Incidentally, in both those races, and here at Sakhir, he ended up finishing 5th. The good news is that no-one is showing signs of running away with this year's title. A four-horse race looks guaranteed, and that's a mouth-watering prospect.

In fact, even though he may not be a contender for the drivers crown, Heidfeld may well have a major say in who does end up with the prize. He may have finished 4th again as he did in Australia and Malaysia, but the German's race in Bahrain was his best this season by far. He stuck with Alonso and Raikkonen all race, and made that awesome outside move on Fernando, literally locking wheels with the McLaren, and putting the mocker on all those (including us) who've questioned his ability to pull off a banzai pass.

Nick could be the real spoiler in the leading pack this year. He wants his contract with BMW renewed for 2008 early, and he's going about convincing Mario Theissen the right way. Especially when Robert Kubica disappoints by finishing 31 seconds behind his team-mate. Robert may have finally brought the car home for points, but if Theissen is desperate to get Sebastian Vettel into a race seat for next season, then currently it's a no-brainer decision to keep Heidfeld and jettison the Pole elsewhere.

This was a drive from DC the likes of which we haven't seen in a very long time. By mid-race he was up to 7th, having made clinical pass after clinical pass, finally taking Fisi's Renault in a reprise of his move on Alexander Wurz in Melbourne, lunging from much further back than expected, but unlike his pathetic attempt in Australia, he made this one stick. Webber too made it past Fisi, despite his mid-race speed hurt by the open fuel flap (again), which in turn disturbed the airflow and ripped off one of his mid-wings.

So there you had it, the Red Bulls were the best-performed Renault-engined cars on the track, and Webber might be glad that Flavio Briatore put him in the dark blue cars rather than in the works Renaults, but yet again reliability was awful and neither finished when both should have scored. Get that right and the points could start flowing soon. But it does make sober reading for the works folk down Renault way. The engine one assumes is fine, but the chassis and the Bridgestones just aren't co-operating right now.

Both Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen struggled massively for grip, and that was the story of their weekend. Both of them were passed by Jarno Trulli, of all people, in the short-chute between turns 9 and 10, where an overtaking move shouldn't be on. There's not much to be said, apart from the obvious, that the team will need to work extremely hard on altering the dynamics of the chassis to get the best out of the tyres. Fisi scored another point here but has written off all title hopes, and, sadly, rightly so.

On pace, Toyota maintained its place at the bottom end of the top half of the field. Trulli has been showing a consistency this season that deserves some credit, finishing a good 7th, but Ralf Schumacher's handling woes continued, leading to another quite dismal performance in both qualifying and the race. At one point, whilst being lapped, he almost brought his car to a complete halt! Ralf's just not quite Ôwith it' at the moment, and we don't need to drag out our usual default comments about his inconsistency.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Nico Rosberg
Suffered the consequences of over-driving

The German seemed to be too desperate to repeat his heroics from Sakhir the previous year, when he scorched to a fastest lap of the race on debut in a terrific burn from the stern. But this year, for every great passing move he made or tried, he went off the circuit or indulged in some wheel-banging just as many times. It made for great viewing, but it really was a case of one step forward, two steps back. And for that we award him our 'Reject of the Race' award this time around.

It says something about Super Aguri's new position in the field that it feels as though the team is yet to string together a consistently impressive weekend, although just about everything they've achieved this year has been far in excess of what they accomplished in 2006. Anthony Davidson led the Super Aguri tilt this weekend. Once again a star in Saturday free practice, he could have made the last ten in qualifying, and in his long first stint he climbed as high as 6th, unchartered territory in a race situation for the team.

However, such was the crowded midfield battle that, when the Englishman made his first stop, he found himself at the back of the queue having gained little from his strategy. Once again the potential of the SA07 left the works Hondas for dead, even though Takuma Sato wasn't quite on the pace, but the double engine failure must come as a concern. Aerodynamics is already a big enough bugbear for all four Honda-family cars for engines to start detonating.

Honda's season continues to be a tale of compounding and confusing woe. Jenson Button got tangled with his mate DC on the first lap, spun and stalled, and that was probably a relief. Rubens Barrichello described his car as having a parachute. The Honda's front-end imbalance problem could only have been exacerbated by the wind at Sakhir. The team plan to have an all-new car, although it will be called the RA107B, by mid-season, but momentum is everything in F1 and right now Honda have none.

It would have been fascinating to see where Liuzzi could have ended up, remembering that the pace of the Red Bulls using virtually the same chassis. In future, if one of the compounds is particularly unattractive, if there is a high chance of some early-lap mayhem, and if a faster car is trapped down the grid and wants to run a virtual one-stop strategy, this could be a very attractive gamble to circumvent the tyre rules. Bravo to Toro Rosso for being the first to pioneer it.

That is, even though Liuzzi's gamble paid off (sort of) thanks to the demise of his team-mate Scott Speed, although that was the American's fault after he got punted by Adrian Sutil. The extensive damage to the front of the Spyker said it all - Sutil is fast, having easily out-qualified Christijan Albers, but he is also impetuous, which is bad news when the Dutchman is exactly the same. Albers has really not shown well at all this season, for a driver in his third season of F1, and in a Dutch team.

Neither Spyker driver is proving to be particularly co-operative whilst being lapped either, which we hope will not become a decisive factor in what is now set up to be knife-edge four-way battle for the championship. The next round in Spain shouldn't throw up any surprises, as the teams all test so much in Barcelona, but with the optimum performance levels of the Ferraris and McLarens so close, things are nicely set up for yet another compelling duel.