Alonso Wins on his Ferrari Debut - Bahrain Grand Prix
- Published on Mar 14th, 2010 by Adam Milleneuve
The weekend started with Sebastian Vettel having a commanding qualifying performance, making a mockery of his team mate and grabbing pole position. The race was a different story though, with Vettel having an exhaust problem leaving Alonso to grab first place and have a commanding drive to the finish, alarmingly quicker than team mate Felipe Massa. Hamilton never looked particularly happy this weekend, admitting he was surprised to qualify 4th. But Lewis made the most of a slightly iffy weekend and finished on the third step of the podium for McLaren.
Results in full:
And here's how it all happened - The lights go out
As the lights with the sound of 24 grand prix cars screaming into action all the drivers managed to get away cleanly with pole position driver Sebastian Vettel taking the lead with ease. The two Ferrari drivers had a mini-squabble, which Fernando won, taking up second place against Felipe Massa. Rosberg up to 4th, closely followed by Hamilton into the first couple of corners.
Mark Webber's Red Bull car caused a bit of chaos with his engine chucking out clouds of blue smoke after the first corner which temporarily blinded the Renault of Robert Kubica who then banged wheels with Force India's Adrian Sutil. They both spun, but impressively everyone else just avoided the pair of them.
Elsewhere in the opening laps, the highly tipped Nico Hulkenberg had a pretty major spin, losing control with the super heavy car. Out of the new teams, one of each of the Virgin and Hispania cars had failures.
The pit stops phase
As expected, by lap 15 many of the cars made their pit stops, in terms of the front runners, McLaren came out on top with Hamilton jumping Rosberg for 4th place and Button jumped Webber for 7th. All because their cars were in the right place at the right time in the pit lane. The Russian rookie Petrov didn't get to complete lap 15 with is car having suspension damage, possibly from a knock at the start.
With the fuel loads going down, the lap times fell and by lap 30, we were down to only 17 cars with both Virgins, both Hispania and both Saubers out of the race along with Renault's Petrov. Vettel had his lead under control, but Fernando Alonso started to put the pressure on Vettel with the gap hanging around a single second of time. With the new rules and no refuelling it is much more tricky to predict the finishing order because of differing tyre wear and of course with the points difference being so great now the drivers may be more determined to start their 2010 campaign with as many points as possible. With 20 laps to go, the top 10 looked had Vettel, Alonso and Massa running as the top 3 followed by: Hamilton, Rosberg, Schumacher, Button, Webber, Liuzzi and Barrichello.
Disaster for Vettel
By lap 35, Vettel's dream start to the 2010 season took a hit with a massive loss of power effecting his straight-line speed and gifting the lead to Fernando Alonso, then 2nd to Felipe Massa. This was a godsend for Ferrari who were concerned over engine temperatures - getting Vettel out of the way allowed them to get some clean air and turn down their engines a little with the next best driver, Vettel hanging onto 3rd and dropping back with Hamilton a full 10 seconds back on the Ferraris in 4th.
With 10 laps remaining, Hamilton easily drove past Vettel's Red Bull for 3rd. Felipe fans should be concerned because with only 4 laps completed since passing Vettel, Fernando Alonso was nearly 6seconds faster than Massa. The other battle with the front runners was Schumacher looking fairly average in 6th (still, not bad at all for the first race out of retirement like) being chased by Button (also having a fairly average day) in the McLaren, who had Mark Webber only another second behind him. Liuzzi and Barrichello completed the top 10 respectively.
Race for the chequered flag
For the final 5 laps it looked pretty set for the finish, with the only question being, who can catch the suffering Red Bull of Vettel, as it turned out, the young German nursed his car home in 4th, while Fernando Alonso lead home a Ferrari 1-2 and ended his wining drought. The prancing horse is back to it's winning ways and Felipe Massa will be asking himself questions because it seemed today that he had no answer for the might double world champion Spaniard.
More analysis, driver focus will be on F1Badger.com later today.
Image credit: Alex Comerford
So what did you make of the racing? Enjoy the first race and how do you think 2010 will pan out? They say that the driver who wins the first race, often goes on to win the title? It's ridiculously early days, but can you see Alonso as the 2010 champion?
As ever, use the comments below to voice and share your thoughts...
Comments and Discussion
Great to have F1 back but the same old problems return. Without Vettel's problems Alonso would not have won even though Fernando was in the quicker car. Ferrari told him to back off because the Ferrari wasn't coping running behind another car just two laps before Vettel's problems started.
If that's the case... overtaking is going to be an issue again.
Similar problems all over the track as well. Hamilton behind Rosberg, Button behind Schumacher etc etc.
Good to see F1 back but it was a boring race.
Can't help but think we have just seen the start of quite a boring period of F1 with these new regs. Cars could not get close to one another. We need the hard tires to drop away with 10 laps left to make it interesting. Kudos to the Lotus team, great outcome for them.
Indeed - Kudos to Lotus, impressive for such a short time in development. I'd hold back on any comments about it being a boring period though - it's only the first race and Bahrain isn't the most exciting of tracks - roll on Australia!
Pretty boring race.
Vettel should have won, at least he proved that the car has the speed and the tyres are doing ok over a race distance. He drove really well, and did a great job holding on to that 4th place.
Lotus was very impressive too, Kovalainen's pace was good and they made it to the end!
Let's hope Australia will be better.
Pretty boring race.
Vettel should have won, at least he proved that the car has the speed and the tyres are doing ok over a race distance. He drove really well, and did a great job holding on to that 4th place.
Lotus was very impressive too, Kovalainen’s pace was good and they made it to the end!
Let’s hope Australia will be better.
Yeah i thought Vettel would drop back further than he did. Initially it looked like he may struggle to stay in the top 10 with the 3 seconds that he lost over 2 consecutive laps, he picked up his pace and drove around the problem only lose 2 seconds a lap thereafter and those behind him didn't really seem that bothered about catching him, otherwise they'd have pushed harder.
Having said that, the drivers are complaining about the diffuser's already this year, there have been huge gains in the area, and we're back to the impossiblilty of being able to follow other cars closely. And nothing can be done about it because the little flaps and wings that teams were putting on their cars through 2008 to combat the effects, have all been banned.
Bahrain was shaping up to be a fitting return for F1, the battle between the front 3 guys was shaping up to be titanic. Sadly we never got that, and nobody further down was prepared to take a risk and push harder for fear of damaging their tyres, so the moment that Vettel's exhaust went, the race was sterilised.
Great job by Lotus though, even though Trulli's car failed half a lap from home, i think we'll allow them that as a finish. I thought Heikki drove a good race, just the minor blip of accidently letting Hulkenberg overtake him while the leaders were coming past, but it didn't really matter that much since Nico then disappeared quickly off up the road.
Regardless of the intentions behind Bahrain's track modifications, it's now rubbish. I know the Crown Prince said he wanted a more technical section which is fine, but the wrong section of track was chosen to do it and the sector served only to spread the cars out more.
Australia would've a far more fitting opener i suspect.
I wouldn't go so far as saying Bahrain was boring, it just failed to deliver on the potential.
No sign of these 3 second pitstops! Fastest was for Vettel at 4 seconds with most others getting somewhere between 4 and 5. *Smug, smug, gloat, smug*