The ten Formula One teams were in the desert of Bahrain for the FORMULA 1 2018 GULF AIR BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX. The race showed that Ferrari is very much a contender for the World Drivers’ Championship, while highlighting Red Bull’s flaws.
The first free practice session started as planned on Friday. Daniel Ricciardo was the fastest of the session, while his teammate Max Verstappen suffered a mechanical failure just two laps into practice. Valtteri Bottas was 0.3 seconds off of the pace of the leading Red Bull, while his teammate Lewis Hamilton was 1.2 seconds from the leader in P5 behind Kimi Räikkönen and Sebastian Vettel. Haas started strong after a disappointing Australian Grand Prix, with both drivers setting times worthy of a top ten position in practice. Meanwhile, both Force India drivers proved to be the slowest, although it was largely because they spent the session testing new components.
Räikkönen was fastest of the second practice session with Vettel just 0.011 seconds behind. Despite leading the session, it was not smooth sailing for Räikkönen who suffered the same fate as the Haas cars in Australia with a loose wheel nut. Bottas set a lap time 0.5 seconds slower than the leading Ferrari for P3 and Hamilton was in P4. Meanwhile Verstappen led the Red Bull team in P5 despite having missed the entire first session and running wide many times during the session. Ricciardo narrowly avoided a collision with the slow Mercedes of Bottas, while Marcus Ericsson and Sergey Sirotkin were the drivers who spun in the session.
Räikkönen found himself at the top of the session again, setting the fastest lap time in the final practice session. Meanwhile, teammate Vettel had some loose bodywork at the start of the session and then retired to the garage early complaining of engine issues. Things didn’t go much better for Hamilton, who suffered a five-place grid penalty overnight so that his team could swap out the gearbox that had been damaged in Australia. With Hamilton down in P4, that cleared the way for the Red Bull drivers to take the top spots behind the leading Ferrari.
Verstappen started qualifying with a crash into the barriers, red flagging the session. The Red Bull driver lost the rear of the car in the corner. Both Ferrari drivers were at the top of the table in Q1, with Bottas in the top three. Vettel led Q2 with Hamilton and Räikkönen rounding off the top three. In Q3 Räikkönen had the lead in the closing minutes of the session, but Vettel set a blazing fast lap in his Ferrari to take the pole position. Ferrari locked out the front row of the grid with Bottas, Hamilton, Ricciarod and Pierre Gasly finishing in the top six, although Hamilton lost grid places due to his penalty.
The race on Sunday started out with double drama in the Red Bull garage. Verstappen and Hamilton collided at the start of the second lap, giving Verstappen a puncture. Meanwhile, Ricciardo suffered a power failure on the second lap and was knocked out of the race, bring out the virtual safety car which helped his teammate by limiting the time lost by his pitstop. It didn’t make much of a difference though because Verstappen retired from the race just a few laps later.
Meanwhile, having led the race from pole position quite comfortably, Vettel pitted after his teammate for what appeared to be the two-stop pit strategy. Vettel was held up by Hamilton, who had not yet pitted for fresh rubber, while Bottas pitted onto the medium tyres to go to the end of the race. Hamilton did the same once Vettel was able to get by. Later in the race disaster struck for Räikkönen during his second pitstop for the supersoft tyres. A signaling error told him to leave the pit box, but the rear tyre had not yet been changed due to an error. Räikkönen struck the mechanic working on the rear tyre, causing fractures to his leg. Räikkönen was unable to continue the race.
With the laps now counting down, Ferrari swapped Vettel into “plan B” to run the tyres to the end of the race. Struggling for grip and locking up the tyres, Vettel began to rapidly lose time to the approaching Mercedes of Bottas behind. Despite this, Bottas failed to get within a reasonable distance to justify a dive into the corner and Vettel was able to narrowly secure his victory in what was one of the closest Bahrain Grand Prix in history.
With his second victory of the season, Sebastian Vettel moves further up ahead at the top of World Drivers’ Championship, with 17 points now separating him and Lewis Hamilton. In the World Constructors’ Championship, the retirement of Kimi Räikkönen means that Mercedes has closed the gap to just 10 points to Ferrari at the lead of the championship.
With the 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix now out of the way, the teams will be heading the Shanghai next week for the first back-to-back race weekends in the 2018 season. The 2018 Chinese Grand Prix is set to take place on the weekend of April 15.
