After Race 4: Bahrain

With the early batch of flyaway races done and dusted, it's no great surprise that Lewis Hamilton already has a championship lead of more than 25 points. One of the more intriguing storylines will be to see how Ferrari can upgrade their car through the season, and whether Sebastian Vettel (40) will be able to a) match and/or b) surpass Ayrton Senna's tally of 41 race victories before Lewis Hamilton (36). The obvious footnote to this is that the Seb and Lewis will have had longer calendars to work with. Vettel will also look to avoid curious practice incidents - as was his collision with Sergio Pérez in Bahrain. 

Elsewhere, the new GP2 season roared into life this weekend and, to no great surprise, Stoffel Vandoorne, dominated proceedings with a win and a second-place finish in the reverse grid race. It again made me ponder as to why McLaren didn't buy-out Marussia and use it as a Honda B-team – to help with both engine and driver development (Kevin Magnussen and Vandoorne, and Nyck de Vries one day too) However, talking about McLaren, it's clear – as eluded to in the F1 Power Rankings McLaren season preview – they'll be damn fast once they iron out their software and installation issues. Engine penalties are irrelevant to them this year, it's all about focusing on development. Besides, they'll inevitably have company from the Renault quartet with the sanctions! 

This week's F1 Power Rankings proved to be one of the most difficult ever: so many drivers had weekends that seemingly defied their starts to the season, which has resulted in numerous ties throughout. On the flip side, that clearly means there's a decent amount of good battling going on in the midfield.

Lewis Hamilton knocking it outta the park - just like Alfred Morris of Washington
Source: Mercedes AMG Petronas

1. Lewis Hamilton (no change)

Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you’re good – and sometimes you’re both. Hamilton again dominated the business end of the weekend. Even brake failure came too late in the day to stop his charge to his ninth win in eleven races.

2. Sebastian Vettel (no change)

Despite an extremely ragged Sunday afternoon drive, which saw him passed by Nico Rosberg not once, not twice, but thrice – and make a few errors, which also saw him break his front wing and ultimately end up behind Valtteri Bottas; he did secure a spot on the front row and remains in touch with the Mercs in the championships standings – just in case Ferrari did pull a rabbit out of the hat in the second half of the season.

Arrivabene-cam is a must for every race
Source: Scuderia Ferrari

3. Kimi Räikkönen (up two spots)

So close! The Kimster is well and truly back and scored his first Scuderia podium since Monza 2009. Did Ferrari potentially cost him a shot at the race win with a somewhat lazy strategy in the first half of the race? – maybe.

4. Romain Grosjean (up four spots)

After a false start to the new season, Grosjean scored solid points for the second race running and is extracting the most from the Lotus. The wasted 2014 season is well behind him.

Black and gold trees, black and gold car
Source: Lotus F1 Team

=5. Carlos Sainz (no change) & Max Verstappen (down two spots)

The Toro Rosso youngsters cling onto their top five spot in the F1 Power Rankings despite a difficult Bahrain Grand Prix. Sainz qualified a superb ninth but neither he nor Verstappen were a factor in the race as STR suffered their first double DNF since Austria. It’ll be interesting to see how the team progress as we head into the European season with the likes of Force India and McLaren expected to significantly improve.

The former King of Spain was in attendance
Source: Scuderia Toro Rosso

7. Felipe Massa (down three spots)

A three spot drop for Massa is perhaps a tad drop, especially given he managed to score a point despite having to rally from a pit-lane start and early damage inflicted by Pastor Maldonado. Rob Smedley has commented that Felipe is enjoying his best season since 2008 – and he’ll look to bounce back in Barcelona.

=8. Daniel Ricciardo & Valtteri Bottas (both up one spot)

This duo find themselves again locked together in the F1 Power Rankings after two fine weekends. Ricciardo had a rather lonely race en route to P6 before his engine spectacularly gave way as he crossed the finishing line whilst Bottas enjoyed his best race in 2015 so far as he finally felt free of his back pain troubles. Comfortably beat Massa in quali and wasn’t far off Rosberg and Räikkönen, before a sterling defensive performance against Vettel on Sunday.

Bottas superbly held off Vettel
Source: Williams F1 Team

=10. Fernando Alonso (up one spot) & Felipe Nasr (down three spots)

It might be that we’ve had less than 20 cars line up on the grid more often than not but it’s proving extremely difficult to separate drivers after these earlier races in this year’s F1 Power Rankings. Alonso had an excellent weekend, making it into Q2 and coming up just short of scoring McLaren’s first points. Alonso could easily have been ranked as high as fourth but it’s simultaneously difficult to evaluate his weekend when JB’s was a non-starter. Nasr slips a few spots after a rather anonymous weekend – but he again kept his nose clean.

12. Sergio Pérez (up three spots)

Checo had a quietly excellent race as he picked up Force India’s first points since the season opener. Having narrowly missed out on Q3, Pérez defied his team’s launch-spec car to finish a fine eighth – still five places off his superb podium finish from one year ago.

Source: Sahara Force India

=13. Nico Hülkenberg (no change) & Marcus Ericsson (up one spot)

As mentioned above, and before in this column, Force India are in damage limitation mode until their new challenger comes along. On Saturday, it was The Hulk who put in a superb performance to qualify P8 – but it was a position he struggled to maintain as the race wore on. Ericsson, meanwhile, was again outqualified and out-raced by his rookie team-mate, but those don’t reveal the full story. A disastrous second pit-stop saw him lose almost half a minute and dropped him from a possible points-scoring position – a shame, given he had made an excellent start.

=15. Nico Rosberg (up one spot), Will Stevens (down three spots), Daniil Kvyat (up three spots)

On a week filled with ties in the F1 Power Rankings, this trio is a microcosm of how difficult it was this to place the drivers after Bahrain. Rosberg was again poor on Saturday and lost out to Räikkönen at the start. He proved to be very racy thereafter before his late brake troubles. Regardless, he was still blown away by Hamilton. Stevens again beat his team-mate in the Manor battle. His three place fall comes after it emerged that Merhi is losing out partly due to his weight disadvantage. Kvyat made a silly error in FP3 as he beeched his car in the gravel before going out in Q1. It looked like he was heading for another underwhelming weekend before the final third to his race where he methodically worked his way up to score a couple of well-earned points.

Rosberg showed his aggressive side against the Ferraris
Source: Mercedes AMG Petronas

18. Jenson Button (up one spot)

Without doubt, this must have been the worst weekend of Button’s F1 career. Through the whole weekend, FP3 was the only session where JB registered any meaningful running. And yet he still moved up a spot, can you guess why?

An ultra-rare sighting of JB on track
Source: McLaren

19. Roberto Merhi (up one spot)

Much like Button, it’s a surprise that Merhi was able to move up a spot. He’ll be off to Aragon this weekend to compete in FR3.5, rather bizarre in the modern era of F1. With both series featuring on Monaco GP weekend, he’ll have a busy time come the end of May.

20. Pastor Maldonado (down three spots)

Oh Pastor… This is a rare column that stands up for the Venezuelan – repeatedly pointing out his scintillating Barcelona 2012 victory. But he doesn’t make it easy for himself. Another Q1 exit was followed by Pastor inexplicably lining up in the wrong grid slot before exploring the Bahraini desert on the opening lap and then hitting Massa. If that wasn’t enough, he then managed to switch his engine off as he made his final pit-stop. This should’ve been a routine top-ten weekend, as it was for Grosjean.

Sparks!
Source: Lotus F1 Team

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