British driver Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) achieved his third victory of the season at the Bahrain Grand Prix, where Finn Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) shone with a great final comeback in which he snatched second place from German Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) .
On top of internal problems or threats from Ferrari’s good race pace, which was sensed over the weekend, Hamilton did his job as flawlessly as usual.
The Englishman managed to escape from the start to the first stop, went ahead of Vettel after the workshops thanks to a maneuver in which he had support from his teammate Rosberg, who held the position, and gritted his teeth after the second tire change , when he saw how Raikkonen was on top of them.
With this, Hamilton leaves Bahrain even more leader of the World Cup, with 93 points, 27 more than his teammate Rosberg, who has 66, and with one more advantage over Vettel, third in the World Cup.
From the start, Hamilton made his way, who managed to maintain his position with respect to Vettel (Ferrari), with whom he shared the first row of the grid. Meanwhile, his teammate Rosberg lost his position to the Finn Raikkonen, although on the fourth lap he managed to overtake the Nordic.
Rosberg continued at the start of the race with his progression at the expense of another Ferrari, Vettel’s, which he left behind a few laps later. The Mercedes were again first and second.
Behind, the Brazilian Massa, injured because the car had stopped in the warm-up lap and had a penalty that made him leave the garages, could only get in front of the two Manor, although he was gaining positions, and even surpassed Spanish Fernando Alonso (McLaren-Honda), who remained in the fourteenth place of departure, without power to overtake more.
With the refueling came the dances in the head again. Ferrari tried first by stopping Vettel, seeing that Hamilton accumulated almost six seconds in the lead. The German’s Ferrari was located ahead of Rosberg, who stopped later, but managed to overtake him.
The Hamilton stop, around lap 15, was somewhat slower than expected, so when he left the workshops he was met by Rosberg and Vettel. The German Mercedes protected the position closest to the wall where Lewis came out.
Sparks flew, but the Englishman was able to come out ahead of the Ferrari, in a spectacular maneuver by the Mercedes, which thus kept the first two seats.
At the halfway point of the race, one of the key clashes had the Brazilian flag, between Felipe Massa’s Williams and Felipe Nasr’s Sauber, one of the most contested of the race in search of the point that awarded tenth place, and that finally it was for Massa.
Who could not fight for the points for the third time this season was the Spanish Carlos Sainz (Toro Rosso), who saw after a refueling on lap 30 how his career ended due to technical problems. About five laps later he would also have to leave his Dutch teammate Max Verstappen.
In the second round of stops, Vettel again tried to use the garage passage to overcome Rosberg with success, although again the Mercedes managed to prevail in the race. In addition, to add insult to injury, the four-time world champion had a problem with his front wing that forced him to stop again, being ruled out for the title fight before lap 40 (out of 57 total).
Ahead, Raikkonen extended his second stop until lap 41, leaving the leadership that he held temporarily to its rightful owner, a Lewis Hamilton who had more than 4 seconds over his partner and pursuer Rosberg.
When the Finn started on new soft tires, he was third at a distance of 23 seconds, in search of an unlikely comeback despite the fast tires, saved for the occasion.
Surprising everyone, ‘Iceman’ Raikkonen had the fastest pace on the track, running at one minute and 37 seconds per lap, almost half a second faster than the Mercedes, until he was three seconds behind Rosberg with five laps to go .
Nico Rosberg, who was in second place, looked at him with such concern that he even asked his engineers to stop reminding him on the radio of the difference he had with the Finn.
Rosberg’s nervousness finally precipitated Raikkonen’s overtaking. A straight Mercedes when going over the braking of the first corner left the overtaking on a tray to the Nordic, who thus achieved access to the second drawer of the podium.
As Raikkonen struggled to catch up with Hamilton, teammate Vettel struggled to regain fourth place against Bottas’s Williams. In the end, neither of them won the award, although the Finn’s career and his successful tire management caused more than a scare in Mercedes, where they assured at the conclusion of the Grand Prix that they had had brake problems.
For his part, Spaniard Fernando Alonso improved in the last moments of the race, managing well the last set of tires to leave behind Nasr’s Sauber and Swedish Marcus Ericsson, and German Nico Hülkenberg’s Force India, thus who achieved eleventh place, on the verge of scoring.
The Spanish Grand Prix, in Montmeló (Barcelona) in three weeks (from May 8 to 10), is the point at which McLaren predicts a new evolution for their car. It will also be a new act for the Mercedes-Ferrari duel, dominated in Bahrain by the reliability of leader Lewis Hamilton despite Raikkonen’s final sprint. EFE