The German Nico Rosberg (Mercedes), who had already won in Australia, increased his advantage at the head of the Formula One World Championship by winning this Sunday in Bahrain the second Grand Prix of the year, which was not disputed by the Spanish Fernando Alonso (McLaren). ), bumpy in the Melbourne opening.
Rosberg, world runner-up for the last two years, achieved his sixteenth victory in F1, the fifth in a row – after winning the last three races of 2015 – by scoring the first of the three night races of the season ahead of Finn Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari ) and the English Lewis Hamilton, third in the Sakhir circuit. Nico came out more leader, adding a possible limit of 50 points, 17 more than his partner and English rival.
The Grand Prix started very badly for the German Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari), four-time world champion with Red Bull between 2010 and 2013, the only one who faced the dominant Mercedes last year and who started third, behind them, on the track from the desert of the Arabian archipelago.
But Vettel’s engine broke down on the formation lap and he couldn’t even start. That it was very eventful and bumpy. Rosberg, second in qualifying on Saturday, overtook Hamilton, who posted his fifty-first F1 pole position in Bahrain and minimized damage, finishing third in the race.
With Vettel – third in Australia, behind the two Mercedes – out of action, the Finn Valtteri Bottas (Williams), who started fifth, entered, after passing his compatriot Kimi – fourth on the grid – too thrown in the first corner. In which he irregularly displaced Hamilton, damaging the front wing of his car and weighing down the performance of the triple English world champion.
The Spaniard Carlos Sainz (Toro Rosso), who came out eleventh and ended up retiring, also started in the worst possible way a day for oblivion, since he had to stop, punctured, in the third lap, after the Mexican Sergio touched him. Pérez (Force India); which is why the Madrid native went from the supersoft tire to the medium and ‘Checo’ entered the garages to change the damaged front wing.
In the sixth lap, Rosberg led and Hamilton – who had fallen to ninth – was fifth, behind the Williams of Brazilian Felipe Massa and Bottas; and Kimi.
The incident at the first corner was investigated and Bottas ended up being sanctioned with a ‘drive through’.
With the difference that existed at the time, the Mercedes stopped for the first time on the same lap, the thirteenth, to change their supersoft tires. Rosberg – who won a three-stop race – placed soft; and Hamilton, who opted for means, was already third five laps later, behind Nico and Kimi; and ahead of Australian Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull), who repeated Australia’s fourth place in Sakhir and is third in the World Cup, with 24 points.
After the halfway point of the test -56 laps-, Rosberg led in front of Kimi, Hamilton, Massa and Ricciardo, with Pérez twelfth and Sainz eighteenth, shortly before retiring. Just after the stops of the Dutch Max Verstappen – Sainz’s partner -, sixth after a good performance; and the Frenchman Romain Grosjean, who again surprised with the new Haas, by improving one place compared to Melbourne and finishing fifth.
On lap 29, Hamilton switched to supersoft, as did Nico shortly after. And, at his last stop, at 40, covering Kimi, Nico went soft: just like Lewis did at 42.
From there to the finish line, the son of the legendary Keke Rosberg – world champion in 1982 – drove without major problems. He won with ten seconds over Kimi, once again hieratic on the podium, and with half a minute over Hamilton, whom he ‘smashed’ a third straight victory in Bahrain; and whose series of five uninterrupted wins equaled.
Only Vettel -who had nine victories-, the Italian Alberto Ascari and the German ‘record man’ Michael Schumacher -both with 7- achieved more wins in a row in F1 than the two ‘silver arrows’, also equaled in that historical list with the Scottish deceased Jim Clark, Englishman Nigel Mansell and Australian Jack Brabham.
Alonso this time saw the bulls from the sidelines, as he himself indicated after the Grand Prix. The Asturian double world champion remains, for the moment, the only triple winner in Sakhir, where he won the years of his two titles (2005 and 2006, with Renault) and in 2010, in his first race with Ferrari.
With a broken rib, he himself complied, not without some resentment, the indication of the doctors of the FIA (International Automobile Federation) that this time it was better not to fly in the desert.
His teammate Jenson Button, who on Friday had celebrated a third place in free practice, remembered ghosts from a not distant past and retired on lap 7, when one of the elements of the energy recovery system of his power unit broke. And his replacement, Stoffel Vandoorne, shone in Sakhir’s artificial light: the 24-year-old Belgian scored on his Formula One debut, finishing 10th and adding the first car of the year to the McLaren-Honda roster. You need good results like May water, after a nightmare 2015.
Spanish-speakers did not have their day: to the abandonment of Sainz we must add that of the Mexican Esteban Gutiérrez (Haas), a direct witness to Alonso’s accident in Australia, in which he was involved and from which, fortunately, he also emerged unharmed. His compatriot ‘Checo’ could not pass sixteen in the second race of the 21 of a World Cup that will close in November in Abu Dhabi and which will resume in two weekends in Shanghai, home of the Chinese Grand Prix. EFE
Rosberg reinforces his leadership in Bahrain, achieving his fifth victory in a row
