Fernando Alonso drove a superbly judged race, to emulate Kimi Raikkonen and Nigel Mansell, and won his debut race with Ferrari, in the 2010 season opening Bahrain Grand Prix. Felippe Massa finished behind him, to give Ferrari their first 1-2 finish since the 2008 French Grand Prix. Massa, thus, silenced his critics who doubted how quick he could be after returning from the skull fracture he sustained during last years Hungarian Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton took the last podium position, and thus the new season sees the return of Ferrari and McLaren to the front end of the pecking order. However, it was not a weekend dominated by the two teams. Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel seemed to take it from where they had left off last year at Abu Dhabi, and had set fastest time on Saturday, and led for a major part of the race. However, Vettel had reliability issues, with a faulty spark plug and his car lost power and he lost the lead to Alonso. Soon, Massa and then Hamilton passed him. However, Vettel did a great job to hang on to his 4th place as he fell under pressure from Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes towards the end of the race.

Karun Chandhok‘s debut race came to a very premature end, as he crashed on lap 2, when he hit a bump on the track and lost control. Team mate Bruno Senna also failed to complete the final 32 circulations, as his car stopped on track. To be honest, the HRT cars weren’t expected to complete race distance condidering the minimal amount of running they have had prior to raceday. Virgin Cosworth, the first F1 car to be fully developed by CFD method, also had both cars retiring in their debut race. The clear winner among the new teams, thus, were the Lotus Cosworth. Heikki Kovalainen was classified two laps down as Lotus elected to stop Jarno Trulli three laps from the end. Michael Schumacher’s return yielded a hard-fought sixth place, pressured all the way by 2009 champion Jenson Button in the other McLaren and Red Bull’s Mark Webber. Over the last 30 laps they were never more than metres apart. Force India picked up points in the first race of the season, with Vitantonio Liuzzi finishing 9th. Rubens Barichello was in 10th place for Williams, taking the final point.

BMW Sauber Ferrari, which was billed the ‘dark horse’ of the season, failed to get both it’s cars to the finish. One wonders whether the pace it showed in testing was done on light fuel loads, in a desperate attempt to win some sponsorships. Right at the start of the race, there were a few passes made. Fernando Alonso dived past his team mate going into turn one and Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes stole fourth position from the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton, who later took it back by virtue of a tidier pit stop. Almost everybody stopped only one for a change of tyres – soft to hard. Driving the heavily-fuelled and longer cars for this year has been compared to chauffeuring a limosine. However, none of the drivers seemed to have had an issue with tyre wear for the race.

Although we are excited about the opening of the new season, the Bahrain GP was a rather boring affair. With the new regulations in place, the race was a rather processional affair. The heavily fuelled cars were not able to pass each other, as the designers have ensured an increase in aerodynamic grip, and the rule makers have brought upon a reduction in mechanical grip(by reducing front tyre width). These factors made it difficult for cars to follow each other and eventually pass the one in front. We can only hope the balance will be restored next season, when double difusers would be banned. For the moment though, it’s over to Melbourne for round 2 of the FIA Formula1 World Championship 2010.

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Bahrain Grand Prix 2009

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