BIC, Al Sakhir: Saturday qualifying in the Bahrain dusk was painted red by Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen ,as they placed they Ferrari firmly on the first row of the grid of the FORMULA 1 2018 GULF AIR BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX.
Second row was all racing silver as Valtteri Bottas preceded Lewis Hamilton to start from 3rd. Daniel Ricciardo and his Red Bull were 5th, just ahead of a strong-charging Honda-powered Toro Rosso driven by the 2016 GP2 Series champion Pierre Gasly. Top ten places were completed by Kevin Magnussen, Nico Hulkenberg, Sebastien Ocon and Carlos Sainz.
The Bahrain race favours the first two rows of the grid, with the pole-sitter winning 33% of the Grand Prix since 2012, the top two winning 83%, and the combined top four on the starting grid winning 100% of the races in these past five years. What this points to is Hamilton statistically not having a chance of winning Sunday’s race due to his gearbox five-place penalty which he incurred on Friday. The world champion Briton qualified in 4th place, therefore he will start in 9th place, behind Ocon and Sainz driving respectively the Mercedes-powered Force India and the works Renault.
But races are not just won on track. The brains on the pit wall, and back at the factory, spend a lot of time number-crunching and they Mercedes in particular will have been looking at ways of getting Hamilton an edge so as to overcome his penalty. One factor they will be considering is their pit stop strategy. The in and out time in Sakhir the pit lane for tyre stops is amongst the season’s highest at 24s. This would indicate most teams, will opt for the fewest possible stops. Hamilton set his fastest lap on Pirelli’s soft compound, thus possibly pointing to a one-stop strategy.
McLaren had another poor showing, qualifying Fernando Alonso in 13th place and Stoffel Vandoorne in 14th, one and half-second adrift of pole, while Max Verstappen also had a day to forget, as he crashed out on Q1. His evident frustration was to be seen by all as the young Dutchman will have to start on Sunday from 15th, and a long way to get back into the points.
In the first FIA Formula 2 Championship Feature Race of the season, McLaren protégé Lando Norris took a dominant victory, mastering the hot and windy conditions to win with an 8.3s advantage over Carlin teammate Sergio Sette Camara. The Brazilian driver held onto second place after a thrilling battle in the final stages of the race with RUSSIAN TIME’s Artem Markelov, the latter producing a spectacular recovery drive to secure the final podium position after having stalled on the grid and prompted a second formation lap.
