F1-Blog

A day for the ‘number 2′ drivers

The number two drivers in each of the front running teams had a good day at Bahrain.

The race winner Filipe Massa managed to stop the eventual second place driver Lewis Hamilton from passing into the first corner.

Massa lead then all the way through the race, with the Ferrari proving that the car had just a little more pace than the McLaren cars.

Surprisingly however the Ferrari’s where both slower in the last stint of the race on the harder compound tyres, with Lewis Hamilton taking nearly 10 seconds out of the lead that Filipe had built up.

Raikkonen had a disappointing race, he seemed not to have the front running pace all weekend, and is obviously struggling to set the Ferrari up to his liking.

Nick Heidfeld had a good race coming in in fourth behind Kimi, with the world champion and joint championship leader Fernando Alonso bringing the second McLaren in for fifth.

Drive of the day however needs to go to the ‘aging’ Brit, David Coulthard. He managed to climb from the back of the grid, up and past his team mate Mark Webber with some amazing overtaking maneuvers. However it all went bang, quite literally with a right hand side drive shaft failure on his RB03 Red Bull. It’s good though, as it seems the team may finally be getting a grip on how to eek the performance out of the Adrian Newey car, they do need to work on reliability however, as Mark Webber’s car also failed (could be the Renault Engine on that car), he drove around for a fair few laps with the fuel filler cap open, ruining his aero package.

The Super Aguri Honda car of Anthony Davidson showed a clean pair of heels to the ‘works’ Honda team again. Button had an accident on the first lap and was the first to retire, and bring out the safety car.

So then three drivers now share the current points championship. Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, and Lewis Hamilton will go into the next race on equal pegging’s of 22 points.

Can Lewis make it a fourth successive podium, after all no-one else has done three before, so he is officially the most successful rookie driver so far. Lets see how he get’s on when back in the European part of the season.

Results

1 Felipe Massa Ferrari Winner
2 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes +2.3 secs
3 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari +10.8 secs
4 Nick Heidfeld BMW +13.8 secs
5 Fernando Alonso McLaren-Mercedes +14.4 secs
6 Robert Kubica BMW +45.5 secs
7 Jarno Trulli Toyota +81.3 secs
8 Giancarlo Fisichella Renault +81.7 secs
9 Heikki Kovalainen Renault +89.4 secs
10 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota +89.9 secs
11 Alexander Wurz Williams-Toyota +1 Lap
12 Ralf Schumacher Toyota +1 Lap
13 Rubens Barrichello Honda +1 Lap
14 Christijan Albers Spyker-Ferrari +2 Lap
15 Adrian Sutil Spyker-Ferrari +4 Lap
16 Anthony Davidson Super Aguri-Honda +6 Lap
Ret Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault +16 Lap
Ret David Coulthard Red Bull-Renault +21 Laps
Ret Takuma Sato Super Aguri-Honda +23 Laps
Ret Vitantonio Liuzzi STR-Ferrari +31 Laps
Ret Jenson Button Honda + secs
Ret Scott Speed STR-Ferrari + secs