Hamilton claims conseuctive wins after wheel-to-wheel
dices with team-mate; Perez takes Force India's second-ever podium; Gutierrez's
Sauber flipped over after big clash with Pastor Maldonado.
Lewis Hamilton emerged on top in a riveting race-long
duel with team-mate Nico Rosberg in an epic Bahrain GP to claim back-to-back
wins as the gloves came off for the first time between the two championship
favourites and F1 2014 definitively came alive.
After a build-up to the race dominated by debates and
arguments in the paddock by some of F1's most influential figures over the
sport's controversial new era of quieter engines and fuel efficiency, the
thrilling action served up over the course over the 57 laps of racing around a
floodlit Sakhir provided the first contrary evidence to suggest that perhaps
not too much is wrong with the sport's 'rules reset' after all.
In a race characterised by wheel-to-wheel duels between
team-mates, Hamilton seized the lead from polesitter Rosberg into the first
corner and then just about held on for his first consecutive race wins since
2010 despite several periods of concerted pressure from the sister Mercedes.
The first came on laps 17-18 when Rosberg twice briefly
retook the lead only for Hamilton to swipe back in front, and then again late
on after a Safety Car had wiped out the nine-second advantage Hamilton had
built up running the faster soft tyres while his team-mate was on the slower
mediums.
With Rosberg now having the advantage of the quicker soft
rubber, he briefly got ahead of Hamilton at the first corner, only to outbrake
himself, as the Briton went on to give an expert masterclass of defensive
driving.
Rosberg, with two second places since his season-opening
victory in Melbourne, still holds the championship lead heading to China, but
Hamilton has closed the deficit to 11 points. And perhaps more importantly,
with two victories over his team-mate inside eight days, the Briton has perhaps
gained the early psychological edge in what is currently an exclusive battle
for honours at the front of the field.
The two Mercedes drivers, as expected, were in a race of
their own, but the action behind was equally as thrilling as several other
pairs of team-mates probably caused their respective pitwalls no end of angst
too.
That was certainly the case at Force India as Sergio
Perez and Nico Hulkenberg, recovering from his Q2 exit on Saturday, waged their
own duel for much of the race for third place. The scrap was eventually won by
Perez as the Mexican, after a near anonymous start to 2014, secured just Force
India's second podium finish - and their first since 2009.
Hulkenberg eventually finished two places behind his
team-mate in fifth after he was overtaken by Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo late
on, the Australian making up for a succession of disappointments at the start
of the season to finally officially register his first points for the World
Champions with fourth.
Not only did the Australian recover from his ten-place
grid penalty, Ricciardo overtook quadruple World Champion team-mate Sebastian
Vettel for the position late on, the German complaining over the radio of a
lack of straight-line speed from his RB10.
The Williams pair had, for much of the race, run higher
up the order - largely thanks to a storming start from Felipe Massa which
vaulted the Brazilian behind the Mercedes pair into Turn One.
But with the FW36 experiencing higher tyre wear to the
cars ahead which necessitated that both drivers stopped three times, Massa and
Valtteri Bottas eventually came home in seventh and eighth respectively.
As in Malaysia, the pair finished less than a second
apart, but after the team orders row of seven days ago, Williams appeared to
wisely let their drivers race to the chequered flag this time.
Completing the near-'Noah's Ark' nature of the top ten,
Ferrari pair Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen came home ninth and tenth
respectively. On the day the team's President Luca di Montezemolo arrived in
the paddock to air his grievances over the sport's new era, the result provided
more depressing evidence for the Scuderia that its a formula they are a long
way from mastering.
The same, to an even greater extent, goes for the
point-less Lotus and Sauber teams and their respective drivers Pastor Maldonado
and Esteban Gutierrez were involved in the explosive race's most dramatic
moment, which triggered the late Safety Car.
Exiting the pits but reaching the Turn One braking point
at the same time as Gutierrez, Maldonado slammed into the side of the Sauber
with the car flipping over before coming to rest top-side up in the run-off
area.
While the crash did serious damage to the C33 chassis,
Gutierrez clambered out of the car while Maldonado hit hard by the stewards
with the triple whammy of in-race stop/go penalty, three penalty points on his
licence and five-place grid drop for the next race in China.
Culled from Skysports
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