As a motor race pure and simple, the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix was a disappointment.
But it did reveal a somewhat different picture of what we can expect in Formula 1 this season from the one indicated by winter testing, as itv.com/f1 columnist James Allen explains in his first race verdict of 2010.
The first grand prix of the new season has come in for some criticism for being dull and processional.
Had polesitter Sebastian Vettel not suffered a spark plug failure, which dropped him from first to fourth, the race would have provided little to talk about.
There was some overtaking lower down the field and a bold pass by Fernando Alonso on Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa at the start, but Alonso made the point afterwards that all the races this season will follow the rather dull pattern we saw today.
F1 has put itself in this position; it had the chance when framing the new no-refuelling rules to take steps to make the racing exciting. But in the end the teams didn’t act.
Prior to the weekend no one was really sure what the pecking order was, with testing proving fairly hard to read.
It was clear that Ferrari has a good car, but Red Bull surprised many people with their pace this weekend, particularly on the super-soft tyre.
McLaren look like they have some work to do, as do Mercedes. The margins were bigger between the front-running teams than many people had expected from testing.
The Ferrari was the most competitive car over all conditions: low-fuel qualifying, early in the race with a heavy car on super-soft tyres and later in the race with a lighter car on hard tyres.
The Red Bull certainly had the edge in qualifying; when the track heated up, Vettel’s car was one of the few which did not overheat its tyres in the middle sector.
He was very quick on the super-soft tyre in the opening stint, but it was noticeable that once they all switched to the medium tyre the RB6 was less competitive than the Ferrari F10.
It was initially assumed that the problem which hampered Vettel’s car towards the end of the race was a broken exhaust, but the team later said a faulty spark plug was to blame.
The resultant loss of power was enough to cost Vettel places to Alonso, Massa and Lewis Hamilton.
Ironically he had just set his fastest lap of the race on lap 32 when the problem struck, dropping his pace dramatically.
This handed the lead to Alonso, who was in that position because he had passed Massa at the start.
It was a very smart move by the Spaniard, who went around the outside of his team-mate into turn one and then passed him in the ensuing left-hand kink of turn two.
It was an important move and one which handed the initiative back to Alonso after he was outpaced by Massa in qualifying.
In the post-race TV interview I asked him if this gave him the bragging rights in the Ferrari team and he said that it was not important, but this was just a political answer.
That pass was significant and Massa goes away knowing that.
Having said all of that, Massa did brilliantly this weekend and we must not forget that he is coming back from the terrible injury he sustained last July.
He also had a problem with his engine overheating today, which had to be controlled by running the engine rich, which in turn sent the fuel consumption up. The only way to control that was by going more slowly.
So even if he had held the place at the start, he would have been asked to let Alonso through later on because he would have been holding him up.
It was a good day for Lewis Hamilton, who got an unexpected podium due to Vettel’s problems.
The pace of he McLaren was not as good as expected, even if Hamilton said that it was what he expected. The McLaren and the Mercedes GP teams seem pretty closely matched on pace.
Hamilton raced Nico Rosberg today and after losing out to him at the start, he jumped him at the pit stop by coming in earlier. It was slightly surprising to see Mercedes outmanoeuvred like that.
What was interesting was that whereas the McLaren was quick on the medium tyre after the pit stop, the Mercedes was not; Hamilton’s fastest lap was a 1m59.560s while Schumacher did a best of 2m00.204s.
After the stops Hamilton was three seconds ahead of Rosberg and in the next 30 laps he extended that gap to 20 seconds.
Adrian Sutil will be kicking himself tonight.
He had a great opportunity to pick up fifth place, starting on the medium tyre in 10th place.
But he got caught up in the melee behind Mark Webber’s car, which looked like it had blown the engine, such was the plume of smoke coming out of it into turn two.
Sutil could only recover as far as P12. But Force India have ninth place thanks to Tonio Liuzzi, who also made the medium tyre work for him from 12th on the grid.
Last season they were very frustrated with endless ninth places, but this year with the new points system they have reason to feel good; they have two points and more importantly it looks like they have a very quick car.
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