Bahrain GP Preview

The Bahrain GP is going ahead despite civil unrest in the country. It might not be a popular move, but the show goes on. This will be the ninth time Formula One has raced at the Sakhir circuit.

Value of pole position
Last year’s winner Sebastian Vettel was the first pole-sitter to win the Bahrain GP since 2007. In the last five editions of the race the winner has been able to make up on average 1.2 positions.
Pole Position: Lewis Hamilton 7/2 (Sportingbet)

Driver to watch
Traditionally a good track for Ferrari, with the Italian team winning four of the eight Bahrain GPs. Felipe Massa excels at the track with two wins and a second place. The Brazilian finishes 1.2 positions better at Sakhir than his overall season’s average.
Top six finish: Felipe Massa 4/7 (Paddy Power)

Retirement Rate – Normal
Bahrain usually has no more or less retirements than the seasonal average.
Over 18.5 classified finishers 8/11 (Skybet)

Last Race Analysis: Chinese GP
With so many different race strategies we have tried to analyse lap times to get a better picture of the raw pace of each car. We have compared lap times for cars on the same tyre compound, with similar fuels loads and broken down the race into ‘stints’.

Stint 1

Most of the leaders started on the soft tyre, apart from Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button, who compromised their grid positions by qualifying on the medium compound. We didn’t learn much about the leaders with the soft tyre lasting little more than five laps.

Stint 2

Less than 0.16s separated the top-4 drivers on the medium tyre. Felipe Massa almost matched the pace of his teammate but struggled later in the race behind traffic.

Stint 3

This is where the race was won for Fernando Alonso. He was over 4/10ths quicker than all his rivals and was able to control the race by running a long third stint. The other outstanding performer was Daniel Ricciardo. He was quicker than Raikkonen and Hamilton and his lap-times were extremely consistent, with less than half a second between his quickest and slowest laps.

Stint 4

Kimi Raikkonen pitted three laps before Lewis Hamilton and used the undercut to get close enough to the British driver to make the pass. Otherwise the Lotus and Mercedes were closely matched in pace.

Summary
- Hamilton & Raikkonen evenly matched.
- Massa had raw pace but couldn’t consistently deliver during the race.
- Daniel Ricciardo (Torro Rosso) impressive; always within 0.8s of fastest average stints.