Chinese Grand Prix Race Recap and Review

Just as it's been for much of this first part of the season, the starting positions of the grid have set the stage for what could be an unusual and exciting race in this Chinese Grand Prix.

As expected by many, the pole position was held by a Mercedes driver, this time being Nico Rosberg, as Lewis Hamilton's championship chances have taken a further blow as the current world champion's engine blew up during qualifying, thus causing the Briton to start that race from the very last place, without mentioning a gearbox and engine change Lewis' 'W07' had to undergo.

A further surprise came as Daniel Ricciardo locked the second slot on the grid behind Rosberg, pushing Räikkönen's and Vettel's Ferraris to P3 and P4, respectively.

Another surprise behind the front runners was Force India's starting positions with Sergio Perez in seventh and Nico Hulkenberg in tenth.

After lights out, after the first corner, it was Daniel Ricciardo who came out on the lead of the race after slipping in the inside of Rosberg in turn one.

But it wouldn't be the only move done in turn one as the first corner would prove to represent a busy affair for most of the driver, with numerous overtakes and slight contact between cars going on there, with the most outstanding one being a move by Daniil Kvyät which was questioned by many at the time, with the Russian taking advantage of a small mistake from Vettel to sneak into the German's inside line to pass both Vettel and his teammate Kimi Räikkönen who was also on the outside part of the asphalt. However, as Kvyät occupied the line Vettel was using until that point, when he tried to get back in it, he found that there was already Daniil in it, thus leaving him with no place to go and left him to an imminent contact with Kimi Räikkönen, who was pushed outside of the track, lost his whole front wing and lost a lot of places because of this.

Though its cleanness had been questioned at the moment, as the replays were shown, people grew more confident that Kvyät's move was in no way punishable, as he only took advantage of the gap left by Sebastian Vettel. Fair enough, no penalties were awarded. As a matter of fact, the incident wasn't even investigated by race direction.

Another driver damaged in the first lap was Lewis Hamilton, as the Mercedes driver had a slight contact with the car ahead of him which caused his front wing to break and be disassembled from the rest of the front nose, which caused him to drag the broken piece under his car for at least the next three  corners and therefore, causing him to follow Räikkönen into the pits. 

Hamilton's race could have not had a better start to it, his championship chances took yet another blow, it seemed like this race would be blow after blow for Hamilton.

Ricciardo's lead at the front would be short lived, as Rosberg easily passed him in the back straight on lap 3, however just as the German made his way past him, his rear left tyre was completely destroyed, leaving a big chunk of it on the track, the cause being not clear but most likely due to the debris in the track left by the falling parts of the cars. The Australian would be another of the early stoppers.

This left Nico Rosberg into a more comfortable position to lead the race and stretch his advantage as he liked, and he did so as he pushed to get a 3 second lead on Red Bull's Daniil Kvyät just before the safety car was deployed because of the debris left in the track needing to be cleared away.

Pit stop frenzy started and it shifted the order as a lot of the drivers on the top ten decided to make their pit stops, leaving Massa and Alonso behind Rosberg.

This also benefitted Räikkönen, Ricciardo and Hamilton as they had already pitted in earlier laps. However, the latter one decided to make his second stop only in the seventh lap, in a possible attempt to switch his strategy to do some damage limitation.

We witnessed a particularly surprising move from Vettel in the pit lane, as he raced past two cars before the white line, in order to gain positions in the pit lane and help his recovery process.

Safety car left the track on lap 8, and then, the action began, in every section of the track there was some battle for positions going on, as the field had been comprised and there was a couple of drivers trying to recover the lost ground.

Kvyät's pit stop caused him to fall back to fifth place but he quickly made the positions up once the green flag was on, getting into P3 by lap 10.

While Vettel, Hamilton and Räikkönen struggled making their way through the field, Rosberg's relentless pace continued at the front, pulling away from Williams' Felipe Massa easily. Not even his first pit stop put him out of the lead as a 26 seconds lead over Bottas at lap 20 put him on the safe.

Alonso's time at the front was quickly cut as Vettel, Perez and Bottas getting past him in only three laps, before his pit stop.

Only a few laps later, on lap 18, Vettel was pushed back to P12 because of his pit stop, after a successful climb back which saw him reach fourth as the highest position.

He was joined in the pits by Kvyät and Rosberg on laps 19, and 20.

Despite their stops, both the German and the Russian were quick to recover and reach second and third by lap 23, in part due to the rest of the field pitting, including Hamilton, who made his third pit stop only at lap 22, aiming for an unconventional strategy.

Lewis would pit again for a final time only 9 laps later, switching to mediums, possibly to try and make it to the end.

Meanwhile, Räikkönen, who followed a similar (though not as odd as Lewis') strategy to Hamilton's due to both having pitted on lap 1, battled it out with Carlos Sainz Jr. for fifth place.

On lap 35, Ferrari and Vettel had a clear shot at jumping Kvyät on the pit lane as they both went into boxes at the same time, but the Russian managed to stay on top just barely but with a difficult task in keeping second place, as he came out just ahead of both Räikkönen and Vettel.

Two laps later, Rosberg made his final stop as he fitted a fresh set of mediums.

As his long run on mediums was not as successful in terms of endurance as expected, Räikkönen was forced to pit for a final time in lap 38, rejoining in eleventh with the quest of recovering all the ground lost with a set of softs that could give him the grip he so needed to achieve the recovery.

It took the Finn only 6 laps to reach eight place, where he found himself behind countryman Bottas, who posed small resistance to a charging Räikkönen who went on to catch Lewis Hamilton for sixth place, and Felipe Massa for fifth, all of this in less than five laps. Really makes you think about what he could've been capable of with such a late rally had the first lap shunt not happened.

Things at the front stayed static, Rosberg was in a race of his own, 36 seconds ahead of Vettel, while Sebastian was 8 clear of Kvyät and Kvyät himself 11 seconds clear of teammate Ricciardo, who was safe from Räikkönen in the final laps.

At the end, Nico Rosberg sealed a win that he had almost guaranteed on Saturday evening by putting on a staggering pace on Sunday.

With this win, he stays red hot and keeps the momentum he's built in the closing stages of 2015 and the first part of 2016.

Three wins out of three in 2016, six wins in a row, an achievement few men in the sport have conquered. Really puts you to think if this man can actually be stopped.

As a bonus fact, every driver who's won the first three races in the season has gone on to win the championship.

There is little to say that hasn't been said about Rosberg's streak, except that this race not only confirms that he is on the best form of his career but is a signal that it's going to take something unusual or a lucky strike for either Vettel, Hamilton or Räikkönen to stop him.

Though it is not to be forgotten that next race will be in Russia, where the only race winner in two races there has been none other than Lewis Hamilton.

I shall insist, 2016 is Hamilton's true test to see what he's made of, with Rosberg at his finest, if Vettel picks up the speed and joins in the battle, things will only get worse for the three time world champion.

I shall also remark that Rosberg's quest won't be an easy one. Sure, he's won the first three races but let's not forget there's 18 other in the calendar, it's a long season. Consistency could prove to be the key to the championship this year.

A brilliant recovery process by Sebastian Vettel in second after a very shaky start for him. He moved around almost every position in the top 10 before reaching the top three, in which he stayed for most of the race, and even managing to finish ahead of Kvyät, who initially got past him on the first corner.

Respect to him for apologizing to the team after the contact with his teammate which jinxed another shot at a good harvest of points in this race.

The only remark to make to him would be after the race, as he would not let go of the first corner incident with the Russian, repeatedly arguing to him about it before the podium ceremony. To which Kvyät only responded by saying that they were both on the podium so there was no problem and by laughing it off, as he should, given that it was no more than a racing incident.

The man in third not only deserves credit for his off-track collected, cool attitude, but with his driving inside it.

He was one of the few drivers to stay inside or close to podium positions during the race and his pace was quite consistent throughout it, using it to climb from sixth in the starting position to no less than third in the first corner, eventually finishing in that same position.

Another two main candidates for drivers of the day are Kimi Räikkönen and Daniel Ricciardo, because despite their early incidents and early pit stops they managed to find a way to punch through the pack to finish inside the top 5, specially Kimi, who made an excellent late charge to reach fifth.

For Lewis Hamilton the race was a nightmarish end to a nightmare of a weekend, as a damaged Saturday and first lap for him, finished with him showing a bad pace, being unable to get past a few drivers, including Massa and Räikkönen, thus having to stay with a decent, considering his starting position, P7.

Passing on to another topic, a dreamy start to the weekend for Force India, who desperately need a good weekend to kickstart their season, with Perez and Hulkenberg in 7th and 10th in the grid, quickly turned into a disappointment, as the strategy once again failed to help both of the drivers in successfully fighting for or defending their positions.

Personally, I am starting to suspect that the bad strategies in the first three races may not be the only trouble hampering them, and having the most powerful engine in their car, perhaps the new chassis is to blame for the lack of speed.

But then again, this is just a theory of mine and I could be completely wrong, and interestingly enough, Hulkenberg managed to set the fastest lap of the race and Perez and Hulkenberg were fourth and sixth on the speed trap, respectively.

Further back down the field, the biggest news to have come out from this race is that the dream that were the first two races for Haas F1 Team (particularly for Grosjean), have now vanished as both of their drivers did not have the best of days on track, with Grosjean being glued to the back markers for most of the race and with Esteban Gutierrez fighting around for 13-16ish positions throughout the race.

But it may just be one unlucky day for the team and they could return stronger in Russia.

Whilst McLaren have shown again that they have improved from last year but not enough  to normally score points (exception made for Stoffel Vandoorne in Bahrain), Renault seems to be having more difficult than expected in getting to grips with the competition, this time with Magnussen being unable to improve from his starting position of P17 and Palmer finishing a disappointing 22nd. I do believe that they have a chance at scoring points this season, but we may just need to wait for it some time, as they continue to develop their car during the season.

Important mention of today's race, as it's been the first of many in recent years where the whole field in its entirety saw the checkered flag. Outstanding!

That's it for today's race recap/review! Hope you enjoyed it! 

Don't forget to follow me in Google+, share this post, +1, recommend to other fellow fans, and comment, it would really help me to keep on growing! 

Thanks for the visits, reads and support in this new season which represents my comeback into blog writing!

See you all again in two weeks time, as F1 arrives to the Black Sea coast in Sochi for the Russian Grand Prix!

(let's hope for a good race there, finally)

My Review and Recap on the 2016 Bahrain Grand Prix.

After yet another terrible show provided by the new qualifying format which was almost identical to the one seen two weeks ago in Melbourne, we get to Sunday evening in Bahrain with the table set up the same way as it was last race, with the right ingredients for a great race and a surprising result. Both Silver Arrows fill up the front row whilst the red cars of the 'Scuderia' occupy both slots in the second row. It is clear that this race will most likely pan out as another Mercedes-Ferrari 'dog fight', it'll be up to the race start to determine which way this bout will go.

The excitement went downhill as Ferrari experienced their second straight engine failure, when smoke started to come out of Sebastian Vettel's car, retirement. A shame.

Sebastian's absence from the race would turn out to become more and more noticeable as the race went on and at the end of it, I bet many of us thing what would this race have been like had Sebastian not retired.

The momentum and excitement would be reborn shortly after. Even though Kimi Räikkönen was unable to make a fantastic start to get past the Mercedes as in Australia (as a matter of fact, he stalled in the start and lost a couple of spots), the first corner was the one that shook things up.

Nico Rosberg got first to the corner and therefore, avoided the mess that the rest of the field would become. First, Lewis Hamilton was almost caused to spin off due to contact with Valtteri Bottas, who was aggressively trying to overtake Hamilton on the inside. Valtteri would later receive a drive through penalty because of the incident.

But that wouldn't be the only contact in the first corner, as several other drivers touched, including Sergio Perez, who was forced to do an early pit stop to change his damaged front wing.

At the end, the first turn of the race left Hamilton down in ninth place, whilst Rosberg took the chance to create a pretty big gap.

Räikkönen, despite having lost three spots, wouldn't have too much damage to his race, as he didn't suffer any contact and he recovered the positions in only a few laps, to position himself in second place, the position that he occupied for most of the race.

Nico Rosberg showed that he was a man in a mission out there, displaying his hunger for this title and how hard is he willing to fight for it, as he was quickly enlarging his lead up to 9 seconds.

This could've set the stage for a monotonous flag to flag win for Rosberg but no, at least on the first part of the race, the action the race lacked at the front was present in the midfield and in the back, with intense battles between the Saubers of Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson (which caused them to leave the track a few times), group fights between both Force Indias and Carlos Sainz, between Pascal Wehrlein and Rio Haryanto with numerous others, between Hamilton and the cars in front of him as he tried to pull back the disadvantage, between Kimi, Ricciardo, Massa and Bottas, who were eventually passed by the Finn, to make it short, during the first part of the race there were few pairs/groups of drivers who didn't race against each other fighting for position, sometimes not even involving point scoring positions.

Overtakes were abundant, and so were retirements at that point, with Jolyon Palmer, Jenson Button and Esteban Gutierrez being the 

first retirees.

A shame for Jenson and Esteban, as they had showed good pace on the weekend and were en route to point scoring finishes, with Esteban showing what this American Ferrari can do.

Also important to point out how much the field shuffled in the first laps due to some teams deciding to make early pit stops.

As expected, Hamilton reached the third spot before the first series of stops without much difficulties, and from that point, the race took a much predictable road, a road which could've taken an exciting turn towards the closing stages of the competition but in the end it  didn't happen, mostly because of Rosberg's pace and determination.

The action in the mid and back field continued during the race, with brilliant performances from Ricciardo, Massa, Wehrlein, Bottas recovering from his drive through, Grosjean, Kvyät, Verstappen and debutant Stoffel Vandoorne, 2015 GP2 champ who raced in replacement for injured Fernando Alonso. Some good battles involved in this part of the pack.

Despite the action behind the leaders, all the sights were placed on the top three, as all of them were on similar strategies, but the possibility of either Hamilton trying to reach Räikkönen or Räikkönen trying to reach Rosberg promised a possible exciting ending to the race.

Regarding the strategies, almost all of the field employed a 3-stop strategy.

The three leaders were on almost identical strategies, except for Hamilton, who used mediums in his second stint, as opposed to the softs used by both Rosberg and Räikkönen.

But Hamilton's long stint in those mediums was cut short, as he pitted only a few laps after Kimi, perhaps to change their strategy to try to cut the gap to him.

Initially, it seemed like the plans were working for both of them, first Hamilton started to cut Räikkönen's lead at a decent rhythm, bringing the gap down to no more than 9 seconds but that was the closest the Briton could get to the Finn, as the latter began pushing to try and catch Rosberg, and he did manage to cut the lead down to less than 6 seconds and the team encouraged him to do more, but the Ferrari man's attack stopped around lap 53, when Rosberg, who had made his final stop on lap 42, started to improved his pace, thus leaving Räikkönen behind a causing his hopes of catching him to stay only as hopes.

That's the point when this race really missed Sebastian Vettel, we all know that he could've been fast enough to to fight it out with the other three guys and he could've been been good enough to challenge Nico for the win and over all, to make this a better race.

In the end, the biggest winner of the night is none other than Nico Rosberg, takes his streak of wins to 5, has two wins out two possibles this year and has a 17 point lead over his teammate and rival Hamilton. The man is on fire, never seen him in a better form than the one he's currently on.

You wanna know something? Hamilton's biggest winning streak? Five races. Same as Rosberg. I put my money on Hamilton trying whatever he can to avoid Rosberg beating his record two weeks later in China, in case he fails to stop him, it'll not only have an impact on the leaderboards but probably psychologically as well, Hamilton has already described his 2016 season as a 'nightmare', in case the hypothetical situation I laid out above happens, his season will obviously get worse, thus disappointing the current world champion.

I've been saying this to people even before the preseason started: 2016 is Hamilton's real test to show what he's made of. With Nico in his best form and with an improving Ferrari-Vettel formula, it won't be an easy one.

Still, the men in second and third places have a reason to smile, Räikkönen turned the disappointment from his race in Melbourne into a brilliant race where he managed to earn the best possible points for his team, damage limitation covering Vettel's retirement. Meanwhile, Lewis made a pretty good recovery from a bad start where Nico beat him and from the contact suffered in turn one, recovering all the spots he needed to. Important to remember that his race could've been a lot worse, and he did enough to avoid that.

Excellent drives from both Red Bull drivers, Ricciardo (P4) having been able to maintain his starting position and earning an extra position on the finish, because of the retirements, and Kvyät (P7) having recovered from yet another bad day on Saturday for him, recovering from eighteenth all the way to seventh place.

The Bahrain Grand Prix was another good race for the newcomers, even though Renault's rookie Jolyon Palmer didn't have the best of luck, others such as Kevin Magnussen, Manor's Pascal Wehrlein, Haas' Romain Grosjean and McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne had fantastic days out there. 

Th Danish Renault driver may have not racked up his first point finish of the year but finished in a decent eleventh place after him and his teammate Palmer started from the pit lane. A great effort, unfortunately without a reward.

Meanwhile, the current DTM champion showed his race craft and his ability to fight for position, as he constantly did throughout the race, claiming a decent P13 as a result. Much better things will come for this youngster, little doubt of that.

Romain and Haas continued to walk on this road of a dreamy start for this new American team, as they improved their result in Melbourne (P6) by finishing fifth and this time, without making use of a strategic gamble as in Australia. The Frenchman has earned himself another deserved candidacy to the title of 'driver of the day' with his performance. Now, this only leaves me wondering what this team will be capable of once the woes on Gutierrez's car are solved and both cars are running correctly and being driven by the quality pairing that they have.

Last but not least, it was not Fernando Alonso nor Jenson Button who took him the first points for McLaren, but the third and reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne, as the Belgian finished in tenth place, showing that he's more than ready to take the step into the big show bi being able to fight equally with the other drivers. Personally not surprised by this, I could see it coming after the staggering way in which he dominated GP2 last season, hope to see more of him this year or the next one.

So guys, this is it for my Bahrain GP Review! As always, thank you for the great support, the visits, the reads and all the stuff you do, you're awesome!

I'll be seeing you in two weeks time, when F1 reaches its third round at the Shanghai International Circuit, until then!