Nope. No idea. Nor, apparently, did
Lotus, who made an attempt to get it banned prior to the race, but with no
effect. I suspect the stewards had no idea how it does it either, and it’s hard
to say something is breaking the rules when you’ve got no idea what it’s
actually doing.
The complicated Bahrain GP saga continued,
with the FIA and Bernie proclaiming it fine and safe to go to, seemingly
conveniently avoiding the whole issue of people get killed whilst protesting,
which is what folks are actually upset about. Can sport be entirely free from
politics? Should F1 avoid all countries with a dodgy human rights record? (That’s
dodgy human rights record, as opposed to dodgy Human League
record. With the first, people have to contend with scary stuff from people
with strange haircuts and a dangerous look in their eyes, and the latter... oh.
Hmm.)
Hamilton was off to a bad start
straight away, with a gearbox change meaning that, whatever he did in quail, he’d
be bumped down the grid 5 races on Sunday morning. A good effort saw him 2nd
fastest, but there were shocks a-plenty, with Massa out in Q2 yet again, but
more startlingly, the Sebulator found himself sitting out Q3 as well. Both
Saubers made it into the top 10, as did Grosjean, and once Lewis’ penalty had
been applied, Kobayashi was 3rd on the grid behind a speedy
Schumacher, and a stunning Rosberg. Britney’s first Q3 lap was startlingly fast
– so much so that he knew he wasn’t going to better it, and sat out the rest of
the session whilst his rivals made futile attempts to get close. Silver front
row lock-out... but not from McLaren.
At the start, Nico got away well,
whilst Button nipped into 3rd as Kobayashi got a clanger of a start
and fell to 6th.
By the 6th lap, Vettel’s
bad weekend was sinking it’s teeth in, as he toured round in 14th,
whilst Rosberg was already over 2.6 up on his team-mate. The following lap saw
Webber pit early for tyres, to try and get out of the traffic chaos that was to
dominate the race.
With 10 circuits gone, Nico has a 5
second advantage, with Jenson attempting to catch Schumacher.
After Raikkonen stopped, he and
Webber had a good scrap for position, but Schumi’s stop on lap 13 was his
demise, as a wheel nut failed to wind up where it was meant to be, but the car
was released anyway. A few turns later, Michael knew the game was up and parked
it.
As the leaders all stopped, Perez found
himself leading another race, before relinquishing the position to Massa.
By lap 34 Button was closing in on
Rosberg, whist Perez was doing a good job of stopping Hamilton from moving up
to 3rd.
Differing tyre-stop strategies
allowed Jenson to lead for while, but a disastrous stop on lap 40 saw him
stationary for 10 seconds. Sounds short, but in modern F1 it was like stopping
off to watch an episode of Star Trek, and finding out it’s a marathon of all the
movies... including that one with the whales. To make matters worse, his return
to the track in 6th saw him land in the middle of a gaggle of cars.
Massa was still clinging on in
second, by his clapped out tyres meant he was holding up a formidable queue,
which included Raikkonen, Vettel, Button, Grosjean, Webber, Senna, Maldonado,
Hamilton and Alonso. Nico didn’t mind though – by this stage he was 22 seconds
ahead of the pack.
With 10 laps left, Maldonado and
Grosjean resumed the hostilities which hadn’t really helped either of them out
previously, in an exciting, wheel-banging, bodywork-removing battle for 8th,
whilst Nico’s pit crew were trying to point out that he needed to take it easy
on his tyres. Please.
With 8 laps to go, Kimi embarked on
a free-fall through the field that suggested that his tyres hadn’t just fallen
off a cliff, but had in fact taken a jet to another country, and fallen off all
the cliffs there too. Over the next 3 laps, he was to fall from 2nd
to 12th, and lost a further 2 places by the end of the race.
Differing levels of remaining tyre
grip saw Hamilton passing Webber too, whilst Vettel, who had somehow pulled himself
up into 2nd, fell victim to Button, Hamilton and finally the
ultimate indignity of Webber fighting past as well.
Rosberg duly bagged his first win at
the 111th attempt, and with the McLaren duo sharing the podium,
Mercedes had the kind of day that makes Norbert temporarily forget pies. So dominant
was Nico’s performance, that Hamilton asked him, before they headed out to the
podium celebrations “Did you actually do any overtaking?”
“No.” Said Rosberg. Crikey.
3 races gone, 3 different winners,
and no idea of who might actually win this championship yet. 2012 F1 is shaping
up nicely.
(Classic rock time, with Free's "The Free Story". N-ice!)
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