Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull showed that why they were the most feared team before the season started as finally the Red Bull managed to hold up and Vettel drove the perfect race to finish a one-two for the team with Mark Webber coming in 2nd. Though rains main qualifying unpredictable with the likes of Ferrari and McLaren missing Q1, the rains stayed away from the race and though Vettel was not bothered much by anyone, there were awesome fights across all the other positions on track.
Lewis Hamilton drove one of his best races and though was at times a bit too aggressive, it was great to see him finish 6th after starting from the 20th. Though towards the end he struggled to overtake Adrian Sutil, but it was a great site to see Force India keeping ahead of McLaren. Teammate Jenson Button managed to come in 8th but was luckily to keep out Alonso who had gear problems which eventually not only caused him problems in overtaking Button but with a lap to go the engine blew up causing him to lose 2 vital points as now he is tied 2nd in the championship with Vettel while teammate Massa leads the table for Ferrari with a 2 point lead.
As expected this season should be a close one, but Mercedes GP who was title contenders before the season started finally managed to get to the podium with Rosberg taking a well deserved 3rd place. Not only he proved that he is faster than Schumacher but he showed that he has it in him to fight with the best. Schumacher once again had a disappointing race but this time he retired due to technical issues but he did show glimpse of old form during the qualifying and by the 2nd half of the season he should be back to normal.
Renault after a very good Australian GP which saw Kubica finish 2nd, once again had a good race for Kubica as he managed 4th place. This was a crucial finish for the team as now in the Constructors championship, it is well ahead of the rest and fast catching up with Mercedes. Vitaly Petrov proved that he has all the talent in the world but going wheel to wheel with Hamilton and even successfully keeping him at bay for a while till Hamilton pulled an illegal move to overtake the Russian. It is only a matter of time with some luck Petrov should be scoring points.
Force India proved that early season form is no flash in the pan with Sutil finishing 5th and the team managed to finish ahead of well funded teams like McLaren and Ferrari. Force India have started the season well and if they improve further they have a good chance of getting one of their drivers on podium but now keeping up with the Renault team should be a challenge for the team.
William’s Nico Hulkenberg scored his maiden F1 points by finishing 10th and though he was lucky at times, he managed to perform in an underpowered Williams which is fast losing out to Renault and Force India, while Toro Rosso was faster than the Williams during the Malaysian GP. Toro Rosso also opened its account for the season with teenage driver Jaime Alguersuari scoring maiden points after a miserable last season. Alguersuari is very young and with experience he could become a very godo driver in the future.
Sauber had a horrible weekend once again with reliability issues hurting them badly. Pedro de la Rosa failed to start the race while Kamui Kobayashi who was looking good early on retired after 8 laps only. Though Sauber is a quick car if they manage to sort out the reliability issues, they can score a few points.
HRT which had a very bad start to Bahrain looked better than both Lotus and Virgin Racing as the Spanish team had both drivers finishing the race. The team has improved a lot and both Lotus and Virgin had to seriously look at this team as they could emerge as the front runner among the new teams this season.
It is early days but it is good to see 3 different winners already this season and as many as 5 drivers separated by less than 5 points. It is good see Kubica and Renault in the mix as well and though it may be an impossible task for the team but Kubica is ahead of Mark Webber and Michael Schumacher as off now and just one point behind Lewis Hamilton. Still early days but the F1 season after a boring start at Bahrain has really kicked off and it should only get better as the we head to China in 2 weeks.
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