watka wrote:What a great race! Bahrain is so hit and miss with what it delivers, but this time I'm glad its on the calendar. Shame I had to settle for the late night BBC highlights than seeing the whole thing live.
I think what makes it a great race rather than just a good one is that we had a rip-roaring battle for the lead. There have been plenty of races over the last few years which have been good due to battles further down the field but they lacked that last little bit of excitement you get from knowing its for the win. The intra-team battles were amazing too. I heard one strict team order all race (Vettel being instructed to let Ricciardo past) and all of the racing was clean.
Hamilton's defending against Rosberg was pretty incredible. His tyres were harder than Nico's and he also had to defend against DRS so how he managed to achieve that, and fairly, is beyond me. Nico will be scratching his head a little bit over that one.
I'm happy that I called Perez's podium (not so happy that I didn't put money down on it!) because Force India have looked strong and Sergio seems to have worked really hard this weekend. The qualifying performance was a rabbit out of the hat in addition to their race pace which was always going to be strong. Ricciardo did really well too, handsomely beating Vettel all weekend, although its always difficult to know where you stand with Vettel's performances as whenever he is slow he always seems to think there is a problem with the car.
I have to agree that this race was quite spectacular - the racing was hard but, mostly, clean and fair, we saw some of the minnows upstage bigger teams (Force India are now in 2nd place in the WCC) and the mix of strategies managing to shake things up nicely. The fight between Rosberg and Hamilton for the lead was especially impressive - firm but respectful driving from both drivers, and it looks like the two of them could be fairly evenly matched throughout the season.
(Tony Jardine, 1988)
Fantastic! I was thinking about you during the race Razta and wondering whether Id spot you but to no avail. Great pics, if you're on Facebook then I reckon that one of you and the trophy should be your profile picture for life!
