Formula 1 is back: Mercedes and the resurgence of Formula 1 in Bahrain

The scrap between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg was the best seen in years.
Source: motorsport.com

Mercedes continued their scorching form in the Bahrain desert as Lewis Hamilton secured his second consecutive victory of the season, with team-mate Nico Rosberg finishing one place down close behind.  The pair were untouchable throughout the race, as both cars stormed off at the start and moved away from the field at the rate of a second per lap. The thrilling duel between the two culminated in a ten-lap dash to the finish, as an horrific accident between Lotus’ Pastor Maldonado and the Sauber of Esteban Gutierrez triggered a safety car on lap 40. After the race resumed on lap 47, second-placed Rosberg mercilessly challenged Hamilton for the lead, the former having the pace advantage on the faster soft-compound tyre. Hamilton managed to fend off the attacking Rosberg with a rigorous defence all the way to the end, as the Silver Arrows came home to secure the team’s second 1-2 finish of the season.

            The race yielded its fair share of excitement further down the field as well, with a frantic contest for third place being settled in favour of Force India’s Sergio Perez. Using an inspired two-stop strategy, the Mexican managed to challenge for the top five throughout the race, and was in third when the safety car emerged. On a similar strategy, team-mate Nico Hulkenburg was running fourth at this point, and took the fight to Perez for the final podium spot once racing resumed. ERS issues ended the German’s challenge on lap 54, as Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo overtook him and proceeded to hunt down Perez. Despite being half a second a lap quicker, Ricciardo couldn’t quite catch the former McLaren driver, finishing a mere four tenths behind to secure fourth and his first points for Red Bull. Hulkenburg managed to limp home in fifth, having held off a train of close running cars including Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull, the Williams drivers Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, and the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen, who took the final points positions.

            Despite yielding action which rendered the viewer helpless in knowing where to look, it was hard to ignore how starkly the race highlighted Ferrari’s woeful lack of performance. It was not so much missed opportunities that characterised the Scuderia’s weekend in Bahrain as missing speed. As evinced by their 9^th and 10^th places, the number 14 and 7 F14Ts were absolutely nowhere. Unfortunately for the team, the cars’ problems look fairly serious, as they seem to extend from the one area they cannot change: the powertrain. The problems with the powertrain couldn’t be any worse, as they appear to be both low on top-end power and high on fuel consumption. With the best will in the world, that is a fairly awful combination, especially on a track that demands consistent high-end speed with its numerous long straights. What’s more, the car appears to suffer from a worrying lack of traction, which is a result of the huge amount of torque these engines produce. Whilst other teams have been able to control this torque by regulating turbo lag, Ferrari haven’t, which means the drivers have to be extremely careful coming out of low-speed corners. These problems thus rendered Alonso and Raikkonen powerless to challenge teams with the Mercedes engine (the number of times a Force India overtook one of the red cars on the run into turn one more than testified to that). All Ferrari could do was focus on their one strong point – reliability – and try to combat the woeful lack of fuel efficiency by simply cruising to the finish line. No wonder Ferrari CEO Luca di Montezemolo criticised Formula 1 for resembling ‘taxi driving’.

            Unfortunately for di Montezemolo, there was no sign of ‘taxi driving’ at all in the Mercedes camp. Hamilton and Rosberg were battling it out in a league of their own at the front of the pack, going at it hammer and tongs in the early stages and vying for the lead from the get-go. After the first round of pit-stops they had no need to worry about the cars behind, as their relentless charge off the line enabled them to build a gap of 25 seconds to third place in as many laps. Fuel consumption was of no concern, either, as the Silver Arrows were 10% more efficient than any other car in the field. With this kind of superiority in mind, Mercedes could have simply called an end to the race after the safety car period and ordered the drivers to cruise to the end. Indeed, Paddy Lowe’s call to ‘bring the cars home’ suggests that they did. As it turned out, they most certainly didn’t. If anything, the drivers were unleashed in the last ten laps and allowed to see what they could really do. They didn’t disappoint, as Hamilton weathered attack after attack from his German counterpart, both drivers drawing upon their deepest reserves of skill and determination to gain the one-up on the other whilst respecting their professional limits. Perhaps most impressive of all, in spite of all this incessant struggling, both their W05s were two seconds a lap faster than any other car.

             Such a performance gap has historically been the reserve of names such as Schumacher and Vettel – names associated with monotonous dominance and a drought of juicy intra-team duels. Unlike the previous approaches taken by Ferrari and Red Bull, however, Mercedes have pandered to the fans of the sport, striving to show that such dominance can be exciting if you allow your drivers to battle off the leash. The seat-of-your-pants excitement engendered by the titanic – but professional – duel between Hamilton and Rosberg did more than enough to testify to that. Mercedes obviously knew the risks, and were brave to have taken them, but they felt they owed it to the sport to provide something special in an all-too-underwhelming era thus far. Mercedes look like heroes, and are undoubtedly the kings of Formula 1 in more ways than one.

In my humble opinion, it would not be too contentious to say that the ten-lap thrash in the closing stages of the grand prix produced some of the best wheel-to-wheel racing seen in recent memory, if not the sport’s history. Yes, it suggested that Mercedes’ have gained the most out of these new rules, and yes, we may be in for the long haul as they usher in another era of dominance, but the amount of eye-watering action it delivered confirms Formula 1 as the ultimate champion in this new era – and long may it continue.