To think that just over two weeks ago after Melbourne's season-opening qualifying session we were bracing ourselves for a year of Mercedes domination. Somehow Ferrari, and Sebastian Vettel, has won the campaign's opening two rounds. The first time the
Scuderia has done so since its pomp of 2004.
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Against advance expectations Sebastian Vettel
made it two wins from two
Photo: Octane Photography
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It's not been quite as simple as those days of demonstration runs in red. The Melbourne win owed much to external events. This time in Bahrain though it all of a sudden was down to pace, mixed on race day with some seat of the pants strategy. F1 whatever else happens never loses its capacity to surprise.
Quite where the Ferrari potency came from isn't clear, but Bahrain is a very different challenge in temperature and layout to Australia; the Italian team also had worked on its troublesome front end between rounds. Add in F1's capacity for voodoo and the Ferrari was the car to beat here.
It locked out the front row of the grid, Vettel ahead, and looked hard to stop. A recent F1 truism is that the usually haughty Mercedes is less happy relatively on softer tyre compounds, as well as when the temperatures go up. The combination of these in Bahrain led to it struggling with overheating the supersoft rubber in qualifying. Adding to its woe, gearbox damage from Melbourne meant Lewis Hamilton had to add five to his starting slot from the fourth place he managed in quali. But of course Mercedes is never to be counted out, and it sought to make a virtue of its vices.
