Vettel is back in business with a spectacular win in Bahrain

Reigning Double Champion Sebastien Vettel bounced back to contention with a superb win in Bahrain Grand Prix from start to finish. Vettel showed tremendous resistance to the challenge posed by Kimi Raikkonen during the middle of the race.

At the lights Vettel and Hamilton made a clean getaway while Button and Rosberg experienced a bad launch which enabled Romain Grosjean and Kimi Rakkonen to move ahead along with Alonso. Grosjean showed amazing speed on the soft tyres to overtake Webber and soon challenged the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton to slotted into 2nd behind Vettel. While Kimi on the other Lotus looked good too but lost few places with a small mistake during lap 1 which made him stuck Fillepe Massa´s Ferrari for while.

While Vettel gasping away with the lead and Grosjean closing him, Schumacher who started from 22nd due to a problematic qualifying and grid penalty was moving ahead consistently. As the tyres started to show their wear most car came in to pit by Lap 9 and the worst of the pitstop happened to Lewis Hamilton as he was stranded for 9seconds due to a problem in the rear left wheel nut and Lewis was dropped down the order from running 3rd and had to overcome the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Ferrari of Alonso which he did in amazing style. But Lewis´ race was ruined as he got held again in pits with the same problem and had drop down again but this time the team cleverly changed to new wheel nut so he got away cleanly on his 3rd stop.

Kimi Raikkonen who started 11th moved upto 3rd after the first pit stop and was soon gasping ahead with his Lotus to close on his team mate Grosjean. Kimi overtook Grosjean by Lap 20 and then started to hunt down the leader Vettel giving him a scare. Kimi before the 2nd pit stop was nearly 6.3secs behind the RedBull but soon after the stop he was just 2.2secs off Vettel and started to closing. Kimi was about to challenge for the lead and even had try on the main straight using the DRS but Vettel spoiled the move with a late cut before turn 1 which put Kimi on the wrong side to overtake. Vettel resisted the challenge of the Lotus and both pitted together for the final time, after which Vettel eased a 2.6secs gap which Raikkonen could not challenge much. Raikkonen had to content with second and his first podium since his return to F1 while reigning champ Vettel crossed the line 3.3sec ahead. Grosjean was ecstatic with his first F1 podium and also Lotus got two of its cars to the parc ferme.

Webber finished fourth unable to mount a challenge to Grosjean. Nico Rosberg managed to finish 5th while Force India´s Paul di Resta finished a superb 6th with a 2stop strategy and holding off Fernando Alonso´s Ferrari and McLaren´s Lewis Hamilton.Filipe Massa on the other Ferrari had a good race comparatively to his previous races and finished on the point and was also challenging team mate Alonso at one point of the race. Schumacher drove master of a race to finish 10th after starting 22nd and his first finish and points of the season. Jenson Button had a puncture in the closing stages of the race and had to pit for a new trye and then had to coming into the pits with a broken exhaust on the last lap making McLaren the biggest loser of the day.

Vettel now leads the championship on 53points with Hamilton and Webber on 49 and 48 respectively. This race proved to be amazing race with trye wears, strategies, late catch up from behind by Raikonen, performance of the Lotus, resurgence of the RedBull and Vettel. This race also witnessed 4 different winners in 4 races of season which last happened in 2003 making F1 even more interesting to watch even the Sakhir circuit witnessed low turn out people due to the political turmoil in Bahrain. This race also saw a Force India car lead its first ever race for few laps.