2010 Bahrain Grand Prix
2010 Bahrain Grand Prix | |||
---|---|---|---|
Race 1 of 19 in the 2010 Formula One World Championship | |||
Race details | |||
Date | 14 March 2010 | ||
Official name | VII Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix | ||
Location |
Bahrain International Circuit Sakhir, Bahrain | ||
Course | Permanent racing facility | ||
Course length | 6.299[1] km (3.914 miles) | ||
Distance | 49 laps, 308.405 km (191.634 miles) | ||
Pole position | |||
Driver | Red Bull-Renault | ||
Time | 1:54.101 | ||
Fastest lap | |||
Driver | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | |
Time | 1:58.287 on lap 45 | ||
Podium | |||
First | Ferrari | ||
Second | Ferrari | ||
Third | McLaren-Mercedes | ||
Lap leaders |
The 2010 Bahrain Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held on 14 March 2010, at the Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain. It was the seventh Bahrain Grand Prix and the opening race of the 2010 Formula One season. It was the first time since 2006 that Bahrain had hosted the opening round. The race took place on a lengthened layout of the track.[1] The race was won by Fernando Alonso, his first as a Ferrari driver.[2]
Report
Background
The race saw the debut of three new teams: Hispania, Virgin and the new Malaysian owned Lotus (unrelated to Team Lotus), as well as the return of Mercedes which had competed as Brawn GP in 2009, and of Sauber, having competed as BMW the previous year. New drivers Nico Hülkenberg, Karun Chandhok, Bruno Senna, Lucas di Grassi and Vitaly Petrov will also take part in their maiden races. Hülkenberg joins Williams, Petrov joins Renault and di Grassi is part of the Virgin team, while Hispania have an all-rookie line-up of Senna and Chandhok. Petrov is Russia's first ever Formula One World Championship driver; Chandhok is India's second following Narain Karthikeyan.
2009 World Champion Jenson Button made his debut for McLaren after changing teams from 2009 Constructor's Champions Brawn in November 2009. Seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher made his return to Formula One with Mercedes, Felipe Massa returned for Ferrari after his head injury at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix, and Timo Glock returned with the Virgin team following his accident at the 2009 Japanese Grand Prix.
All the previous winners of the event were present: Jenson Button won the 2009 Bahrain Grand Prix, with the Ferrari pair of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa were both two-time winners at this circuit. Schumacher won the first event in 2004.
The race also saw a return to the banning of refueling of the cars during the race, a practice which had been allowed since the 1994 Formula One season. Additionally a new points scoring system to decide the World Drivers' Championship was implemented, the most radical revamp of the system since the formation of the World Championship in 1950. Race winning drivers will now score more than double the number of points previously allocated with points distributed further down the list of finishers. The proportions of points available to winners are higher.
At 24 drivers, this was the largest grid at a Grand Prix since 1995.
The race was also the first to feature a revised stewards' panel under new FIA regulations, featuring a former Formula One driver. The driver in Bahrain was four-time World Champion Alain Prost.[3]
Practice and qualifying
Adrian Sutil set the fastest time for the Force India team in the first session of free practice on Friday morning. Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) was second, ahead of Robert Kubica (Renault), Felipe Massa in the other Ferrari, and the two McLaren drivers, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton. On his return to Formula One, Michael Schumacher set the tenth-fastest time for Mercedes, two positions behind team-mate Nico Rosberg. Of the new teams, both Lotus drivers and Timo Glock set times, but Lucas di Grassi did not complete a full lap in the second Virgin car. The Hispania team was still completing its two chassis when the session started, but Bruno Senna was able to complete two installation laps before it ended.[4]
In session 2 of free practice, Nico Rosberg set the fastest time, with Hamilton in second and Schumacher came third. Senna was struggling to match the pace of the fastest GP2 Asia Series drivers, but eventually did so, four seconds off the pace of the Virgins.[citation needed]
In the Saturday free practice session, Alonso in the Ferrari set the fastest time of 1:54.099, 0.269 seconds faster than Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes. Hispania's Karun Chandhok failed to participate in the practice session due to a hydraulic problem.[5] Elsewhere, the Virgin of Glock lost its left-front wheel in the middle of the session, with the problem being attributed to an under-torqued airgun.[6]
The first qualifying session saw the six drivers from the three new teams eliminated, with Timo Glock—the fastest of the newcomers—2.7 seconds adrift of Jaime Alguersuari in eighteenth and the only driver from the established teams to be eliminated. Despite a crippling hydraulics problem that saw him unable to take part in any of the free practice sessions, Hispania's Karun Chandhok was able to qualify in 24th and last place with a lap time ten seconds slower than the fastest driver, Ferrari's Fernando Alonso.
Reigning World Champion Jenson Button narrowly avoided elimination in the second qualifying period, pushing former Brawn GP team-mate Rubens Barrichello out of the top ten and into elimination. Barrichello's Williams team-mate Nico Hülkenberg was also elimated, as were both Saubers of Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi, the second Toro Rosso of Sébastien Buemi, Force India's Vitantonio Liuzzi and rookie driver Vitaly Petrov in the Renault.
Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel took pole late in the third session, edging out the Ferraris of Massa and Alonso, with 2008 World Champion Lewis Hamilton in fourth. Mercedes' Nico Rosberg and seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher were fifth and seventh respectively, with Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber splitting them. Jenson Button could only manage eighth place, while ninth and tenth were taken by Robert Kubica and Adrian Sutil in the remaining Renault and Force India.[7]
Race
The first corner of the first lap saw Mark Webber's engine release copious amounts of oil smoke, triggering a sequence of events that saw Adrian Sutil and Robert Kubica spin around and be relegated to the back of the field. The first lap was otherwise clean, with Sebastian Vettel quickly establishing himself as the race leader over the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa. There was little position-changing otherwise, with Vitaly Petrov in the second Renault the biggest mover, up to eleventh from seventeenth on the grid.
It was a race of attrition, with the first major incident of the race being the retirement of Hispania's Karun Chandhok, who, after just a handful of laps in qualifying, hit a bump he did not know existed and retired with a damaged front wing. Virgin Racing's Lucas di Grassi joined him on the sidelines shortly thereafter when his Virgin VR-01's hydraulics — a chronic problem throughout the off-season — gave up. Fellow rookie Nico Hülkenberg was lucky to avoid a similar fate to Chandhok when he missed a corner on the run down to turn seventeen and skipped over the circuit. BMW Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi fell victim to hydraulic failure, and was joined a lap later by Petrov who damaged his front-right suspension when he hit a kerb too hard; at the time of his retirement, Petrov had been the highest-placed rookie and had been racing Rubens Barrichello for tenth place and the final championship point on offer. Renault later clarified the issue as being an unanticipated mechanical fault on both cars that was traced back to Petrov's preference for a lower ride height than team-mate Kubica who went unscathed. Timo Glock in the second Virgin also retired after losing third and fifth gears, while Bruno Senna's debut for Hispania ended when his engine overheated at the end of the main straight. The six drivers retired in the space of just seventeen laps.
The first round of pit stops also proved to be the only round of stops, with Vettel dialling out enough of a lead to prevent the Ferraris from leap-frogging them. Elsewhere, the two Mercedes entrants of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher circulated in fifth and sixth, while reigning World Champion Jenson Button struggled down in seventh while team-mate Lewis Hamilton kept in touch with the Ferraris. The list of retirements grew on lap 23 when Pedro de la Rosa in the second BMW Sauber was also struck by a hydraulic issue.
In the dying stages of the race, Vettel noticeably slowed down on the circuit when his exhaust was expected of seizing up; this was later reported by the team as a problem with a spark plug. He was quickly passed by the two Ferraris and Hamilton, and spent the rest of the race trying to hold Rosberg at bay. Alonso went on to win the race, joining Juan Manuel Fangio, Giancarlo Baghetti, Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell and Kimi Räikkönen as the only men to win for Ferrari on their debut. Massa finished second on his return to full-time racing after his injury at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix. Hamilton completed the podium, while Vettel successully fended Rosberg off long enough to salvage fourth. Schumacher followed his team-mate home for sixth, with Button seventh, Webber eighth, Vitantonio Liuzzi placing ninth and Barrichello claiming the final point on offer. Kubica recovered from his first-corner spin to claim eleventh while Sébastien Buemi and Jarno Trulli also retired; Buemi's Toro Rosso was struck by electrical issues, while Trulli added his name to the growing list of drivers taken down by hydraulics issues. As they each retired having completed 46 laps, they were classified as finishers as they completed ninety percent of the winner's race distance. Heikki Kovalainen finished fifteenth in the second Lotus, meaning that Lotus became the only entrant of the new teams to have a car finish the race.
Post-race
Many fans were critical after the race of the "new" Formula One, with the criticism being echoed by Formula One personalities. McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh stated that the F1 community had to "work together to improve it."[8] Former driver and BBC pundit David Coulthard said that two pitstops could be made mandatory as it "would also mean more potential for mistakes (and, by extension, spectator interest) in the pits." Coulthard was critical also of changes made by former [[[FIA]] president Max Mosley, as the changes were made during his time in charge.[9]
One person to disagree with the criticism, though, was Jacques Villeneuve
Classification
Qualifying
Pos | No | Driver | Constructor | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Grid |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 5 | Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull-Renault | 1:55.029 | 1:53.883 | 1:54.101 | 1 |
2 | 7 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 1:55.313 | 1:54.331 | 1:54.242 | 2 |
3 | 8 | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 1:54.612 | 1:54.172 | 1:54.608 | 3 |
4 | 2 | Lewis Hamilton | McLaren-Mercedes | 1:55.341 | 1:54.707 | 1:55.217 | 4 |
5 | 4 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 1:55.463 | 1:54.682 | 1:55.241 | 5 |
6 | 6 | Mark Webber | Red Bull-Renault | 1:55.298 | 1:54.318 | 1:55.284 | 6 |
7 | 3 | Michael Schumacher | Mercedes | 1:55.593 | 1:55.105 | 1:55.524 | 7 |
8 | 1 | Jenson Button | McLaren-Mercedes | 1:55.715 | 1:55.168 | 1:55.672 | 8 |
9 | 11 | Robert Kubica | Renault | 1:55.511 | 1:54.963 | 1:55.885 | 9 |
10 | 14 | Adrian Sutil | Force India-Mercedes | 1:55.213 | 1:54.996 | 1:56.309 | 10 |
11 | 9 | Rubens Barrichello | Williams-Cosworth | 1:55.969 | 1:55.330 | 11 | |
12 | 15 | Vitantonio Liuzzi | Force India-Mercedes | 1:55.628 | 1:55.623 | 12 | |
13 | 10 | Nico Hülkenberg | Williams-Cosworth | 1:56.375 | 1:55.857 | 13 | |
14 | 22 | Pedro de la Rosa | BMW Sauber-Ferrari | 1:56.428 | 1:56.237 | 14 | |
15 | 16 | Sébastien Buemi | Toro Rosso-Ferrari | 1:56.189 | 1:56.265 | 15 | |
16 | 23 | Kamui Kobayashi | BMW Sauber-Ferrari | 1:56.541 | 1:56.270 | 16 | |
17 | 12 | Vitaly Petrov | Renault | 1:56.167 | 1:56.619 | 17 | |
18 | 17 | Jaime Alguersuari | Toro Rosso-Ferrari | 1:57.071 | 18 | ||
19 | 24 | Timo Glock | Virgin-Cosworth | 1:59.728 | 19 | ||
20 | 18 | Jarno Trulli | Lotus-Cosworth | 1:59.852 | 20 | ||
21 | 19 | Heikki Kovalainen | Lotus-Cosworth | 2:00.313 | 21 | ||
22 | 25 | Lucas di Grassi | Virgin-Cosworth | 2:00.587 | 22 | ||
23 | 21 | Bruno Senna | HRT-Cosworth | 2:03.204 | 23 | ||
24 | 20 | Karun Chandhok | HRT-Cosworth | 2:04.904 | 24 |
Race
- Template:Fnb Both Sébastien Buemi and Jarno Trulli were classified as they had driven 90% of the winner's race distance.
Standings after the race
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- Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.
References
- ^ a b Noble, Jonathan (2010-01-25). "Bahrain unveils new layout for F1 race". autosport.com. Haymarket Publications. Retrieved 2010-01-25.
- ^ Benson, Andrew (2010-03-14). "Fernando Alonso leads Ferrari one-two in Bahrain". BBC Sport. BBC. Retrieved 2010-03-14.
- ^ Beer, Matt (2010-03-11). "Prost joins stewards for Bahrain". autosport.com. Haymarket Publications. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
- ^ Strang, Simon (2010-03-12). "Sutil tops first practice in Bahrain". autosport.com. Haymarket Publications. Retrieved 2010-03-12.
- ^ Benson, Andrew; Holt, Sarah (2010-03-13). "Ferrari's Fernando Alonso sets pace ahead of qualifying". BBC Sport. BBC. Retrieved 2010-03-13.
- ^ Strang, Simon (2010-03-13). "Alonso goes quickest in final practice". autosport.com. Haymarket Publications. Retrieved 2010-03-13.
- ^ Benson, Andrew (2010-03-13). "Sebastian Vettel beats Ferraris to Bahrain pole". BBC Sport. BBC. Retrieved 2010-03-13.
- ^ "Changes urged to improve show". Autosport.com.
- ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorsport/formulaone/7450600/David-Coulthard-Max-Mosleys-Formula-One-legacy-has-left-us-with-soporific-spectacle.html
External links