Wonderful win for Rosberg in Bahrain

Nico Rosberg won his 5^th race in a row, 2^nd this season, showing he’s a strong candidate for the World Championship this year. Kimi Räikkönen finished 2^nd ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who had another eventful start.

The race had an early ending for Sebastian Vettel, since his engine broke during the formation lap. The start was very chaotic, with Valtteri Bottas getting up to 3^rd but colliding with Hamilton on the first corner. The current World Champion went down to 9^th while Bottas got a penalty. Rosberg led the race ahead of Massa, Bottas, Ricciardo and Räikkönen. Carlos Sainz made contact with Sergio Pérez, getting a puncture and breaking the Mexican’s front wing. Meanwhile, Palmer, Gutiérrez and Button had to retire for mechanical problems.

The tyre strategy with three compounds available offered a wide range of options. For their second stint, Rosberg, Räikkönen and Ricciardo chose the soft, while Hamilton and Massa went for the medium. On lap 20, the top 10 was: Rosberg, Räikkönen, Hamilton, Ricciardo, Grosjean (supersoft), Verstappen, Massa, Vandoorne, Bottas and Kvyat.

Ricciardo was the first one to stop again and continued with the soft compound. He came out behind Bottas and passed him pretty quickly. Verstappen changed his softs for mediums and came out on P10. Grosjean chose a three pit stop strategy with another supersoft set on P8. Hamilton decided to copy Grosjean and changed his mediums to supersofts, just as Räikkönen and Rosberg did with his softs.

Finally, Rosberg did a perfect race, dominating from beginning to end and adapting the strategy to the circumstances. Kimi Räikkönen couldn’t catch the Mercedes ahead but was able to keep Hamilton behind. Ricciardo was 4^th for the second race in a row, while his teammate Kvyat managed to climb up to 7^th after starting on 15^th. Grosjean did a wonderful race, this time with a lot of fights on track, and showed the potential Haas have by finishing 5^th. Verstappen finished 6^th for Toro Rosso, while the Williams drivers finished in a disappointing 8^th for Massa and 9^th for Bottas after being 2^nd and 3^rd in the first corner. Stoffel Vandoorne completed the points on his debut race for McLaren. Magnussen, Ericsson, Wehrlein and Nasr had some wonderful battles on track and finished P11 to P14. The Force India only managed to finish ahead of Haryanto, with Hülkenberg ahead of Pérez.