2016 Bahrain Grand Prix

[Paul Hayes]

It never quite lived up to the excitement of the first lap or two, but well done to Rosberg, Grosjean and Wehrlein.

[sswishbone]

Fantastic for Vandorne to score on debut, massive result for Mclaren

Brilliant from Grosjean, so aggressive pit strategy but so great on the track

[UncreativeUsername37]

I like this season.

[sw3ishida]

Until we see him again, Vandoorne's single point will remain on the board as "the little point that could".

[Miguel98]

Great race, great commentators.. All is well in Portugal in F1.

Great drive by Rosberg. Calm, measured. A different Nico so far this year.

[Aguaman]

Oh that's a nice trophy

[mario]

I don't want to jinx anything, but - based on absolutely nothing whatsoever - I am optimistic that Hamilton won't win today. Admittedly, Rosberg repeatedly winning would quickly become as dull as Hamilton walking away with the title, but hopefully Ferrari can not shoot themselves in the foot this week and take the fight for the win right to the end of the race and make it exciting.

That engine blowout has rather undercut Vettel's charge this season, and it's a rather bad sign for both drivers that they have had two mechanical failures in back to back races (not to mention the issues that their customers are having as well). Even if Ferrari are closer in terms of raw pace, those reliability issues are doing significant damage to their title aspirations.

[Aislabie]

Unbelievable scenes - two successive superb Grands Prix!

[Miguel98]

I don't want to jinx anything, but - based on absolutely nothing whatsoever - I am optimistic that Hamilton won't win today. Admittedly, Rosberg repeatedly winning would quickly become as dull as Hamilton walking away with the title, but hopefully Ferrari can not shoot themselves in the foot this week and take the fight for the win right to the end of the race and make it exciting.

That engine blowout has rather undercut Vettel's charge this season, and it's a rather bad sign for both drivers that they have had two mechanical failures in back to back races (not to mention the issues that their customers are having as well). Even if Ferrari are closer in terms of raw pace, those reliability issues are doing significant damage to their title aspirations.

Ferrari are already going to bring a update turbocharger unit to Catalunya. If it's an upgrade on performance wise or reliability wise.. We'll have to wait.

[Dj_bereta]

The first thing that comes to my mind after the race finish is: Button is in big pressure now. Okay, his car broken in the race, but Vandoorne qualified ahead of him and scored the first point for McLaren in this season.

In just one race Vandoorne delivered more than people are expecting. I can't imagine McLaren keeping Button for another year after this superb performance of Vandoorne.

[AndreaModa]

Good race, crazy first few laps, brilliant to see Haas and Manor competitive too. I bet Sauber were screaming at Ericsson at the end to keep Wehrlein behind him. That 12th place could prove to be important!

[Miguel98]

Now, this comes as a surprise. There's some potential in that car...

[flattyre]

At this rate, I'm wondering if Haas will be able to sneak onto the podium at some point this year. It'll take a race with a good chunk of retirements, but I see no reason why they couldn't if they keep this pace up with Grosjean.

Positively surprised by the performance of Stoffel "Van Door", as I like to call him

Oh, and I've cast my obligatory driver of the day vote to the unstoppable Rio Haryanto. The question is... have you?

[mario]

I don't want to jinx anything, but - based on absolutely nothing whatsoever - I am optimistic that Hamilton won't win today. Admittedly, Rosberg repeatedly winning would quickly become as dull as Hamilton walking away with the title, but hopefully Ferrari can not shoot themselves in the foot this week and take the fight for the win right to the end of the race and make it exciting.

That engine blowout has rather undercut Vettel's charge this season, and it's a rather bad sign for both drivers that they have had two mechanical failures in back to back races (not to mention the issues that their customers are having as well). Even if Ferrari are closer in terms of raw pace, those reliability issues are doing significant damage to their title aspirations.

Ferrari are already going to bring a update turbocharger unit to Catalunya. If it's an upgrade on performance wise or reliability wise.. We'll have to wait.

It sounds as if Ferrari might well need to bring in an update to boost their reliability - whilst it seems that their peak power is comparable with Mercedes when they run their power unit in its most aggressive power setting, they cannot sustain a comparable power output in race mode without compromising the reliability of their unit.

In Vettel's case, though, it looks like it might have been a different component failure this time around, with Arrivabene indicating that it was a fuel injection system failure or an intake valve failure being the most likely culprits (though a full analysis hasn't been completed).

At this rate, I'm wondering if Haas will be able to sneak onto the podium at some point this year. It'll take a race with a good chunk of retirements, but I see no reason why they couldn't if they keep this pace up with Grosjean.

Positively surprised by the performance of Stoffel "Van Door", as I like to call him

Oh, and I've cast my obligatory driver of the day vote to the unstoppable Rio Haryanto. The question is... have you?

I don't think it is impossible that we could see Haas make it onto the podium - we saw that Grosjean had an outside chance of beating Ricciardo today and, had Hamilton suffered enough damage to force him out of the race, a podium finish could well have been up for grabs.

The VF-16 does seem to be rather kind on its tyres and works quite well on the softer compounds, and overall the car does seem to be quite nicely balanced. It would take a slightly favourable set of circumstances, but with Renault not expected to bring in a major update until Canada and Ferrari bringing their own updates in Spain, plus Williams currently struggling with their new front wing and nose assembly, Haas could potentially take advantage of the current weakness of some of their rivals if Mercedes and Ferrari falter.

[good_Ralf]

I’ve been using Microsoft Excel to create some spreadsheets which use lap time data from races.
One of the spreadsheets I made calculates the fastest fuel-adjusted lap for each driver.
From what I can gather, one extra lap of fuel costs about 0.05s (which differs from the 0.1s that someone mentioned earlier) in lap time on a typical Tilkedrome, so I plugged that figure into my spreadsheet.
I didn't take the fastest lap standings and apply my formulae to that, the spreadsheet (one for each driver) works out the fuel-adjusted lap time for every lap in a driver's race.

This is the top 10 in the fuel-adjusted fastest lap standings:

1) Hamilton - 1:33.2
2) Rosberg - 0.366
3) Raikkonen - 0.827
4) Perez - 1.233
5) Kvyat - 1.288
6) Wehrlein - 1.442
7) Grosjean - 1.629
8) Ricciardo - 1.679
9) Nasr - 1.684
10) Hulkenberg - 1.732

I created another spreadsheet which for each lap, calculates the aggregate time for the previous 5 laps of a driver's race. I inserted the laptimes into the spreadsheet and the fastest 5 lap stint in a driver’s race appears in an adjacent table. Some drivers can be quick over a single lap but not over a number of laps, I think a 5 lap stint is a good indicator as how good a driver is at speed and consistency during a race.

I did a spreadsheet using the laps for today's race in Bahrain and first, I worked out what the fuel-adjusted laps were, then I applied them to the 5LS spreadsheet.
So Lewis Hamilton put in the fastest 5 lap stint of the race (fuel-adjusted). The list below shows how fast the other drivers were on average over a fuel-adjusted 5LS compared to Hamilton.

1) Hamilton
2) Raikkonen - 0.311
3) Rosberg - 0.434
4) Verstappen - 1.232
5) Perez - 1.516
6) Ricciardo - 1.595
7) Grosjean - 1.709
8) Kvyat - 1.727
9) Hulkenberg - 1.967
10) Nasr - 2.099
Massa - 2.111
Wehrlein - 2.140
Bottas - 2.160
Vandoorne - 2.408
Haryanto - 2.492
Gutierrez - 2.601
Button - 2.746
Magnussen - 2.789
Ericsson - 2.837
Sainz - 3.125

In any case, take these hastily-made figures with a pinch of salt.

[Frentzen127]

If you have all the fuel adjusted lap times for each driver, could you sort them all from fastest to slowest, and plot histograms for each? We might be able to learn a thing or two from their probability distributions, just a thought.

[CoopsII]

Oh, and I've cast my obligatory driver of the day vote to the unstoppable Rio Haryanto. The question is... have you?

Certainly, and I cast into eternal damnation anybody from the forum who dared to vote for one of the front runners!

A great race but it could've been a classic were it not for Vettel stopping and Hamilton being Bott-assed. Nice to see Rosberg building a healthy lead but I'd like to see him deal with some pressure from Vettel.

I missed the Aussie qualifying so it was all new to me this weekend and I wasn't particularly impressed. I found myself watching the graphic counting down beside each name rather then the on-track action. It might have helped if the on-track action focused on who was facing elimination but half the time they were sat in the garage so what can the director do? It was all a bit disjointed, to me.

[AxelP800]

Am I the only one who enjoy those sparks? I mean it added a sense of speed.

[DanielPT]

I think it was a decent race with lots of fights in the midfield and awesome MRT coverage! It all came through for a relaxed late afternoon victory for Rosberg. Ferrari is indeed closer to Mercedes than at this time last year, yet like the pre season test indicated, it was at the cost of reliability. Whether they will solve it in time for them to mount a serious championship title campaign remains to be seen, but so far things aren't looking good. Haas and Grosjean kept their fairy tale start to the season but I can only feel for Gutierrez that, through no fault of his own, is having the brunt of Haas bad luck barely participating in both races. Besides the coverage, Wehrlein also had a stonker of a race and certainly is showing is DTM champion credentials. He is carrying the MRT fight to the lower midfield in an amazing fashion and I must admit that he is winning me over with his heroics. Hope to see much more of him this season. Of course all of this came at the cost of someone. Force India had an horrendous race. If I am not mistaken Hulk was, from all the finishing drivers, the one who lost most positions in the race. The owners shenanigans in India catching up with the team? If so, it is a shame. And it would be more of a shame if Sauber were to disappear from F1 if such rumors are true. It was also poor for them although they at least had some coverage and were, at some point, flirting with the points. Another team that disappointed was Williams. They have the one lap pace, but strategy wise, they are still behind. They went to mediums and probably that hurt their race as much as Bottas dive in the first corner. A final shout to Vandoorne who had a good race and managed to score the first points for McLaren. Oh the irony!

[Aislabie]

I'm just going to leave this quote here from a 2001 F1 Season preview:

Achilles Heel: Poor race strategy has lost Williams several races in the past.

[WeirdKerr]

I'm just going to leave this quote here from a 2001 F1 Season preview:

Achilles Heel: Poor race strategy has lost Williams several races in the past.

I remember watching during 1995 when there were a few races that Williams lost due to poor(or overly conservative) fuel/tyre strategy....

[Dj_bereta]

I'm just going to leave this quote here from a 2001 F1 Season preview:

Achilles Heel: Poor race strategy has lost Williams several races in the past.

I remember watching during 1995 when there were a few races that Williams lost due to poor(or overly conservative) fuel/tyre strategy....

And the infamous strategy for Monaco Grand Prix of 1997 season starting with dry tyres in a wet track.

[flattyre]

Am I the only one who enjoy those sparks? I mean it added a sense of speed.

Nope, you're not the only one. I love them. I remember wishing for them to come back during the Schumacher era, I even thought about setting up a petition to return to titanium skid blocks around about 2005. I can't tell you how chuffed I was when they returned.

[DanielPT]

Am I the only one who enjoy those sparks? I mean it added a sense of speed.

Nope, you're not the only one. I love them. I remember wishing for them to come back during the Schumacher era, I even thought about setting up a petition to return to titanium skid blocks around about 2005. I can't tell you how chuffed I was when they returned.

The problem for me with the sparks these days are the reason for their introduction. It is no longer a consequence of the car, but it is a way, a gimmick, to improve the show. I now find them distracting and somewhat ridiculous.

Look! Sparks! They're shiny!

[RonDenisDeletraz]

I quite like the sparks, it is a bit gimmicky but that is not unusual for modern F1

[Nuppiz]

The sparks are fine, but I think they've gone overboard with them. Every car is regularly spewing out sparks as if they were driving on rims alone, making it too obvious they're deliberatedly added in instead of being an accidental consequence of how the car is built. Sometimes less is more, and I wouldn't mind if they reduced them to at least half of the current amount.

By the way, in a sport where thousandths of a second are important, just how much is the scraping effect slowing down the cars?

[Ataxia]

They're not gimmicky though, the titanium was introduced to replace the metals previously used in the skid block which would fragment and potentially cause some damage. Since titanium is lighter, there's a reduced possibility of this. Furthermore, titanium is "softer" than say, steel, so it's more prone to wearing out. Teams need to run their cars higher in order to manage that wear before it affects the wooden skid block.

Sparks are a side-effect of the titanium being used, but F1 presumably marketed it as "sparks? SHINY! LOOK!" for the large casual fanbase who don't care about materials engineering.

[DanielPT]

They're not gimmicky though, the titanium was introduced to replace the metals previously used in the skid block which would fragment and potentially cause some damage. Since titanium is lighter, there's a reduced possibility of this. Furthermore, titanium is "softer" than say, steel, so it's more prone to wearing out. Teams need to run their cars higher in order to manage that wear before it affects the wooden skid block.

Sparks are a side-effect of the titanium being used, but F1 presumably marketed it as "sparks? SHINY! LOOK!" for the large casual fanbase who don't care about materials engineering.

That was the explanation they did for the change. That it was for safety and technical reasons. People around F1, including teams, discussed it as a improvement to the show and apparently the real reason was to placate cheating (i.e. running the car lower to the ground because the skid plates protected the plank from excessive wear) from one unnamed but easily guessable team. So, it all still seems a gimmick in my opinion regardless of the real reason.

[Wallio]

That was the explanation they did for the change. That it was for safety and technical reasons. People around F1, including teams, discussed it as a improvement to the show and apparently the real reason was to placate cheating (i.e. running the car lower to the ground because the skid plates protected the plank from excessive wear) from one unnamed but easily guessable team. So, it all still seems a gimmick in my opinion regardless of the real reason.

Ah, for probably the first time in 1 history, that sentence has been written about a team other than Ferrari. I feel older by the day.