Indeed - in fact, watching the BBC live text they even said at one point that Mercedes dialled the performance of the engine back a bit to help preserve it.
Although I was delighted to see Hamilton win, I have to admit it was a boring race. In fact, it will be a boring season if what you say turns out to be true (and you could well be right).
I’ve heard whispers that Hamilton could have been consistently 1-1.5 seconds faster that the next best cars should he have chosen. That sounds ominous.
I think it is a damn shame that we have three true “great” drivers active at the moment (Hamilton, Vettel and Alonso) and yet we so rarely get to see them going mano-a-mano.
'twas ever thus though. I clearly recall the dominance of the MP4/4 and the processional races that produced.
The one saving grace may be that the bundles of torque and asymmetrical nature of power delivery from the various engines could mean that we see a lot of mid-pack overtaking.
He ran wide on a corner and high-centered on the kerbing, which broke one of the front wing supports. But as Martin Brundle said, there was probably a manufacturing defect that contributed to the failure, as it wasn’t a particularly hard hit.
Mercedes have definitely been jobbing a bit. They told Rosberg to increase his lead on Vettel up to 5 seconds prior to the final pit stop, and he just said “OK” and did it. No sweat. Supposedly Ferrari- and Renault-powered cars are still running conservative ERS mappings for reliability reasons, and despite that, Red Bull is still showing a lot of pace. I think it will make for an interesting season, assuming they work out the bugs in the next few races.
Bit surprised to see the Mercedes so quick. Were they on the pace in preseason testing?
How can you say that with all the fighting that was going on further back?
Very much so, to the degree that they were probably holding back on their ultimate pace even then. There are ways and means of extracting true form out of long-run, race-condition comparisons and the consensus is that they are well ahead…at the moment! progress never stands still.
At lot of this stems from their commitment and development of the new car from some time ago, concentrating on getting it right even at the expense of development for last year.
They appear to be reaping the rewards now and even Christian Horner thinks Mercedes advantage will be even greater in Bahrain this weekend.
I have to admit I didn’t actually watch the race, I was following it on BBC Live Text online. I didn’t get the impression there was much going on back there but I stand corrected. Did they show a lot of this on screen? Quite often, particularly if the leading driver happens to be racing in their home country, the local producer just gives us lap after lap of the leader with little thought to what else is going on. To be fair, winning the race is what everyone comes for and what people want to see, it’s hard to get excited by a battled for 9th and 10th (less still 13th and 14th) - for example. All I saw (at least towards the end) was the battle between the two Williams, battles between teammates are rarely interesting though unless they go the whole hog and take each other out.
Wow, Bahrain GP today was brilliant. There was no doubt that Mercedes are still dominating but Hamilton and Rosberg went at it hammer and tongs and there was loads of action further down.
Even if Merc’s dominance continues it looks like we are in for some fascinating racing.
Interesting to see Ricciardo beating Vettel…wonder how well that’ll go down?
I don’t watch F1 much but caught the end of the Bahrain race.
What did they do to the engines, they don’t do that annoying high-pitch whine anymore, it’s more of a growling sound now? I like!
They’ve changed to 1.6 litre turbo-charged engines with energy recovery systems so there is a whole new cacophony of weird noises going on. Not quite as insane as the 1000+ bhp 1.5 litre turbo monsters of the 1980’s but it certainly seems to be making for interesting racing.
So, a tire changer doesn’t get the tire tight, causing a car to have to stop in pit lane and reverse back to fix it, and that’s a 10-grid place penalty.
But if you come out of the pits, T-bone a car already on track causing that car to completely flip over, you only get a 5-grid place penalty?
I mean, I thought Gutierrez could have done a better job in giving room, but if you’re going to decide Maldanado is at fault, the penalty has to be more than a loose wheel.
An unsafe release in the pits exposes the pit crews to danger. Drivers encased in their carbon fibre cocoons are relatively safe even if they are flipped over at 100mph.
Don’t forget the cameraman who got hit by a loose tire last year, that was the last straw for the current draconian pit lane rules.
I don’t have a problem with balance of penalties here. Racing incidents don’t necessarily endanger anyone other than one or two drivers (who are very well protected). The pit lane incidents put many others at risk, seems about right to me.
If the wheel had actually come off, perhaps. I just have a hard time buying that “We had a problem, but caught it before it became an actual issue” is twice as worse as actually taking out another driver. “The cocoons are relatively safe” is a bullshit argument, theoretical tolerances of safety equipment shouldn’t really be a factor.
At the point the wheel comes off it is too late, so in the case of the Red Bull they didn’t catch it. The moment the car is released and starts accelerating you have a risk to all pit-lane personnel (who have no cocoon at all).
All drivers take to the track full in the knowledge that being “taken out” is an occupational hazard, pit crew have no such expectation.
In any case, If the crash caused is bad enough (a la Grosjean) then a driver can get greater grid penalties or even be banned for a race altogether. There is also the “penalty points” system for the drivers and Maldonado has had 3 points added to his license (12 gets you a one race ban)
I don’t think Maldonados crash was that bad as it happens. I think Maldonado thought he had been noticed as the Sauber ran wide…obviously not. And it was only a touch of the wheels that flipped Gutierrez over and made a relatively low-speed crash look worse than it was.
They mandated a single exhaust this year, rather than the twin exhausts of years past. That made the engines much quieter (as did the reduction in block size.) What you’re mostly hearing now is the charge cooler for the forced induction system.
Worth bumping this thread to reflect on how the season is panning out.
Mercedes look like they are going to walk it, Hamilton seems to be in a class of his own.
Alonso proves his class by getting the Ferrari further up the field than the package warrants. (I’ve thought since the 2007 season that Alonso and Hamilton are the class acts of F1)
Williams flattering to deceive, Force India capable of podiums.
The real story is Red Bull though. Does the performance of Vettel versus Ricciardo prove what many suspected these past 4 years? That Vettel had the best car, perfectly adapted to his style of driving and had a decent (but unexceptional) no.2.
The moment he has a rival on par and a car not quite to his liking he seems far less a worthy 4-time world champ. Certainly on current evidence I’d imagine that had he had LH or FA alongside him for the previous 4 seasons they would have chewed him up and spat him out.
Absent of equal machinery for all, the only real test of a driver is how he does against his team-mate and who those team mates are. Alonso? 'nuff said. Hamilton? went up against Alonso, Button and Rosberg. Vettel? Webber and Bourdais. Ricciardo is the best he has competed against so far and he doesn’t seem to be coping too well thus far.
I personally think he is a quality driver, top three certainly just behind Hamilton and Alonso but this season may turn out to important for him regarding how his 4 titles are viewed.
China was a bit of a boring race, I thought. Especially after the excitement of Bahrain with Hamilton and Rosberg racing.
I think there’s no doubt that Vettel had the best car over the last years, built and tweaked to his preferred driving style. But that’s the same as what Hamilton has this year. Hamilton said in an interview on Sky that the car had been designed especially for him - something I’m sure Rosberg was thrilled to hear! 
It was good to see Alonso back on the podium. You’ve gotta wonder if things might have been different for Domenicali if the Ferrari boss had been at the China race instead of the Bahrain race…
I find myself being more interested in the middle teams this year - Williams and Force India in particular.
Sky were trying to drum up a bit of drama before the race - something about a Red Bull engineer signing a contract to move to McLaren, then wanting to come back to Red Bull because someone else was also moving and he didn’t want to work with them?
Huh? I thought it a cracking race with plenty of fights and action.
And whatever anyone else says, I really like the reduced noise.