Sebastian Vettel broke into the lead with his red bull after the first few laps and stayed there until the end of the race. The second was Finnish Kimi Raikkonen and the third Romain Grosjean, both with a lotus. Thus, we witnessed the same look of the podium for the winners as last year.
Already in the first rounds, Vettel attacked the leading Nico Rosberg, who had to defend himself frantically against the German attacks. Fernando Alonso also intervened in the duel with a Ferrari, but Vettel overtook him with a brave overtaking on the outside in the fifth corner. In the second lap, Vettl managed to get ahead of Rosberg for a short time in the second turn, where he was carried too wide and the Mercedes racer found himself in front of him again. Vettel tried a similar maneuver in the next round, this time successfully, and from that moment on, he dictated a pace that the others could not follow.
Rosberg was soon pushed into third place by Alonso, who was tempted by the adjustable rear wings, which remained open when braking. The Spaniard had to make a forced stop where the mechanics manually closed the wings, but the problem recurred in the next lap. By the ninth lap, the Ferrari racer had dropped to nineteenth place, and it became clear to him that he would no longer be able to use the DRS until the end of the race.
Alonso thus dropped out of the fight for the leading positions, and attention was diverted by Raikkonen and di Resta, who were both on the same tactics of stopping less than the other leaders. Di Resti looked like he would finish the race ahead of Raikkonen, but only until his last stop in the pits, where Raikkonen managed to overtake him with an earlier stop.
The Force Indie racer comforted himself for a moment with third place, but Grosjean breathed for his collar. The Frenchman saved his softer tires for the last part of the race on the tactic of three stops and thus managed to catch and overtake the Scot, who nevertheless finished the race in fourth place.
In the remaining ten, it was hot from start to finish. We saw an abundance of bike-by-bike racing, and the action was spiced up by various tactics that made the racers alternately faster on different sections of the track.
Lewis Hamilton climbed slightly higher than his starting position after the resounding start of the race. The Mercedes racer finished the race in fifth place, which he won only in the last laps, when Mark Webber, who finished seventh, lost his tires. Behind Sergio Perez with McLaren is another event-filled race where he achieved the best result with McLaren to date. The Mexican indulged in many robust moves during the race. Some of these were shared by his teammate Jenson Button, with whom Perez even collided and angered the Briton. Despite an injured front wing, the Mexican finished the race in sixth place after, like Hamilton, overtaking Webber in the final lap.
The latter flirted with the podium for a while, but after the last stop in the pits he fell into the background.
Alonso managed to finish in eighth place despite problems with the DRS, and Rosberg and Button took the last two places in the top ten with four stops each.
The rear right tire of Felipe Massa's Ferrari burst twice. The Brazilian consequently had to settle for 15th place.
Sebastian Vettel thus increased the lead in the overall championship standings. He leads Kimi Raikkonen by 10 points. The Finn has 67 of them, the third-ranked Hamilton has collected 50 points so far and overtook the now-targeted Alonso, who is fourth with 47 points, or 30 points behind Vettl. Among the constructors, the Red Bull team is in the lead with 109 points. The second best are at Lotus, and their gap is 16 points. In third place is Ferrari with 77 points and fourth with Mercedes with 64.
Bahrain GP, unofficial results:
| Racer | Team | Hour | |
|
1. |
Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull |
1:36:00.498 |
|
2. |
Kimi Räikkönen | Lotus |
+9.111 |
|
3. |
Romain Grosjean | Lotus |
+19.507 |
|
4. |
Paul di Resta | Force India |
+21.727 |
|
5. |
Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes |
+35.230 |
|
6. |
Sergio Perez | McLaren |
+35.998 |
|
7. |
Mark Webber | Red Bull |
+37.244 |
|
8. |
Fernando Alonso | Ferrari |
+37.574 |
|
9. |
Nico Rosberg | Mercedes |
+41.126 |
|
10. |
Jenson Button | McLaren |
+46.631 |
|
11. |
Pastor Maldonado | Williams |
+ 1: 06.450 |
|
12. |
Nico Hulkenberg | Clean |
+ 1: 12.933 |
|
13. |
Adrian Sutil | Force India |
+ 1: 16.719 |
|
14. |
Valtteri Bottas | Williams |
+ 1: 21.511 |
|
15. |
Felipe Massa | Ferrari |
+ 1: 26.364 |
|
16. |
Daniel Ricciardo | Toro Rosso |
+1 Circle |
|
17. |
Charles Pic | Caterham |
+1 Circle |
|
18. |
Esteban Gutierrez | Clean |
+1 Circle |
|
19. |
Jules Bianchi | Marussia |
+1 Circle |
|
20. |
Max Chilton | Marussia |
+1 Circle |
|
21. |
Giedo van der Garde | Caterham |
+2 Circles |
| Resignation | |||
|
22. |
Jean-Eric Vergne | Toro Rosso |
+41 Laps |