The Bahrain GP talking points

Can Rosberg make a response where it matters?

After all the trash talking of the last week, instigating by Nico’s ill-considered rant in the post-race press conference in China and culminating in Lewis’s withering suggestion that his team-mate didn’t have the mentality to try to win in Shanghai, it’s the track talking Rosberg does in Bahrain that counts now.

Look no further for the driver under the most pressure to deliver the goods this weekend; Rosberg’s reputation, and maybe even his season, are on the line in the desert.

With China back-to-back with Bahrain, Rosberg has had little time to clear his head between events and decide on how to play it this weekend. It will be fascinating to see which Nico turns up – the Mr Spiky of mid-2014, the Mr Gracious of Abu Double and Australia, or the Mr Grumpy of China? Fascinating but also largely irrelevant. The only manifestation which matters is whether Nico is the number one or number two driver at Mercedes after losing out to Hamilton in both qualifying and the races at all three 2015 events so far.

One overarching lesson from China is that for Rosberg to beat Hamilton on race day in 2015, he’ll need a few victories in qualifying first. Hamilton has become too good an all-round driver to let any advantage easily slip from his grasp while the age-old difficulty of following another car through dirty air seems particularly acute this year.

Nor does it help Rosberg’s cause that Ferrari have closed the gap to Mercedes this year from a chasm to a sliver; with Ferrari ready to pounce on any mistake from the Silver Arrows, the opportunity, ever present in 2014 when Mercedes were in a league of their own, for the second W06 to roll the dice on strategy has been severely curtailed. Within the new ‘follow my leader’ confines at Mercedes, qualifying has been ratcheted up to a critical level from where the winner almost takes all. Over to you, Nico.
PG

Will Bahrain’s late start hamper Ferrari?

Think the desert is going to be hot and benefit Ferrari? Think again! In fact, track temperatures are likely to be lower than they were in China due to the late start time introduced last year when Bahrain became a twilight/night race. 

The heat of Malaysia helped Ferrari defeat Mercedes when tyre-wear became the deciding factor, but in China the Scuderia were unable to mount a challenge with track temperatures around 20c lower at 40c. Bahrain, believe it or not, will be even colder under floodlights - at last year's event, track temperatures peaked at 29c.

“With the race taking place in the evening, conditions won’t be as aggressive as they were in Malaysia – or even Bahrain two years ago, when the race was still run during the day,” says Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery.

However, there is another factor that could help Ferrari’s cause – an abrasive track surface. “Bahrain has the highest degree of asphalt roughness seen all year (with the exception of Jerez, used for testing). This accelerates thermal degradation on the tyres,” report Pirelli. “The traction demands [are] particularly tough on the rear tyres: the limiting factor in Bahrain.”

And that could be good news for Ferrari who made major improvements to that very area of the winter. "Clever suspension rear and front is really the key explanation as to Ferrari’s better tyre management,” explained Sky F1’s Ted Kravitz. So while the temperatures may favour silver over red, the Prancing Horse could come galloping back on the exit of Bahrain’s numerous slow corners.
WE

Can Pastor Maldonado find redemption in Bahrain?

How do you solve a problem like Pastor Maldonado? That's a question hardly exclusive to this feature and one which Lotus themselves were aware they had to tackle when they signed the fast but erratic Venezuelan from Williams last season. “I think we just need to make sure he can keep his focus – actually similar issues we had with Romain – keep his focus on track,” said then team boss Eric Boullier at the tail end of 2013. “I'm sure that with the proper support and team around him, we can do something nice with Pastor."

The McLaren-bound Boullier never got to oversee that process, however, and more than a year on the conundrum that has long surrounded Maldonado remains very much unsolved.

This weekend’s race brings up Maldonado’s 80th start in F1. Despite the 30-year-old’s status as a grand prix winner – a feat, achieved with an impressively textbook victory in Spain three seasons ago, which puts him among the elite 14 per cent of F1 drivers who have ever stood on the podium’s top step – Maldonado has somewhat unfathomably only finished in the points on eight occasions in total. That, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely the same amount of times as Pedro Diniz, one of the sport’s most famous pay drivers who, as coincidence would have it, wasn’t adverse to a spectacular crash either.

In fact, just one of Maldonado’s points finishes have been achieved at Lotus – a ninth place in Austin last November – and a second certainly went begging last weekend in China as a race-day performance that was brimming with promise unravelled in the kind of spectacular way that perhaps could only befall someone as luckless as Pastor. In the interests of fairness, something he doesn’t always get from his heavily-armed critics, Maldonado’s E23 had already developed brake problems before he overshot the pit entry and then spun on his return to the circuit. Jenson Button then held his hands up for sending the Lotus towards the scenery as they battled over the minor places into the closing laps.

So, with an unwanted hat-trick of DNFs at the start of 2015 behind him, it’s the desert of Bahrain where Maldonado will finally aim to take advantage of Lotus’s revival and get his season properly up and running. It would certainly be fitting if he managed it at Sakhir as it was at last year’s race when Maldonado was at the centre of perhaps his most infamous moment in F1 when he flipped Esteban Gutierrez’s Sauber into a spectacular airborne spin. Lotus will just hope he can keep any ‘flying’ confined to the tarmac this time.
JG

F1 hybrid era working both ways for Force India

Hybrid-era F1 can work both ways, as Williams and particularly Force India are finding out. Both were to the fore in last year’s Bahrain GP, as Mercedes power dominated on a track that features long straights and tight corners. Sergio Perez eventually finished third after a duel with team-mate Nico Hulkenberg that matched the Hamilton v Rosberg battle out front in terms of its pugnacity.

But that was then. The here and now finds Force India struggling on the fringes of the points, with the Hulk stuck in the Q1 drop zone last time out in China alongside current whipping boys Manor and, err, McLaren-Honda. Both drivers scored in the opening race but the attrition rate in Melbourne was such that it was difficult not to provided you finished. If engine power is now the main imperative, it fell into Force India’s clutches very nicely indeed 12 months ago. But evidently it can also lay bare weaknesses elsewhere in the overall package when a rival engine manufacturer makes a step, because the step is a big one - bigger than those achieved by aerodynamic gains anyway.

Even by his standards, Kimi Raikkonen was rueful when he described after last year’s race just how easy it was for the Force Indias to get past; it seems unlikely they’ll be fighting over the same piece of track this weekend. In fact, Ferrari’s advances with their power unit have been such that Sauber now appear faster than Force India as well.

Arguably, their struggles with the VJM08 chassis - principally its lateness, stemming from the wariness of creditors stung by F1’s financial crisis – can also be traced back to the switch to V6 turbo power, since the cost of introducing the new technology has been cited as one reason why Caterham went under, Manor Marussua almost followed and midfield teams have their work cut out to survive.

A ‘B’-spec car is said to be on its way in time for the Austrian GP but in the meantime Force India limp on at a time of year that has, in past seasons, seen them in full stride. Sadly for the Silverstone team, last year’s pluses are now being outweighed.
MW   

Live Formula 1