Sebastian Vettel has won the 2017 Bahrain Grand Prix in fantastic fashion. His 6.5 second gap to the second place car of Lewis Hamilton enjoyed the benefit of a 5 second penalty against Hamilton. But none the less, Vettel far out performed his team mate Kimi Raikkonen. The bells of Maranello may be ringing for Vettel, but I think Kimi’s head is ringing, along with that of Valtteri Bottas.
Valtteri Bottas took his first ever Formula 1 pole yesterday. The Finn was flying high and redeemed his unforgivable error of spinning under caution in China. But by the end of the Bahrain Grand Prix he was clearly delegated to the second driver position in the AMG Mercedes stable. Bottas out qualified the 3 time world champion and Hamilton was hearty in his recognition of the fact. But fighting under anger, Hamilton demonstrates a pace that can match.
Towards the end of the race, a trailing Hamilton, chased Bottas down, was given the pass under team orders, and beat Bottas in the race by nearly 14 seconds.
As Hamilton and Vettel battle at the front for the top step of the podium, their seconds languished nearly 20 seconds behind, (with penalty applied), battling for the scraps of the podium.
Romain Grosjean gets the Mailman award from the Haas F1 Fan journal. His 9th place finish delivered 4 points to the team! This gives the team a total of 8 points and places them 7th in the F1 constructors championship.
The day did not go so well for the junior Haas driver, Kevin Magnussen. The young Dane started in the 20th position and retired on lap 9 and was the first of the race. The commentary on NBC broadcast during the race was that the failure was due to the MGU-K. The MGU-K is essentially an electric motor that mechanically connects to the engines main crank shaft. That motor can be used as a drag component, which also generates electricity, or as an electric motor, which assists the main engine crank and helps spin the the turbo charged combustion engine.
Magnussens MGU-K failed… KMags was done.
From there on the show was all about Vettel and Hamilton. Romain Grosjean’s race was never really threatened. We can just hope that MGU-K unit failure in the #20 car was a one off. At no time during the race did we hear concern from the Haas team over Grosjean’s MGU-K.
The Scuderia Ferrari is leading the Formula 1 Championship by 13 points, who’da thunk it?
But this is the Haas F1 Journal…
The Haas cars are running those same Ferrari engines. KMag’s MGU-K aside, we’re optimistic.
so WELL DONE Romain Grosjean and the Haas F1 Team.
We’ll see you all on April 27th in Sochi.
Happy Easter All!