Race – Vettel Holds Off Raikkonen for Sakhir Win at LinesMaker

Race — Vettel Holds Off Raikkonen for Sakhir Win

Red Bull’s Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel leapt back into the lime­light – and the lead of the world cham­pi­onship – with vic­tory in Sunday’s 2012 For­mula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix. The world cham­pion took the lead from the start and imme­di­ately out-paced McLaren’s Lewis Hamil­ton and team mate Mark Web­ber. But it did not take long for the strength of the Lotus team threat to make itself felt.

First it was Romain Gros­jean who came thrust­ing up to pass Hamilton’s McLaren on the sev­enth lap. Then team mate Kimi Raikko­nen, who started 11th, moved up to third as the first round of pit stops began two laps later.

Paul di Resta, who opted for a two-stop strat­egy in con­trast to the three run by the other fron­trun­ners, led a Grand Prix for the first time for Force India on the 12th lap after Vet­tel had pit­ted on the 11th, but there­after the Ger­man was headed only briefly by Gros­jean on the 40th lap dur­ing the third and final pit calls. But it was by no means an easy ride for the Red Bull driver.

Raikko­nen had force­fully hunted down Gros­jean by the Lap 20 and moved ahead on the 24th before imme­di­ately pit­ting. And then the chase began. At one stage Vet­tel had nursed a 6.3s lead before the sec­ond stops, but now Raikko­nen was only 2.2s behind, and clos­ing. The gap came down to a sec­ond, until on Lap 36 Vet­tel had to block a deter­mined move for the lead as they went into Turn One.

It would tran­spire that was the clos­est Raikko­nen got to vic­tory, how­ever. Both dri­vers dived pit­ward on Lap 39, and there­after Vet­tel eked out a 2.9s lead straight away, and then built it to a lit­tle more than three as the pair of them bal­anced speed with tyre con­ser­va­tion to the che­quered flag. When they got there, the Red Bull was still 3.3s ahead of the Lotus, but Vet­tel knew he’d been in a fight.

Gros­jean held on to third to fin­ish on the podium for the first time in his revived F1 career, to make it a great day for Lotus, and Mark Web­ber took a lonely fourth for Red Bull, unable to match his team mate’s pace this day but untrou­bled by Mer­cedes’ Nico Ros­berg who just edged ahead of Di Resta on the 52nd lap.

Ros­berg found him­self under inves­ti­ga­tion from the stew­ards after two aggressive-looking moves in which he swept from one side of the track in defence of posi­tion and seem­ingly put first Hamil­ton, and later Ferrari’s Fer­nando Alonso, on to the dirt. Post-race, the Ger­man was cleared of any wrong­do­ing in both incidents.

The race was a dis­as­ter for McLaren. On two of his three stops Hamil­ton had a prob­lem with the threads on the left-rear hub and lost hor­ri­ble amounts of time. It was a sim­i­lar prob­lem to the one that afflicted team mate Jen­son But­ton in China. The first time he dropped from third to 10th, and there­after he was con­demned to an after­noon of chas­ing rivals in the pack and wear­ing his front tyres out faster as a result.

But­ton was in the thick of bat­tle for fifth place in the clos­ing stages after con­serv­ing his tyres, but a left-rear punc­ture neces­si­tated a pit stop on the 53rd lap, and then he was in again two laps later with a sick-sounding car to retire.

Di Resta drove a beau­ti­fully judged race to take a thoroughly-deserved sixth, and just kept Alonso and Hamil­ton at bay, though there was a moment of anx­i­ety at the fin­ish as Ros­berg almost stopped in the mid­dle of the road as he crossed the line, pos­si­bly as a result of mechan­i­cal problems.

Felipe Massa had a much bet­ter race and was hound­ing Fer­rari team mate Alonso for a while on his way to ninth and his first points of the sea­son, while Mer­cedes’ Michael Schu­macher made great progress ini­tially from 22nd on the grid after incur­ring a late five place penalty for a gear­box change, lost a bit of momen­tum mid-race, then hacked past the Saubers of Kamui Kobayashi and Ser­gio Perez to snatch the final point. In that lit­tle melee, Perez also over­took his team mate, even though the Japan­ese dri­ver had fresher rubber.

It was also a dis­as­trous day for poor Daniel Ric­cia­rdo, who dropped straight down from his sixth on the grid to 16th after get­ting beaten up in the early traf­fic and sub­se­quently hav­ing to pit for a new nose after seven laps. He fin­ished behind team mate Jean-Eric Vergne, while fur­ther behind them Vitaly Petrov led home Cater­ham team mate Heikki Kovalainen. The Finn drove a feisty race after an early clash ruined his strong qual­i­fy­ing position.

Behind But­ton, who was clas­si­fied 18th, Timo Glock was Marussia’s sole sur­vivor after Charles Pic posted the first retire­ment with mechan­i­cal prob­lems, and led home the HRTs of Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan. Nei­ther Williams made it home. Pas­tor Mal­don­ado had left-rear punc­ture and a big spin before retir­ing, and then Bruno Senna joined him in the garage with mechan­i­cal ills.

Red Bull’s first suc­cess of the sea­son, which made Vet­tel the fourth dif­fer­ent win­ner in four races, puts the cham­pion back on top of the points table too, with 53 to the unhappy Hamilton’s 49. Web­ber is third with 48, fol­lowed by But­ton and Alonso on 43 apiece, Ros­berg on 35 and Raikko­nen on 34.

Red Bull also jumped ahead in the con­struc­tors’ rank­ings, with 101 points to McLaren’s 92, while the other big mover was Lotus who jumped up to third with 57 ahead of Fer­rari on 45, Mer­cedes on 37 and Sauber on 31.

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more F1 rac­ing news see: Race – Vet­tel holds off Raikko­nen for Sakhir win.

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