Lewis Hamilton beats his teammate under the floodlights of Bahrain
Mercedes domination continues with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 1st and 2nd places on podium with a Sahara Force India Sergio Perez in 3rd.
Race winner Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1 W05 celebrates at the end of the race ahead of second placed team mate Nico Rosberg, Mercedes AMG F1 W05
XPB Images
From the green light till the checkered flag it was an astonishing race fulfilled with overtakes and thrilling moments.
Bahrain GP was not a race of fuel-saving taxi drivers as we saw it in first two rounds of a new F1 era, all drivers were pushing hard and were on wide opened throttle any time it was possible.
The first part of the race was almost the same as we saw in practice and qualification - Mercedes-powered teams dominated.
Sergio Perez was a hero of the race, fighting for podium from the first lap even using brute force against his teammate Nico Hulkenberg, who claimed 10 points for the team finishing in 5th position.
The race saw a few collisions, first with Lotus and STR driver Jean-Eric Vergne, then it was Adrian Sutil and Jules Bianchi, but being on a quite a good pace and going for points Sauber's young Mexican driver Esteban Gutierrez was heavily crashed by Pastor Maldonado causing C33-Ferrari to rollover and a long thrill, as Gutierrez stayed in his car long. The pace car were out. Pastor got 10 seconds stop and go penalty.
Kevin Magnussen failed to end the race due to tech issues, and was out during the safety car. Hamilton pitted and got a set of medium tires, while Rosberg got soft ones right after him as he used medium compound in second stint. This promised a great challenge in last 10 laps between Mercedes drivers even after Paddy Lowe's message to both to bring both cars back home. But thanks to the Mercedes AMG Petronas chiefs we saw a great end of the race with a lots of thrilling tries by Nico to overtake Lewis, who finally took his second race win and first in Bahrain in his career.
Race restart saw a tight fight between Mercedes and Force India drivers, Button started to lose positions and in the end forced to stop with 2 laps left to go in his 250 GP race.
Red Bull Racing drivers managed to gain 20 points for the team using a different 2 pit-stops tactic, but that made Sebastian Vettel to withstand the onslaught of 3-stopers behind that was Williams Martini drivers, Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas who had some agressive situations fighting for positions between them, but finished both in points in 7th and 8th respectively. Daniel Ricciardo, despite his 10 places penalty got his 3rd place gained in qualification back pushing hard overtaking rivals one by one using more aggressive driving style like passing using outer line of turns, and beating his teammate wheel to wheel on a straight.
Ferrari drivers struggled all the race with their heavy cars and a lack of balance. But using all their talent Fernando Alonso finished 9th and Kimi Raikkonen, that almost being hit by Valtteri Bottas in try to overtook Ricciardo, closed the top 10.
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