Bahrain GP – Drivers’ Scorecard

Before giving the marks to the protagonists of Sakhir, I ‘d like to say something in relation to the incident that involved the non-guilty driver of Sauber, Gutierrez, badly hit by Pastor Maldonado in the first corner. As we know, the delegates punished the Venezuelan Lotus driver with three points on his Super Licence and a five-place grid drop for the next race in China, besides the ten-second stop-and-go penalty during the race. Once again I’m astonished for the different parameters userd for judging and issuing penalties. If we compare the penalties given to Magnussen – for a millimetric contact in the Australian GP with Raikkonen – or to the non-guilty Ricciardo in Sepang, the mistake of Pastor is much heavier. Magnussen lost 2 points on his Super Licence, whereas Ricciardo paid with a stop-and-go and a ten-place grid drop for Bahrain – ten places that compromised the podium in Bahrain for the Red Bull pilot. Rules are still not clear and evaluations are too subjective. Now, I’m curious to see how a team will be able to replace a penalized driver with an untrained pilot…

But let’s skip to votes:

Lewis Hamilton – 9 A great fight with the teammate, keeping the show at a high level. Good job at start, overtaking his teammate in pole-position.

Nico Rosberg – 8,5 For the second time not a great performance at start. He will have to be careful, since starts could become fundamental for the final results, considering the huge advantage of Mercedes.

Daniel Ricciardo – 8.5 Amazing race, showing he’s not afraid at all of his teammate, who holds four World Champion titles. Despite all the penalties he had a great reaction: he’s the best surprise of this beginning of the season.

Sergio Perez – 8 He conquered on the field the third step of the podium, rescuing a not-too-happy beginning of the season.

Felipe Massa, Valtteri Bottas – 7 They brought both cars at finishing, scoring for Williams precious points that will count for the future.

Daniil Kvyat – 7 Even though he was soon out of the score-zone, he’s enhancing Toro Rosso’s name, overshadowing his teammate despite his young age.

Nico Hulkenberg – 6 A little down for all the weekend. He wasn’t able to answerback his teammate.

Sebastian Vettel – 6 He accomplished his mission, but he was a little nervous and not impeccable. It can happen, after four seasons at the top. With Massa he reached the limits of the regulations and fair play.

Fernando Alonso e Kimi Raikkonen – 6 An encouraging vote, as they couldn’t do better than they did.

Formula 1 – 8 For pleasing us with a great GP, with two Mercedes playing with each other. They wanted to make the race hot, but I think they perfectly knew Hamilton would have won. As already happened in other seasons, this year the issue is a team issue. The result of last Sunday is composed of 2 Mercedes, 2 Force India with – in between – 2 Red Bull, 2 Williams and 2 Ferrari. The fight will be most of all between teammates.