Bahrain Formula One Race A Battle Between Ferrari and Mercedes

When Valterri Bottas of Mercedes took the pole, and Lewis Hamilton took the second spot on the front row, it started to look like the clock had been turned back a year.  However a glance at Sebastian Vettel’s time in his Ferrari showed that he was very close to the two Mercedes cars.  He was only a half a second off Lewis Hamilton’s time and Hamilton was only .030 seconds off of Bottas’s pole winning pace.  This was shaping up to be a close race!

Bottas got an excellent start with Hamilton coming up on the other side.  Vettel got a very good start too and moved to the outside when Hamilton moved inside.  At the turn, Vettel was able to hold his position and take second from Hamilton.  The race continued like that for awhile with more action taking place at the middle and back of the pack positions.

When it appeared that Vettel would not get past Bottas, he came into the pits for his first tire change.  Then a full course yellow resulted in the safety car being deployed and other cars took to the pits.  After which, he took the lead of the race.  Amazingly he was able to hold onto the lead even as other cars tried chasing him down.  Bottas was unable to make a dent in the lead Vettel held and yielded his second place position to Hamliton, who then charged ahead and started to reduce Vettel’s 19 second lead down to around 4 or 5 seconds.  Vettel, working his way through slower traffic, was able to grow that back to over six seconds before he took the checkered flag for his second win of the season.  Hamilton came in second and Bottas third.  Kimi Raikkonen took fourth place for Ferrari giving Ferrari the lead in the Manufacturer’s Championship and Sebastian Vettel the lead in the Driver’s Championship.

This is definitely going to be a great season for watching Formula One!