PF1 Bahrain GP Preview

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Bahrain Grand Prix Preview
Wednesday 22nd April 2009 - PlanetF1.com

Ferrari return to their favourite non-Italian track to try and get their season started - but it's going to be a bigger fight than they've ever had before.


In less time than it takes Adrian Newey to say "stick your diffuser up your ****" it's already game on for the Bahrain GP. And maybe we have a slim chance of having our first normal race of the year.


In Oz there were two Safety Cars, in Malaysia the monsoon came, in China it was so cold and wet that the cars could hardly function properly - it's very rare for teams to do a whole race distance on full wets.


So in many ways I'm quite looking forward to a "Barcelona" or an "Imola" of a race for a change.


Sebastian Vettel will be looking to make it two grands prix in a row for Red Bull, but he's a lucky lucky boy. He badly impeded Heikki Kovalainen in Q2 in Shanghai and should have had an automatic grid demotion. At the time we commented that it looked like McLaren had chosen to get brownie points from Red Bull and say nothing.


Four days later and it emerges that Red Bull boss Christian Horner is already deep in discussion with Mercedes about a supply of engines for 2010. Funny that...


The Brawn GP team will be looking to re-establish their diffuser advantage on a track where they will definitely be able to get some heat into their tyres. In fact the Bahrain GP will be a true litmus test of where the teams all sit in the new F1 order.


Toyota will want to put their Shanghai slide behind them. Jarno Trulli became invisible in the race, fading from the front at such a rapid rate that Robert Kubica entirely missed him. Except, of course, when he hit him.


The fact that the BMW could slam into the back of the Toyota so violently and the stewards fail to investigate the incident is shocking. Surely you'd want to check on the telemetry to see if Trulli was braking early or Kubica wasn't paying attention...? And these two have history.


Though BMW had a reasonably good test after the sandstorm cleared at the Sakhir Circuit earlier in the year, it's unlikely that they'll creep ahead of the Ferraris or the Toyotas.


Surprisingly Ferrari are already making noises about chucking in the towel for 2009 and concentrating on 2010 which is a bit premature. They've always gone well in Bahrain and Massa is a proven winner here.


They will be up against a buoyant Red Bull team who've always threatened good results but never had the reliability, and a Brawn team keen to re-establish their advantage. McLaren have the edge of an ever-more-reliable KERS device to pass on this sometimes tricky circuit and Renault are talking up their chances too.


Quite why Renault are feeling so confident remains to be seen. Flavio Briatore hailed their result in China, which was only a 9th and a barrier-bruising 16th from Nelson Piquet Junior. Alonso feels he's ready to challenge for the World Championship, too. Is Renault cars boss Carlos Ghosn about to wield an axe or something and is that the reason for Flav's intemperate outburst?


Junior, along with Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Bourdais have the chance to make immediate amends for some poor driving in China. Though Piquet's never looked convincing, Nakajima had some solid races in 2008 and it's a surprise to see him struggle so much.


The Williams team need to make the most of their diffuser advantage while all the teams are busy constructing theirs. They need to bank some points.


With the grid separated by so little now, we can expect some more shock exits from Q1 and Q2. In Shanghai there was just 0.5 covering the top 12 in Q2 and the whole grid is often covered by as little as 1.5 seconds, so one bad corner can really make a significant difference. As Kovalainen found out in Shanghai.


This unexpected concertina-ing of the field gives an added boost to Heikki and Lewis's KERS button. So much has been happening in races in 2009 that nobody's had any time to run cameras on the Mclarens and see how they're using it. We might see more in Bahrain.


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