Formula 1 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix

Hamilton was heard calling Verstappen “a dickhead”, prompting questions about it in the post-race press conference – when Sebastian Vettel leapt to Hamilton’s defence.Appearing on the Dutch TV show Peptalk on Ziggo Sport on Monday night, Verstappen was shown this clip via Skype in his hotel room in Bahrain. After hearing what was said, Verstappen remarked: “He is just out of the car ...

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Vettel followed up a fortunate victory in the Australian GP by qualifying on pole in Bahrain and holding off Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas for the win after a mid-race change of strategy.When asked by Motorsport.com whether his performance was more down to Mercedes' not being at the same level as in Australia, or Ferrari's own gains, Vettel replied: "It's a difficult one."I can't speak ...

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Verstappen and Hamilton made contact in the early part of the race after the Red Bull driver ran wide, squeezing his rival.Hamilton escaped with no damage from the contact, but Verstappen suffered a broken wheel and puncture, while a differential failure caused his retirement.Verstappen's team boss Christian Horner insisted that it was was an incident behind two hard racers, and ...

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44 Lewis HamiltonMercedes F1 W09Start: 9thFinish: 3rdStrategy: 1 stop (soft/medium)Rating: 8There was a lot of good for Hamilton, who produced some incisive passes and performed well on his 31-lap stint on mediums. But he never looked completely comfortable on Saturday and Sunday and qualified just behind Bottas. By his own admission, Hamilton was too tame in the early laps – par ...

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Max Verstappen picked up a puncture while passing Lewis Hamilton at the start of the second lap, which caused gearbox damage that led to his swift retirement, and moments later Ricciardo stopped from fourth position.Red Bull believes a Renault energy store failure triggered a sudden loss of power as Ricciardo entered the Turn 8 hairpin.Ricciardo said: “Being out so early in a race is ...

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Mercedes had the Bahrain Grand Prix won on lap 21. Well, almost. According to team boss Toto Wolff, there was only a one-in-ten chance of Ferrari winning despite Sebastian Vettel being in the lead. And yet, 36 laps later, Vettel claimed his second consecutive grand prix victory by 0.699s from Valtteri Bottas."I think we had won the race already after coming out on the medium behind ...

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Sirotkin and teammate Lance Stroll started 18th and 20th, and finished in the reverse order on the road in 16th and 17th, although they subsequently gained places from time penalties handed to Sergio Perez and Brendon Hartley.Despite the lack of pace from the car – which was slower than last year – Sirotkin tried to be upbeat."A tough feeling after a tough weekend," said the ...

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Francesco Cigarini was preparing to fit a new left-rear tyre during Raikkonen's second stop when the Finn was mistakenly told to leave the pit box.Raikkonen ran over Cigarini's left leg as he pulled away, which Ferrari said broke its crew member's shinbone and fibula.Cigarini was transferred to Bahrain's BDF Hospital and took to social media in the early hours of Monday morning to ...

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Ocon started eighth on the grid and gained two positions early on when the Red Bull duo retired with separate issues. However, the weaknesses of the VJM11 became evident soon and he lost three places in one corner on lap 4.The Frenchman was initially committed to a one-stop strategy, but was forced to pit again on lap 35, putting him on the backfoot.However, the fresher tyres allowed ...

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Vettel beats checkmateSeb ...

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The pair shared the sixth row of the grid and collided on the first lap when Hartley's Toro Rosso spun Perez's Force India around at Turn 4 during early battling.Hartley received a 10s penalty for causing that incident and went on to finish a lapped 13th, while Perez finished 12th.But the stewards summoned both drivers to a hearing after the race to discuss a separate incident that ...

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Kimi Raikkonen had come into the pits for his second stop of the race when there was a problem at the left rear of the car.Despite the wheel not having been removed, Raikkonen was instructed that the stop had been completed and he left the pit box.As he accelerated away, he hit the mechanic who had been standing there with the replacement wheel – running over the crew member's leg ...

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PODIUM INTERVIEWS(Conducted by David Coulthard)Sebastian, you had to work for that one!Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, I think I came on the race with about 10 laps to go, “I have everything under control”. I don’t know if they broadcast that. That was a lie; there was nothing under control. When they told me the pace of Valtteri at that time, there was no way I could do that. I was making ...

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The French, in only his seventh Formula 1 race, gave the Toro Rosso-Honda package its first points of the season with a sensational drive to fourth.It was the best result for the Honda engine since it returned to the sport in 2015.Gasly had started from fifth on the grid following Toro Rosso's "huge step forward" from Melbourne, but Marko admitted today's result came as a ...

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Hamilton was heard calling Verstappen "a dickhead" in the drivers' room before the podium ceremony, prompting questions about it in the post-race press conference.But when Hamilton was asked about what he said, race winner Vettel interjected and expressed sympathy for his rival."Can I answer that?" Vettel said. "It's not fair – I don't know what Lewis did, we've all been in that ...

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Verstappen suffered a puncture and differential damage that forced him to retire from the race when he and Hamilton made slight contact on the exit of the first corner early in the race.The Red Bull driver was on the inside in the middle of the turn, and ran to the outside to squeeze Hamilton, whose front wing then clipped his left-rear wheel.When watching the incident back behind ...

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The pitcrew member was tasked with fitting a new left rear tyre to Raikkonen's car but, following a problem with the removal of the wheel already on it, he was still in position and had not moved when Raikkonen was released.The mechanic was thrown to the ground by the Ferrari wheel, and was immediately attended to by paramedics before being taken to the track's medical centre.A tweet ...

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The Woking-based team was left "astonished" on Saturday after struggling in qualifying, where Alonso finished 13th and teammate Stoffel Vandoorne was one place behind.But both drivers recovered to finish in the points on Sunday, with Alonso in seventh and Vandoorne in eighth.It is the first time McLaren has scored points in consecutive races with both cars since the 2014 season.But ...

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The German led the early stages in Bahrain but was focused on a two-stopper when he moved to the soft compounds at the first round of tyre changes.Behind him, Mercedes chose to put Valtteri Bottas on to the medium compounds with the aim of going for a one-stop.With Vettel not opening out enough of an advantage over his rival, the German thought that the race was lost at that time – ...

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The Ferrari driver held on in a grandstand finish as Bottas, on mediums to Vettel's fading softs, just failed to steal the victory.Lewis Hamilton recovered from a grid penalty to complete the podium after Kimi Raikkonen's hopes were dashed during a horror pitstop that left a Ferrari mechanic hurt.Vettel held the lead at the start as Bottas mugged Raikkonen into Turn 1, and built a ...

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The Williams FW41 features flared exits at the rear of the sidepods, which are significantly wider than what we have seen in testing or during the Australian Grand Prix weekend.Adequate cooling is one of the first requirements of the Formula 1 car concept when you are putting it together.If you are not honest with yourself in the early stages of the design, then you will have to ...

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The Silverstone-based team had one version of the new front wing, which was given to Perez thanks to him being classified higher than teammate Esteban Ocon in the world championship.But after using it on a difficult Friday for the team, it was not used again in Bahrain as the data showed it was not delivering the performance even though it did not change the feel of the car for ...

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Although Sebastian Vettel won the Australian Grand Prix, Hamilton's Mercedes was clearly the faster car in Melbourne, but this weekend at Sakhir the W09 has been no match for the SF71H, with Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen locking out the front row for Ferrari in qualifying.When asked to explain the turnaround in form between the two teams compared to the season opener, Hamilton said: "I ...

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Leclerc had the edge over his more experienced Sauber teammate Marcus Ericsson through practice and the first runs in Q1, but his qualifying ended with a spin at the final corner.He said traffic on his second run and his own misjudgement later was to blame for ending up 19th, three tenths and two positions behind Ericsson."I was already pushing way too much from the beginning of the ...

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F1's managing director of motorsport is helping in the push for a series of rule changes from 2021 in a bid to attract a bigger audience.One proposal that has been suggested is for F1 to totally change the way that the grids are decided – with a qualifying race rather than a timed session being used.Speaking in an interview with Sky's Martin Brundle, Brawn suggested that the concept ...

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TRACK INTERVIEWS(conducted by Johnny Herbert)Q: Let’s talk to this man, who is on pole position. Nice smiley face. You must be a happy boy?Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, let me breathe! It was quite intense. First run in Q3 I was very happy and then tossed it away in the last corner. No, really happy that I got the second run and I got it clean and I knew in the last corner I just knew I ...

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Robb has been watching since the days of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, and has travelled to grands prix across the world. He is a fan of Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari, while his wife pulls for Lewis Hamilton -- and their passion for F1 may have saved their lives on March 25.They decided to stay up past 1am EST to watch the Australian Grand Prix, the opening round of the ...

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Mercedes was outpaced by Ferrari in qualifying in Bahrain, with Valtteri Bottas taking third and Lewis Hamilton fourth, before his five-place grid penalty was applied.Wolff says that the Bahrain track, now acknowledged by Pirelli as the roughest of the season, has not played to the strengths of Mercedes."I always said right from the beginning that this was going to be a season where ...

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A lacklustre showing in qualifying, with neither the Spaniard nor teammate Stoffel Vandoorne making it through to Q3, has left the team struggling to find answers as to what went wrong.But while racing director Eric Boullier said he was "astonished" at events on Saturday – which included McLaren being outqualified by the Honda-powered Toro Rossos – Alonso said he was not shocked by ...

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Hartley and teammate Pierre Gasly were eliminated in Q1 at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, in which the team would score no points – but both drivers then fared much better in Bahrain qualifying.The Kiwi came up just a tenth short of advancing to the final qualifying segment, while Gasly put the Honda-powered STR13 a shock fifth on the grid.Hartley said a new aero package ...

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As previously reported, the meeting was called by the FIA's Nikolas Tombazis in part as a response to an Australian GP that saw virtually no overtaking.A team of engineers under F1 chief technical officer Pat Symonds has been working on concepts for the 2021 package, but in the interim, ways are being sought to increase the amount of overtaking in the interim seasons of 2019 and ...

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With Vettel having admitted after the season opener in Australia that his team still needs to make big steps with its SF71H, rival Mercedes had come into the Sakhir weekend as favourite.However, thanks to some key steps made to improve his feel of the car, Vettel says that getting on top of the balance helped things "come alive" to deliver an all Ferrari front row."We mostly tried to ...

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The Red Bull driver had put in a time good enough to get him through to Q2, and was completing a second high-speed lap to help sort out some engine settings.But as he ran across the kerbs at Turn 2, the back end of his RB14 stepped out and he spun across the track, hitting the barriers on the outside of the circuit.Having studied the telemetry data on his return to the garage ...

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Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne only managed to qualify in 13th and 14th positions respectively, despite Alonso having shown top-10 form in FP3 on Saturday."Obviously it's a bit of a surprise, based on the pace we had in FP3," Boullier told Sky Sports F1 immediately after Q2. "There is a need for a big investigation."On his last lap Fernando found some pace in Sector 2 and ...

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Raikkonen had the advantage after the first runs in Q3 by 0.095s from Vettel, but failed to improve on his second run.Vettel, who had a precautionary change of the control electronics of his power unit ahead of qualifying, then banged in a lap of 1m27.958s using the supersofts that were the tyre of choice to secure his 51st F1 pole position.Valtteri Bottas was third, just 23 ...

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Raikkonen, who was quickest on Friday, enjoyed an advantage of almost half a second in FP3 as his rivals failed to produce representative laptimes.Teams were hesitant to hit the track given qualifying and Sunday's race will be held in different conditions, and it took 20 minutes for Carlos Sainz to end the wait for a laptime.Sainz's 1m33.893s was never going to be a benchmark that ...

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