Lewis Hamilton dives inside Nico Rosberg on the first lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix Saturday night. Hamilton beat his teammate by one second. [Photo by Getty Images]
SAKIR, Bahrain- In what was a race of passing between teammates, still became a great Sunday night event at the Bahrain International Circuit as Lewis Hamilton held off his teammate Nico Rosberg by one second to win the 10th Grand Prix of Bahrain. Sergio Perez gave Sahara Force India their first podium and personally, his best finish in over a year.
“It’s great to see that we have such a great following here, I am so grateful to the team for getting us up here and this is my first win here in Bahrain which is nice.” said Hamilton.
The start began with both Hamilton and Rosberg coming around the opening corner, with the Briton getting around the inside to take the lead, which he held during the opening laps. On the same lap, Jean-Eric Vergne encountered contact with Romain Grosjean and flattened his rear right tire. On the same lap, Jules Bianchi and Adrian Sutil touched, in which the former suffered a shredded rear right tire. Hamilton by lap 12, was 1.4 seconds ahead of Rosberg, and considering the action that was going on behind the top two, by lap 37, Hamilton continued to increase his lead to 9.2 seconds.
But on lap 41, the lead that Hamilton had diminished, as Sauber driver Estaban Guttierrez was struck by Pastor Maldonado, filipping the Mexican’s car and scattering debris all over the track. Gutierrez escaped without any harm, and Maldonado to return back to the pits for a 10 second infraction, but it took minutes for the safety car to come out and just when the field began to bunch up for the restart, Mclaren’s Kevin Magnussen encountered engine trouble and pulled off the track.The safety car pulled into the pits with 10 laps to go, but it did not hurt Hamilton, as he took off quickly in front of Rosberg and continued to lead the race. With five laps left and on good tires , Rosberg made an attempt to overtake his teammate, but Hamilton held on and won by only a second. Daniel Ricciardo nearly passed Perez for third, but ran out of time as the Mexican just held out for the last podium position.
Nico Hulkenberg after being passed by Riccairdo late in the race, ended up in fifth, while Sebastian Vettel had his worst finish since 2008 in sixth. The Williams pair of Felipe Massa and Valterri Bottas took seventh and eighth, respectively, while the Ferrari duo of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen rounded out the top ten.
For Hamilton, it was his second win in a row and his 24th of his career. But the threat of his teammate was something that was on his mind which could stay the course of this season.
“It was really exciting, Nico drove fantastically well, it was so fair but it was so hard to keep him behind me, I was on a real knife edge at the end but just managed to take it.” he said.
Mark Gero has written formula one racing stories since 2002 on the Internet for such sites as Motorsport.com, Racing Information Service News and for a brief time at the Munich Eye newspaper in Munich, Germany along with Autoweek online. Mark also has a diploma in journalism from the London School of Journalism in London, England and in addition a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa.