2019 Bahrain Grand Prix - Sakhir, March 29 - 31

[GoranF1]

I can only imagine how Vettel must feel.

-Newcomer Leclerc beats him fair & square
-Race pace was a bit off
-Overtaken by his main rival in spectacular fashion
-Makes a mistake afterwards (maybe not 100% his fault, but still)
-Finishes 5th because of weird front wing complication

Italian media smell blood right now.

Ferrari needs to replace him whit Alonso whit immediate effect.

[Sulman]

Eerily similar to the start of last season, a dominant Ferrari unable to take all the spoils. They need to make hay while the sun shines, because Mercedes will come back an be faster at some point, they seem to be able make it count though.

What was with Bottas today, what was what 24 seconds off Lewis before the yellow flag ? his comeback didn't last long.

And Red Bull about 30 seconds from Leclerc before his issue, the car looked like a dog today

Sakhir's a bit of a weird track. Sadly, so is Shanghai, and then er, Azerbaijan.

It's going to be Barcelona before we really know what's going on.

[Vasconia]

Bottas was on medium before, and the team knew that the car was better with that compound. Lewis did the job to pass Vettel at this time. Anyway Leclerc driving was perfect all the weekend, not deserved 3rd position.

Still don´t understand why Vettel looked slow with the medium, he had been quite fast in the previous stint but he couldn´t build a gap with Lewis and finally he was able to attack him. I could understand it in the first lap but then he couldn´t open a mininum gap. Surprising.

[McMika98]

Kvyat doesn't cut it. He is done. Even today, he was clumsy and was banging the cars.

I don't think it was Kvyat fault though, Giovinazzi understeered into him. From there on, his race was ruined. Also, speed-wise Kvyat is consistently faster than Albon. Not saying Albon is bad, he is driving awesome for a rookie,but Kvyat seems to have stepped up his game.
[/quote]

Albon is 2 - 0 up in quali and have more points. In both races he was ahead for most of the time. Give him some time he will beat Kvyat and Gasly. Shows how bad a reference Hartley was last year.

[MtthsMlw]

[Unc1eM0nty]

Bottas was on medium before, and the team knew that the car was better with that compound. Lewis did the job to pass Vettel at this time. Anyway Leclerc driving was perfect all the weekend, not deserved 3rd position.

Still don´t understand why Vettel looked slow with the medium, he had been quite fast in the previous stint but he couldn´t build a gap with Lewis and finally he was able to attack him. I could understand it in the first lap but then he couldn´t open a mininum gap. Surprising.

He had a 4 second gap before the 2nd stop as well

[dans79]

I'll ask this again, but what kind of issues do people think Ferrari is hiding?

It was rumored they had cooling related issues with the power unit in Australia, and now they had an mgu-h failure.

[Unf]

Reliability - key word to say about who won, who is winning and who is going to win championships. And in that term Mercedes was, is and will be way ahead from Ferrari as long as Italian's will not make huge changes in their engineering departments...

[MtthsMlw]

I'll ask this again, but what kind of issues do people think Ferrari is hiding?

It was rumored they had cooling related issues with the power unit in Australia, and now they had an mgu-h failure.

I'm quite certain it has to do with the completely overhauled cooling config and layout of the PU. That's the most obvious thing that is different to last year's very reliable engine.

[selvam_e2002]

I can only imagine how Vettel must feel.

-Newcomer Leclerc beats him fair & square
-Race pace was a bit off
-Overtaken by his main rival in spectacular fashion
-Makes a mistake afterwards (maybe not 100% his fault, but still)
-Finishes 5th because of weird front wing complication

Italian media smell blood right now.

Ferrari needs to replace him whit Alonso whit immediate effect.

Indeed. should be replaced with Alonso with Immediate effect.

[MtthsMlw]

Reliability - key word to say about who won, who is winning and who is going to win championships. And in that term Mercedes was, is and will be way ahead from Ferrari as long as Italian's will not make huge changes in their engineering departments...

Last year Vettel had zero issues that caused a DNF, Kimi had two. Merc had two in Austria and one in Germany Qualifying.

[dans79]

I'll ask this again, but what kind of issues do people think Ferrari is hiding?

It was rumored they had cooling related issues with the power unit in Australia, and now they had an mgu-h failure.

I'm quite certain it has to do with the completely overhauled cooling config and layout of the PU. That's the most obvious thing that is different to last year's very reliable engine.

if that's true, then they have a really big problem on their hands because that's not going to be easy to change.

[netoperek]

haha priceless! Robert said after the race that even his WRC experience was barely enough to keep the car on track
Weird strategy from Williams, taking Robert off early when he was faster than George and putting softs on, which they knew are terrible on that car (this particular one, George's car is a bit better in this regard). It looked like they wanted to give Russel a clean space with Robert protecting his back, which kinda worked, as Russel got 20+ uneventful laps because of that.
Anyway upcoming testing will be done on Roberts car, to see what the hell is going on with it.

[djones]

Today we all witnessed the end for Vettel I think.

He will only get worse as the pressure builds from within the team (Leclerc).

[Javert]

New aero rules worked in allowing closer racing!