By Sam Cooper
April 15 2007

Britain’s Lewis Hamilton stormed to 2nd just 2.3 seconds behind the winning car of Felipe Massa; Fernando Alonso finished a lowly 5th in today’s Bahrain Grand Prix.

At the start Lewis got a poor start leaving him under threat from Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen, however Fernando Alonso managed to stop that, after getting ahead of Kimi at turn two.

At turn four there was a clash between Jenson Button, Adrian Sutil and Scott Speed, Scott and Jenson going out of the race, Jenson looking surprisingly happy considering that he crashed out, maybe at the thought that he wouldn’t have to driver the problem ridden RA107 for another 57 gruelling laps.

In the laps to come Lewis and Felipe were heavily battling for the lead of the race, while Fernando and Kimi began to fall behind, neither of the two never looking all that fast compared to their younger team mates.

Lewis stopped first when we got to the first pit stop window, suggesting that he did indeed make a mistake on his qualifying lap, as Felipe pitted after Lewis. Meanwhile Fernando and Kimi pitted much later than their team mates.

In the second stint, the McLaren team looked to be struggling with their scrubbed soft tyres and fell off the pace, Lewis and Fernando were losing up to half a second a lap to the Ferrari’s. Lewis and Fernando tried to counterbalance this, and ended up losing 0.1-0.2 seconds a lap which turned out to be costly in the end.

Towards the end of the second stint things began to get better for McLaren, the team were slowly chipping away at the Ferrari’s lead, things were looking up.

Then disaster struck for Fernando, BMW Sauber driver Nick Heidfeld overtook Fernando Alonso, a shame but he was the faster of the two, Alonso began to close up to him at the end of the race.

Meanwhile Lewis began to charge, knocking tenth after tenth of a second out of Massa’s ever shrinking lead, things were about to heat up in the desert.

And heat up they did, Lewis was catching Massa until Anthony Davidson’s engine blew up, causing a dint to be made in Lewis’s comeback drive. This only stopped Lewis from progressing for just one sector, he then began to pile on the pressure.

5.5 seconds behind… 5.2 the gap kept shrinking the further round Lewis got round the circuit. Then with 2 laps to go it reached under 3 seconds.

By the time the race ended the gap was just 2.3 seconds, Lewis must be kicking himself with what could have been, dispite this second is very impressive.

Fernando raced home just 0.6 seconds behind the BMW, being world champion he must have wanted a better race.

Race results will be shown below.

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Pos.	Driver	Team	Time
1	F. Massa	Ferrari	1:32:27.515
2	L. Hamilton	McLaren	+ 2.360
3	K. Räikkönen	Ferrari	+ 10.839
4	N. Heidfeld	BMW	+ 13.831
5	F. Alonso	McLaren	+ 14.426
6	R. Kubica	BMW	+ 45.529
7	J. Trulli	Toyota	+ 1:21.371
8	G. Fisichella	Renault	+ 1:21.701
9	H. Kovalainen	Renault	+ 1:29.411
10	N. Rosberg	Williams	+ 1:29.916
11	A. Wurz	Williams	+ 1 laps
12	R. Schumacher	Toyota	+ 1 laps
13	R. Barrichello	Honda	+ 1 laps
14	C. Albers	Spyker F1	+ 2 laps
15	A. Sutil	Spyker F1	+ 4 laps
16	A. Davidson	Super Aguri	DNF
17	M. Webber	Red Bull	DNF
18	D. Coulthard	Red Bull	DNF
19	T. Sato	Super Aguri	DNF
20	V. Liuzzi	Scuderia Toro Rosso	DNF
21	J. Button	Honda	DNF
22	S. Speed	Scuderia Toro Rosso	DNF

 

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