Schumacher and Alonso at the finish.
Renault’s Fernando Alonso started the defence of his world championship in style by fending off Michael Schumacher to win the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Schumacher led from the start as Alonso rose from fourth on the grid to second, and the Renault closed on to the tail of the Ferrari after their first stops.
Alonso took a narrow lead after a later final stop and held on to the end.
McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen was third after starting from the back of the grid, ahead of Honda’s Jenson Button.
The Iceman gets a lot of credit for ending up 3rd having started from the back of the pack — after his suspension failure and crash in qualifying left him with no qualification.
One of the drives of the race was young Nico Rosberg — who also started near the back and was shunted in the 1st lap requiring a lengthy pit stop which put him back on track a lap down. He finished in the points — in 7th — and set fast lap in the process. His 1st Formula 1 race.
wow people were guessing right, Button did very well. And I’m kind of disappointed that kimi finished behind schumi. Oh Well, mercedes is tied in 1st with renault in team standings.
Good race to start the season. Several teams could be up for the championship this year. Definitively Ferrari seems to be back. Renault, McLaren and Honda seem to be very competitive also. It also seems like Williams could be in the podium this year. I worry about McLarens reliability having had the first huge mechanical failure of the year.
I think Nico Rosberg really impressed – didn’t he end up with fastest lap of the race??
For those readers who may not have seen the race yet, would you mind not putting the results in the headline? Over at Autoblog, they warn you in the headline that they are going to discuss race results. Then you don’t have to read that item if you haven’t seen the race yet. And the picture doesn’t help either, so get rid of that.
Martin, I understand your question. I face it, myself, watching sports that have been delayed by the American telecaster. And like anyone else, I can forget to NOT look. I was wandering some RSS feeds, this morning, and noticed Rooney got a couple of early goals for a Man U victory over Newcastle — well before the FSC [delayed] telecast which started a few minutes ago.
However, you could have gotten up at 6AM EST to watch it live on Speed. Or recorded/TiVo’d it — as I did — since it was earlier than I was about to get up and watch live. To require that we don’t discuss a sports event before the repeat broadcast is a bit egregious. Next time, I’ll wait until Left Coast folks have had time to get up and watch — but, the other commenters managed to be up in time to watch live or TiVo’d. As important as the event was to me, I watched it with breakfast.
Yes, my boss is a big Formula 1 race fan. He sometimes has to watch them taped in case he misses it live on Satellite or on the Speed channel. I remember his wife coming into the office and say to me out load,..”You know who won the Formula 1 race this weekend?” I heard the biggest yell, “Don’t say it!”.
Good to see ferrari competitive again
Eideard, I’m not asking you to refrain from discussing the results. I’m just suggesting that it might be helpful not to mention the results in the headline. That way, those people who did not see the event live can skip that item. Simple fix.
The website is viewable worldwide, not just the US, so refering to US time zones is not relevant. There is no way to know when people decide to watch the race. Some will watch it live, some will not.
Point taken, Martin. I was responding after looking at your IP address [about 4 hours drive time south of most of my PEI kin].
Becomes a question of when, I guess. We have regulars who are 12-24 hours further along the time line. Though I don’t know if Greg Allen is an F1 fan.
GRRR! SPOILED FOR ME AS WELL! Some of us work weekends! I can’t tell you how bad that has spoiled my mood. Should I even watch the f’ing thing now?
What next? Are you going to blab about how The Sopranos ended too???
And the most beautiful car award this year goes to – McLaren. The chrome finishing is just exquisite.
I picked the wrong 2 years to stop watching.
But after 2003 how can you blame me?
Why does Speed have to be $70 per month. Just ridiculous.
Caleb, note at the top that this was not posted by Johnny D.