1) Stoffel Vandoorne is the real deal
McLaren have won a world championship point this season and it has come from neither of their world champions, Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button, but from the Belgian rookie Stoffel Vandoorne. For some time now we’ve been getting off-the-record briefings from Woking that Vandoorne really is something special, and now we know why. The GP2 champion arrived in Bahrain after an 11-hour flight from Japan and, having not even tested the car before, beat his very experienced team-mate Button in qualifying and then came 10th on a faultless F1 debut.
2) Romain Grosjean’s decision to join Haas was inspired
Romain Grosjean’s switch from Lotus, just as his old team was getting big backing from Renault, was questioned last year. Now it looks as if it may be as good a move as Lewis Hamilton’s to Mercedes from McLaren. OK, so Haas are really Ferrari-lite, we know that. But it is still a rookie outfit. Some thought Grosjean’s sixth place in the Australian Grand Prix last month was a bit of a fluke but he followed that up with fifth in Bahrain. He beat both the fast Toro Rossos in qualifying. And though he didn’t make the top eight on Saturday he made the most of rubber advantages to beat both Williams cars and Max Verstappen on Sunday.
3) Formula One is pressing self-destruct but viewers don’t care
On Monday Channel 4, who have replaced the BBC as the terrestrial channel covering F1, were delighted to report that their first live race attracted a peak of 3.2m viewers, with an average of 2.3m over the afternoon. Sky’s well established and terrific coverage attracted an average of 605,000. There’s life in the old box yet.
4) Teams are bewildered by tyres, not just you and me
If you are struggling to tell your prime from your option, and your supersoft from your ultrasoft, the multicoloured Pirellis are also giving the engineers and mechanics a tough time. In Australia the medium tyre (that’s the white one) was so good that a number of outfits were tempted to turn to it again in Bahrain. But on this surface it was less effective. Lewis Hamilton aimed for a long stint on his mediums but aborted the effort because they were simply too slow. It was the same for Williams. Felipe Massa, second on the first lap, finished eighth. “We just chose the wrong strategy. The pace of the car on the mediums was so slow - we couldn’t do anything,” he said.
5) We still don’t know how good the Ferrari is
In Australia Ferrari fluffed their strategy call and in Bahrain, after Sebastian Vettel’s breakdown on the formation lap, followed by Kimi Raikkonen’s poor start (though he finished second) we are still in the dark. The Bahrain winner, Nico Rosberg, said: “They haven’t shown what they are able to do yet, that is clear. They have had so many mishaps which has cost them dearly, so we haven’t seen the real Ferrari yet. We need to be careful. They are coming at us strong. We do know they’re super-close.”