It is funny how a bit of expectation can suddenly lead to disappointment.
Kimi Raikkonen spoke as positively as you would expect: the Finn renown for using as few words as possible to convey his emotions, about finishing second in Bahrain on Sunday, his first podium finish in 28 races.
In many ways the 2007 Formula One world champion made the race interesting all on his own. His willingness to try an alternative strategy to his Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel and the two Mercedes-GP drivers made the second half of the race a fascinating contest.
Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Vettel ran with soft tyres for the first two parts of the race, before going to the harder compound for the final 20 laps.
Formula One regulations dictate each driver must use both the soft and hard tyre during the race, and Raikkonen differed by going on the harder compound in the middle part of the race, so he would be on the softer tyre, which is faster as it offers more immediate grip, but deteriorates quicker, for the closing laps.
He was 16 seconds behind Rosberg after making his final stop with 18 laps to go, and he closed to within one second with three laps remaining.
We will never know if Raikkonen could have capped a searing charge with an overtake of Rosberg in front. He didn’t need to, as the German’s brakes caused him to run wide at Turn 1 on the penultimate lap, handing second place on a plate to the Finn.
Interestingly, Hamilton also suffered brake problems on the final lap, but Raikkonen didn’t have enough time to close the gap on the defending world champion and finished three seconds back.
It was a great finish for the Ferrari driver after he had run fourth for much of the race. There is the lingering sense though that he could have won had Ferrari brought Raikkonen in a lap or two earlier for both his first and second pit stops on ageing tyres, losing valuable seconds.
If Ferrari had called him in earlier, it could have put him in range to capitalise on Hamilton’s problems.
Obviously Ferrari were not anticipating the Mercedes cars’ brake problems; they were allowing Raikkonen to race Vettel and the focus was on their inter-team position.
Tyre degradation was not as high as had been anticipated at the Bahrain International Circuit, and so Mercedes were able to maintain their raw speed advantage of up to half-a-second a lap over their rivals.
But Raikkonen’s strategy allowed him to pressure Mercedes, mainly because they were probably too guilty of focusing on Vettel. The German had been their nearest challenger for much of the race but took himself out of the reckoning when he damaged his front wing by running wide over the kerbs, forcing him to make an extra pit stop.
Expectation had been high before the race that Ferrari could beat Mercedes, as they had done with Vettel in Malaysia last month. What Sunday demonstrated though was that unless either Hamilton or Rosberg make a mistake then the Mercedes pair are almost unbeatable.
Vettel and Ferrari were kinder on their tyres in Malaysia, but Mercedes had given them a helping hand with their botched strategy because of an early safety car period, which had gifted Vettel track position.
In Bahrain, Hamilton and Rosberg were clearly fastest on the track when they had to be, and it was only some creative thinking from Ferrari, and their own brake issues, that put the Mercedes cars under pressure.
Not to take anything away from Ferrari: the way the team has turned itself around this season is nothing shy of remarkable. They were woeful in 2014, winless for the first time in 21 years. Yet their fortunes have been transformed by the SF15-T chassis, best demonstrated by Raikkonen, who scored only 55 points in arguably his worst season in F1 last year, but is only 13 points off that tally this season after just four races.
Ferrari have done superb to be best of the rest behind Mercedes. But to stop this becoming a Hamilton walkover, with Rosberg unable to match his teammate’s pace, F1 needs them to start unlocking some perfect performances to take the fight to the Briton.
gcaygill@thenational.ae
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