2010 Bahrain Grand Prix – the complete F1 Fanatic review

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Review the Bahrain Grand Prix with F1 Fanatic's complete coverage

Find all the F1 Fanatic Bahrain Grand Prix coverage in one place below – from the first sight of the 2010 season’s new cars through to detailed analysis of how every driver fared in Sunday’s race.

Race

Alonso heads one-two on Ferrari debut – Perfect start for Ferrari as reliability trouble hits Red Bull again.

Bahrain Grand Prix in pictures – The race from start to finish in 77 hi-res pictures.

Rate the race: Bahrain – Your verdict on the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Bahrain Grand Prix result – Full classification.

Championship standings after Bahrain – Maximum points for Ferrari after the first race.

Bahrain Grand Prix fastest laps – Each drivers’ fastest lap and the top 50 fastest laps of the race.

Rosberg stymies Hamilton while Vettel saves fourth (Bahrain GP analysis) – Lap charts and more analysis of the race.

Rosberg surprises against Schumacher (Bahrain Grand Prix team mate battles) – A detailed look at how every driver did against his team mate with graphs of all their laps.

Bahrain Grand Prix stats and facts – Interesting info from the first race of 2010.

Which track should Bahrain use in 2011? – The revised Bahrain Grand Prix circuit wasn’t an instant hit. Should the race organisers change the venue again next year?

Qualifying

Vettel holds back Ferrari charge for pole (Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying) – A surprise pole position for Sebastian Vettel prevented an all-Ferrari front row.

Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying in pictures – Saturday photos.

Bahrain Grand Prix grid – The full starting line-up and when each driver was eliminated in Q1, Q2 and Q3.

Vettel faces Ferrari threat in season opener (Bahrain GP pre-race analysis) – Looking ahead to the race.

Practice

Bahrain Grand Prix practice in pictures – Our first sight of the full 2010 field in action.

Sutil heads Bahrain free practice one – Force India fastest to begin with.

Bahrain Grand Prix FP1 analysis – A look at all the times from free practice one.

Rosberg quickest in Bahrain practice two – Perennial 2009 practice-leader Rosberg does it again.

Bahrain Grand Prix FP2 analysis – All the times from free practice two.

Alonso fastest in final practice – Alonso shows his hand ahead of qualifying.

Bahrain GP press conference: Schumacher, Hamilton, Alonso, Button and Massa – F1’s four champions plus the returning Massa on the first race of the year.

2010 Bahrain Grand Prix – The F1 Fanatic unofficial race programme – All the pre-race material.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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30 comments on “2010 Bahrain Grand Prix – the complete F1 Fanatic review”

  1. Great coverage of the weekend F1 Fanatic, this is the first season i have added f1fanactic to part of my f1 experience lovin it so far especially the discussions. Keep up the good work keith!

  2. A video showing first 30 seconds of the race from Hamilton’s onboard camera. Hamilton was fighting with Massa and out-braked himself. http://skrci.me/LHFMNR

    1. Damn, that was almost awesome….until it finished 5 seconds too early. Still cool to see though, because I missed that during the race.

      1. Yeah, sorry about that, but it’s all that was. It’s still good enough to see what happened. More videos to follow (BUT vs. WEB in pits, HAM pits, VET pole lap onboard, Ferraris and Hamilton overtaking Vettel).

        1. yea that was a good replay, a good perspective that we didnt see during the race. Looks like he just about got the job done then out-breaked himeself due to having dirty tyres. thanks :)

    2. You know I think this race suffered rather badly at the hands of it’s producer. There was a fair amount of overtaking at the back, an we missed so many moments like these. The Guy seems totaly incapable of using the replay button, an spotting closeley following cars.

      During races when not much happens at the front it’s up to the producer to show us the exciting stuff.

      1. You’re right. How many replays did we even see? Only few :( I think in Australia it will be much better.

      2. agree Scribe. Was thinking the same myself and it’s not helped the fact that everyone is saying there was little action

        1. Hopefully they are rusty too, just like Schumi :-)

          By the second telecast, they should get their act together..including the ladder during quali…

      3. DId they every show a replay of how Chandhok crashed? I just remember seeing him climbing out of the HRT which had a distinct lack of a nose cone. I never saw how it happened.

      4. Indeed. Amazing how they could have missed that one. During the race I only saw a glimps of Hamilton just about past Massa and the next time they showed the cars Hamilton was behind Massa.

        Also, there were 21 overtakes on track during the race (not counting the first lap). How many of those did we get to see?

        If the camera just follows the 8 cars at the front who will never take the risk of damaging their tyres during the first race, then the whole race looks pretty boring yes.

        BTW this damned spamfilter is starting to annoy me to no end.

      5. Yes, I could not agree with you more Scribe, where do they get these producers? High School?

    3. Two more videos (pole position onboard lap and Hamilton’s pit stop onboard) are now on the same link: http://skrci.me/LHFMNR

      1. your poor blog seems to have gone down under the weight of a hundred hungry fanatics my friend. Still great videos, you should be in productions.

  3. Extraordinary effort Keith!

  4. Thanks for everything this weekend Keith!
    You and all the Fanatics here make this my #1
    F1 site!

  5. Hamilton says Massa stop him in the first corner. Hahahaha! Hamilton cry…

  6. Red Bull will have to dump Renault if they want real success!

    1. 2nd that. Webber’s oil and Vettle’s spark plug. Great review. Thanks Keith! Is there an article/review on every race the fastest pit stops – stationary and from entry to exit? I think this will be an exiting review on who is the master of pit stops. (i only noticed mclaren is really fast) interested to compare times of drivers of same team and in comparison to other teams. ranking of the fastest team to the slowest. Keith can I suggest to include this to the top 50 fastest laps article.

      1. What’s that got to do with Renault’s engines?

        Putting too much oil in the engine isn’t the fault of the engine design, it’s down to the muppet engineer tasked with filling up the oil.
        Faulty spark plugs aren’t anything to do with engine desing either.

        Red Bull have been tarting this line that all their problems are down to Renault since the middle of last year. Only one out of four cars running those engines last year had any problems. Red Bull had plenty of *other* reliability problems that were nothing to do with engines. Excuses, excuses. When your car doesn’t switch itself off going over a bunp, your wing mirrors stay on, your brakes work, and your mechanics can tell the difference between a pint and a litre, then you can start complaining about engines, boys.

    2. Er why, Renault is a whole lot closer to Mercedes in terms of power than last year, an consumes vastly less fuel than Ferrari. Did you not notcie Vettle disaperaing into the distance at the begining FUEL EFFECT. Because of the fuel effect Vettle gained a big enough cushion to prevent Ferrari from splitting tactics effectively. The car isn’t amazingly aerodynamically superior to the Ferrari, it does eat it’s tyres marginally faster. If Vettle won it would have been more down to the huge advantage his engine gave him at the beggining of the race then his chassis. An there calling it a spark plug problem, well along with that being Redbulls fault that huge rent in the side of the Redbull on it’s revolutionary exahst system didn’t burn itself.

      Renault, especially now they’ve mostly seperated from their works team, has a massive intrest in the engines going into that Redbull as their “works” team aint gong to in anything so the engines Redbull are getting will be tip top. With the new rules it could well turn out to be the choice engine in the paddock, just think comparable power, an 10KG’s less fuel.

  7. Keith, thanks for the excellent coverage of the weekend and the detailed analysis which as always is one of the outstanding features of this site.

  8. Ecclestone speaks wise:

    “It is basically the same problem we have had for the last few years about downforce and cars not being able to get close to the one in front to create more overtaking.

    “The teams know this but they won’t do anything about it because each team looks after its own interests: trying to win.

    “I had a meeting with the teams and tried to explain to them what our business is about – racing and entertaining the public. It’s not about playing with computers and going fast over one lap.”

    As we feared, it is the teams with the wind-tunnel investments that do not want to lower aero advantages… Ironically, it would help teams like Renault. My guess is that Ferrari are the ones to blame for this.. while I am a fan of Ferrari since I knew what a car was (and a Ferrari is that) I am very annoyed that they continue to use their weight to suffocate the sport. They have Alonso and Massa, I would think that they would still be favorites for a championship or two.

    1. It’s a sad day when I agree with Bernie Ecclestone, but something needs to be done about modern F1’s lack of overtaking.

  9. Ok. I have had enough.

    Instead of limiting RPM
    or tyres or whatever, there
    is one easy way to provide
    overtaking.

    All the teams love the wings
    for sponsor issues.
    We may not eliminate wings.

    Wings provide valuable sponsor
    signage.

    So, provide an open formula, as
    the series should be, with specific
    aerodynamics from the front axle
    forward, and from the rear axle
    rearward.

    The wings should be basically singage
    that even the fools of the FIA could
    make irrelevant.

    The teams get their primo ad spots,
    and the FIA designs aeros that allow
    slip-streaming and passing.

    Easy-peasy, Japanesie …….

    1. What really gets me miffed, is the argument from some teams from the ground effects days about the ad spots.

      During the ground effects days these same teams were not that concerned about wings for the ad spots.

  10. If Sutil didn’t hit Robert, Kubica definitely would be higher in competition!

  11. What does everyone think to the new Russian driver, Petrov?

  12. … and now for the REAL start of the season. Australia should always be the first race. Great track, great atmosphere, almost always great racing…. I think people will change their opinions of the rules once they’ve seen that, as we already know and have known for years, the tracks are the real problem in F1.

    Spa, Suzuka, Albert Park, Brazil etc. Always a good race.

  13. As a little chap of seven, my father took my brothers and I to see my first F1 race, a thrill that has never left me, (I am now 56). I am saddened by the dumbing down of F1, one moment it’s changes for ‘driver safety’, a move to appease the ‘politically correct’, no real danger no real thrill if you ask me. The move to put petrol in the pits was to ensure less drivers ignited with a full tank of gas in the boot, and to emulate American racing (cart), under the mistaken notion that it would encourage U.S. fans to watch. I think if I were a driver carrying a full race distance of fuel on board I would be very nervous indeed. Drivers were thought of as real risk takers, play boys, facing the very real possibility of death at every turn. Now what have we? a motley crew of high paid, manicured, publicity spokes men, (No women drivers yet), running predictable precessions around the new multi million dollar tracks that with few exceptions look the same. Am I the only one that feels fed up that a wonderful sport is slowly being ruined for a buck and a pound?
    P.S. Thank you Keith for this fantastic forum done I am sure, for the love of the sport and from the heart!
    aja

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