A Race With No Excuses: Bahrain Grand Prix Race Report 2009

Bahrain Grand Prix Round-up

Click here for official race results for the Bahrain Grand Prix 2009.

Four races down and we are now a quarter of the way through the 2009 F1 season.

Jenson Button has now taken 3 out of 4 wins and is stamping his feet all over this year's championship. As Martin Brundle put it after the race - Jenson has to move on from the 'Brawn GP dream start' to thinking about how he goes on from here and win the title.

The great thing about this weekends race was there were no excuses for teams to hide behind in relation to their performance.

The controversy in Melbourne over the twilight race time and then the monsoon weather featuring in Malaysia and China all contributed to topsy turvy results but in Bahrain the weather was stunningly hot all weekend.

Too hot for Brawn GP - or so they thought. Minutes before the race start it was known that the Brawn GP cars would have extra air release holes to aide cooling. Something that should have slowed them down and made the cars more unstable. But they had no issues and the pace of both cars today was amazing.

Jenson was down beat after qualifying 4th yesterday, saying they had lost that incredible edge the Brawn GP cars enjoyed in the previous races. In the race today however, Jenson managed to overtake Lewis Hamilton, despite Lewis having the KERS system to push to defend. Once Jenson had 3rd place he could hammer in the lap times and this ultimately won him the race as he leapfrogged both Toyotas.

This is great news for Brawn GP and shows they are still very much on top of things. They even have updates coming for the Spanish Grand Prix in 2 weeks which will make them yet quicker.

Toyota will be frustrated.

It was hugs, pats on the back and fairy tales after qualifying 1-2 on the grid yesterday but overall - their race pace just wasn't fast enough to take a race victory. They are still clearly 3rd in the pecking order behind Brawn GP and Red Bull who still look strong at the hands of Sebastian Vettel.

McLarens comeback

Lewis Hamilton will take pleasure in getting 4th position after starting 5th. The car wasn't fast enough to overtake a Toyota or a Red Bull, but it was fast enough to stay close to them and this is a major factor in the progress McLaren is making.

Hamilton finished over 50 seconds ahead of his team mate, Heikki Kovalainen and this shows that Lewis can extract close to 100% from an off the pace Formula 1 car. Awesome news for his doubters and sceptics who believe his 2007 and 2008 performances were all because of his machine. Clearly that wasn't the case.

There's plenty of positively for his fortunes going into the European F1 season.

Ferrari makes a point

Quite literally as Kimi Raikkonen finished 6th meaning Ferrari leapfrogs Force India in the constructor's championship.

It's a terrible state of affairs at Ferrari right now with this awful start they've had and the only comfort they'll take from Bahrain Grand Prix is the fact that 2009 isn't the worst ever start to a Formula 1 championship campaign. Enjoy...

It was a great Grand Prix today with plenty to talk about. Importantly, the race showed you don't necessarily have to be on pole position to win.