SAKHIR, BAHRAIN (BDCi TV) – – Sebastian Vettel won the Grand Prix of Bahrain handily over Kimi Raikkonen Sunday keeping him ahead of anyone in the 2013 driver points standings.
The defending 3-time champion won by 9.1 seconds even with one more pit stop than Raikkonen. He took over for pole winner Nico Rosberg after a couple laps and didn’t look back.
“Well done to the whole team, to everyone here, to the factory in the background and especially to those who were working on the strategy today; it worked just as we expected, so we obviously got the numbers right”, a gleaming Vettel said after the race.
Vettel’s win gives him 77 points to second place Raikkonen’s 67 points.
For Raikkonen of the Lotus team, it was another top 2 finish; he’s been either first or second three of the four races in 2013. His teammate Romain Grosjean earned a respectable 3rd after passing Paul Di Resta with seven laps to go.
Team-wise both Red Bull (109 points) and Lotus (93 points) advanced at the expense mostly of team Ferrari (77 points) who had a Sunday they’d rather forget.
Fernando Alonso salvaged an eighth place finish after busting his DRS (Drag Resistance Sysem) in the ninth lap. His Brazilian teammate Felipe Massa finished in a forgettable 15th place, 86.3 seconds behind Vettel.
“I was really unlucky in this race and even if it’s true that many things can happen in this sport, I can’t find an explanation for why so many of them have to be negative”, Massa relayed to the media afterward. “Now we must try and understand exactly what happened and immediately turn our attention to the next race.”
There will plenty of time for Ferrari and other teams to figure things out with a 3-week hiatus between now and the Gran Premio de Espana to be held on the weekend of May 10-12th.