Alonso powers to victory

Fernando Alonso won Sunday’s Bahrain GP ahead of his teammate Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton.

Third on the grid, the Spaniard elbowed his way through to second place at the start of the race as pole-sitter Sebastian Vettel eased away in the lead. Alonso couldn’t match the pace of the Red Bull in the early stage of the race and found himself under the pressure of Massa.

The leading trio pitted on laps 17 (Alonso) and 18 (Vettel and Massa) and rejoined the race in the same order. Vettel looked quite in control by then but reported a loss of power (due to a suspected broken exhaust) on lap 34. The German suddenly started to lose two to three seconds a lap and could do nothing to prevent Alonso from taking the lead. The Ferrari driver got past easily and powered to his first victory for the Scuderia.

It took only one lap for Massa to take 2nd and guarantee a one-two for the Italian team. Lewis Hamilton disposed of Vettel a few laps later to join both Ferrari drivers on the podium. Nursing his wounded Red Bull, Vettel did really well to hold on to fourth place from Nico Rosberg but will no doubt be really disappointed.

Michael Schumacher crossed the line in sixth place ahead of current World Champion Jenson Button and Mark Webber. The final points went to Force India’s Tonio Liuzzi and Williams’s Rubens Barrichello.

Robert Kubica and Adrian Sutil took 11th and 12th after a disastrous first lap.

Lotus easily won the battle of the new teams, with both cars seeing the chequered flag. None of the Virgin or HRT cars made it to the finish.

Both Sauber and Renault’s Vitaly Petrov were also amongst the retirees.