.

Mercedes have done exactly what we thought would be possible in Qualifying today, and put both of their cars on the first two grid slots for tomorrows race. However that doesn’t guarantee them a one-two tomorrow, even though Monaco is notorious for being a circuit you can’t overtake on, strategy will play a key part in the overtaking on track.

We said on Wednesday that Pirelli were saying two-stops will ‘the norm’ amongst drivers, with the one stop also being on the cards. Looking at Mercedes’ pace and recent races - particularly for Hamilton - we are likely going to see them do a two stop for both of their drivers. Mercedes are having issues with controlling the surface temperature of their tyres, something that will likely have an effect in tomorrows race when it comes to them conserving.

We’ve already saw from the times set in Practice that after 16 laps, the Super-Soft [which is what all of the top ten are starting on] starts to drop off by two seconds a lap. If you’re going to do a one stop, you need to at least take it up to lap 34 or 36 in order to make it to the end of the race on Softs. Mercedes simply can’t make it to that lap without loosing too much time, so they will have to make sure they pit when Red Bull do in order to cover off them.

Red Bull will probably try the two-stop with Mark and one-stop with Seb, as he tries to cover Raikkonen who will definitely do a one stop, given that Lotus like to put him on conservative yet fast strategies. They also have quite quick soft tyre pace compared to their rivals, so Lotus will obviously be wanting to capitalise on that.

Speaking of Lotus, it was quite surprising to see Grosjean only qualify 13th after seeing his fast pace in Practice and during the early stages of Qualifying. Whilst Grosjean has shunted his car twice this weekend, it hasn’t affected his speed. We will likely see him do a two stop tomorrow, in order to get into the top ten and past the threatening Toro Rosso and Force India’s who will also likely be doing two stops.

Caterham are also in the mix, who will likely want to advance from their position in 15th into the points at the start. Van der Garde has the pace to challenge the midfield at the start, however that might not be the case as the fuel levels come down and outright car performance starts to contribute to driver pace.

Ferrari meanwhile are looking interesting from their starting positions. Alonso has already stated this weekend that he aims to beat Vettel and Raikkonen, as they are the two stopping him from having the number ‘1’ beside his name in the drivers championship standings. Last time out Ferrari went for the ‘faster-but-more-stops’ three stop strategy, and that allowed Alonso to push throughout the race and ultimately take victory. This time, whilst there is the option to do that, Ferrari might want to cover off Lotus, so we may see them adopt a one-stop.

One Ferrari driver who will likely be on a two-stop is Felipe Massa, who like his teammate three years ago, starts from last after crashing in Practice 3. Ferrari could pit him on lap one, because he’s only going to loose time anyway, and make him run qualifying laps until the rest all pit for their tyres around lap 14/16. They could also start him from the pits and employ the same strategy as Alonso in 2010; run him on Super-Softs from the pitbox to the end of the pitlane, change them to Softs as the cars do their parade lap and run him on them from the start, although it will mean he will have to pit later on for another set of Softs.

Either way, tomorrow will be all about consistency for the one-stoppers. They need to be making sure that they are fast enough to maintain the gap between the two-stoppers once they have pitted, otherwise they will find themselves being passed. At the end one-stoppers are also vulnerable because they will have less tyre life than the two stoppers who have pitted for fresh rubber. However the two stoppers will have to wait three or four laps before their tyres are fully up to temperature, depending on the track temp.

The Grid

1. Nico Rosberg - 1:13.876
2. Lewis Hamilton - 1:13.967
3. Sebastian Vettel - 1:13.98
4. Mark Webber - 1:14.181
5. Kimi Raikkonen - 1:14.822
6. Fernando Alonso - 1:14.824
7. Sergio Perez - 1:15.138
8. Adrian Sutil - 1:15.383
9. Jenson Button - 1:15.647
10. Jean-Eric Vergne - 1:15.703
11. Nico Hulkenberg - 1:18.331
12. Daniel Ricciardo - 1:18.344
13. Romain Grosjean - 1:18.603
14. Valtteri Bottas - 1:19.077
15. Giedo van der Garde - 1:19.408
16. Pastor Maldonado - 1:21.688
17. Paul di Resta - 1:26.322
18. Charles Pic - 1:26.633
19. Esteban Gutierrez - 1:26.917
20. Max Chilton - 1:27.303
21. Jules Bianchi - No time
22. Felipe Massa - No time

In all my years of watching Formula 1, I still have to question how we’re able to turn - effectively an entire country - into one big race venue where 22 of the finest pieces of machinery and drivers in the world muscle their way around, what should theoretically be the impossible. Making a gambling is as crucial on the track as it is in the casino’s in Monaco. It truly is the last of the crazy tracks.

With the talk of tyres dominating the better part of the 2013 season so far, I thought I’d start off with the tyre nominations for this weekends race. Pirelli will be bringing the yellow-marked Soft tyre and the red-marked Super-Soft tyre.

Pirelli say they expect to see two stops as “the norm” and that track evolution will play a part in the weekend because practice takes part on a Thursday in a race weekend rather than a Friday, and because the track is open to the public on Friday, it could play a part in how ‘green’ the track is on Saturday for that practice session.

Paul Hembery for Pirelli said “Monaco has very low tyre wear and degradation. This doesn’t make the race any less strategic however, as in the past we have seen drivers trying completely different strategies yet ending up very close to each other at the finish.”

Another factor the drivers have to take into consideration is how heavy this track is on the brakes. In fact its that heavy, the heat from the brakes actually transmit to the tyres, which adds to the stress placed on the tyre structure. Entering Sainte Devote, for example, the cars scrub off 160kph in just 100 metres. The tyres also have extremely big demands placed on them in the swimming pool complex, where they hit the kerbs at more than 200kph and experience lateral forces of 3.65g.

Whilst some times it might not look like it, the drivers that make it into Formula 1 are ones endorsed by the FIA as having the highest driving standards in order to compete at such a high level in motorsport. This also rings true for GP2, and in some capacity GP3. Last weekends GP2 race on Saturday was action packed with some great moments for the fans. But in terms of racing, it was amateur level to say the least.

Believe it or not, actual racing is more of a spectacle than cars riding over the top of one-another. There were a lot of moments like this, but for the majority of the race all sense of room and the rules about car widths just went out of the window.

We saw cars being turned into when there was clearly enough room on the circuit to stay wheel to wheel, and there was just stupid moves being made which resulted in inevitable contact. To put things in perspective, one driver, Sergio Canamasas finished the race without a rear wing in both the feature and sprint race.

But there was one incident that actually involved the highlighted incident with Canamasas in the sprint race that I thought was not looked at properly by the stewards. It involved Canamasas and Jonny Checotto Jr, who on the second-to-last lap, was fighting to keep third position. On entry into turn 12 Checotto ran a little bit off the apex, allowing Canamasas to run up the inside and go side-by-side on the exit.

However on entry into turn 13, Checotto made a questionable move on the Caterham GP2 driver, which caused a chain reaction as he boxed the pack up, causing Haryanto to run into the back of Canamasas and take out his front wing and Canamasas’ rear wing, whilst also forcing everyone else to run wide and dangerously rejoin the track with some contact involved. Canamasas then continued on without the rear wing as the incident happened after the pits, so he couldn’t really pull in, so it forced him to run the last lap without a crucial part of downforce into some of F1’s fastest corners.

You could argue that it was Haryanto’s fault for running into Canamasas, but looking at the footage, yes he did out-brake himself, but the whole thing was caused by Checotto. I don’t wish to pick on Checotto when I say this, but the guy doesn’t know the limits of the cars in close contact. The whole point of progressing to GP2 is showing your race craft you’ve accumulated over racing in the lower formula’s, not to show how well you use your car as a weapon.

F1 teams don’t want to see contact of any kind, whether it be mistakes or stupidity. That might well have been a mistake from Jonny, but the last couple of incidents in which he effectively drove another competitor off the track for impeding his qualifying run in Malaysia, are just unacceptable. Will Buxton made the point in commentary, because the stewards chose the soft line in Malaysia, its just stopped a line from being drawn for the guy.

The incident I’ve just talked about wasn’t investigated by the stewards, however a driver picking up a flag at the end of race, having just won and being high off of the euphoria of winning infront of his home crowed, did get investigated. I’m not one to knock the race stewards, but this time they really did screw up. Whether it will come back to haunt them is one thing, but I do think they need to draw a line when it comes to driving standards, because this level of competition is too high for those kinds of antics.

The talk of the paddock and fans is all set on the tyres. The words “Pirelli” and “Tyre” have been said more times this afternoon than “Fernando” and “Wins.” Red Bull were caught up in this having saved three sets of hard tyres, and Lotus were in conservation mode with Raikkonen, whilst Mercedes just dropped back as their tyres dropped off the cliff.

The four stop was the favourite amongst the teams, Ferrari elected to go on this with both of their drivers, pitting in Massa early on lap 8, then Alonso a lap later, both of them on new sets of Hard tyres. This proved to be a crucial move in the race, as it meant the indecisive Red Bull and three stopping Lotus would have to turn their pace up a little, if they wanted to stay ahead of the prancing horses.

Mercedes meanwhile were always going to drop back. Rosberg defended well in the first stage of the race, actually using his last sector pace against Vettel who said he despises the final “mickey mouse chicane” in the press conference on Saturday, to eak out enough of a gap to stay clear in the first DRS zone. But from the first pit stops, it was just a case of when they would drop back from the pace of the others.

Ferrari meanwhile, managed to get Alonso out in some clear air in the first stint, allowing him to put in the lap times needed to undercut Vettel and Raikkonen. Then it was a case of negotiating Rosberg, which he did so with aggression at the first corner with the aid of DRS. Vettel swiftly followed suit, as did Massa and Raikkonen.

Then it was a case of Alonso just stretching out the gap, yet again on pure pace as Red Bull conserved their tyres. This happened to be the turning point for Red Bull, they knew Alonso was on a four stop, radioing into Vettel saying he can “put in Qualifying pace,” but by the time they told him this, it was too late.

Raikkonen meanwhile, arguably the only driver to make the three stop work apart from Button, found himself behind Vettel after pitting for what would be his second to last time. He was a lot faster, which meant this wasn’t good for Lotus’ strategy, as all the time that he spent behind him, he lost to Alonso. Vettel didn’t put up much of a fight after four laps, when he realised its just going to take life out of his tyres. Raikkonen however was now 10 seconds behind Alonso, who was leading his teammate quite comfortably during the second stint.

Then on the last stint, Raikkonen switch to new Hards, allowing him to overtake Massa whilst he pitted, and close the gap to Alonso who had to pit again for his final set of Mediums. However by that time the gap was some 18 seconds, enough for Alonso to pit. He had to come in two laps earlier though, as he pushed his tyres that much during that stint, that the right rear nearly delaminated, like we’ve seen happen to other drivers throughout the weekend.

From then on in, even after the pit stop, Alonso managed to stretch the gap out to another ten seconds ahead of Raikkonen. By then he’d lapped the entire field up to tenth place, who were all too busy driving to a delta.

Bottom line in today’s race, Alonso was mighty. He made the four stop work, as did his teammate, through out-and-out pace. Red Bull could have done this, but by the time they realised it was faster, the race had already been lost.

The talk has been about whether or not these Pirelli tyres are dictating the race too much, and I can only refer to what I said last week, and to todays race. I reiterate, Fernando Alonso won today on pure speed. It wasn’t on tyre conservation and making sure he had the right amount of sets heading into Sunday from Friday and Saturday, it was on speed. Alonso proved today that, yet again he is the second coming of the great Gilles Villeneuve for me.

Whilst there has been particular focus on all of the developments the teams have made in the last month for their cars, the main focus has been on the on-track action. Practice provided us with a moderate long and short fuelled run pace ideas, but Qualifying provided us with the raw pace numbers.

Nico Rosberg starts from the first grid slot in tomorrows race, alongside his teammate Lewis Hamilton who will take up the second grid slot. Then behind them is the Red Bull of Sebastien Vettel, then the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen which is situated ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari, who rounds up the top five.

Looking at the times, both Mercedes drivers were posting lap times in the high 1:23’s in Practice Two on the Hard tyre - which happened to be the only time they ran that tyre - which is around seven or six tenths off of the average pace being set on those times by the other teams [i.e Ferrari, Red Bull, Lotus]. Those were likely set on high fuel loads, as towards the end of Practice Two they posted lap times in the low 1:23’s, which is still four tenths off the Ferrari’s and Red Bulls.

Their Medium tyre pace however is something they’ve been really looking at. They ran the tyre competitively for all of Practice 3 and were eight tenths slower than the fastest Ferrari of Felipe Massa. In Practice Two they were running the tyre on high fuel loads by the looks of it, posting lap times similar to what they did on the hard tyre, on low fuel runs.

Both Hamilton and Rosberg admitted they might struggle in the press conference, with Hamilton saying “I’ve got to look over things tonight and work out how I can limit the degradation tomorrow which is going to be a big problem for me.” So it could well be a case of a four stop for both Mercedes drivers if they have tyre deg issues, which won’t bode down well in the opening first couple of laps if it happens early on and they find themselves in the DRS detection point.

Ferrari meanwhile have the most consistent pace out of the bunch. Fernando Alonso was setting lap times in the 1:23.000 dead zones on the hard tyre, whilst Felipe Massa was three tenths slower. Then on the Medium tyre, the Ferrari’s were posting lap times in the high 1:21’s on low fuel, whilst they were high 1:22’s on high fuel loads. They will likely adopt the three stop; Medium, Medium, then Hard for Alonso, and put Massa on the four stop incase they find that to be faster overall.

The Lotus’ are their biggest threat I think. They were showing similar, if not exactly the same pace as Ferrari in Practice and in Qualifying in terms of raw lap time. They will probably elect to go for the three stop for Kimi and put Romain on a four stop. If it does go like that, it will be interesting to see what Romain can do in that last stint on fresher tyres than Alonso, Vettel, or Webber.

Red Bull are also looking quite racy, with Vettel in third best pipped to take the lead first out of the Ferrari, Lotus and Red Bull battle. He will likely go for a four stop having said he will eat his own hat if anyone does a two stop, and also saving three sets of the hard compound tyre. Mark Webber meanwhile, who showed similar pace to Sebastien on the Medium tyre doing high 1:22’s on high fuel runs, then low 1:22’s on low fuel runs, will probably go for the four stop. Overall Red Bull will be looking at a one-two, or possibly one-three depending on how well Mark’s stints go. But competition is high between the top three.

Elsewhere I’d look out for Toro Rosso, they will probably take us by surprise and race in the top ten alongside Force India for the majority of the race. They will probably finish ahead of McLaren, as they have been faster than them all weekend. Caterham will also look good, possibly even faster than Williams at this rate as Van Der Garde was just 1.3 second off of Valteri Bottas in Qualifying, who looked like he was fighting his car rather than driving it when the onboard shots went to him, which won’t be good for tyre life.

Which segways me into my final point for this article, tomorrow will be all about the tyres. Yes, I know that has been the case for the past four races, but it won’t be for similar factors. This time its all about making the tyres last in the middle stint, so you can switch to the hard later on in the final stint to do a two stop. We will see a lot of teams probably converting if they find that they have to manage the tyres at the cost of actual pace, which is why those who choose the three stop will be vulnerable to the fighting four stoppers later on in the second stint.

Track evolution will also play a big part in the race tomorrow, again suiting the four stoppers who will have the extra life out of the tyres to make use of the greener track conditions.

1. Nico Rosberg - 1:20.718s
2. Lewis Hamilton - 1:20.972s + 0.254s
3. Sebastian Vettel - 1:21.054s + 0.336s
4. Kimi Raikkonen - 1:21.177s + 0.459s
5. Fernando Alonso - 1:21.218s + 0.500s
6. Romain Grosjean - 1:21.308s + 0.590s
7. Mark Webber - 1:21.570s + 0.852s
8. Felipe Massa - 1:21.219s + 0.501s [3 place grid penalty]
9. Sergio Perez - 1:22.069s + 1.351s
10. Paul di Resta - 1:22.233s + 1.515s
11. Daniel Ricciardo - 1:22.127s + 1.126s
12. Jean-Eric Vergne - 1:22.166s + 1.165s
13. Adrian Sutil - 1:22.346s + 1.345s
14. Jenson Button - 1:23.166s + 2.165s
15. Nico Hulkenberg - 1:22.389s + 1.388s
16. Valtteri Bottas - 1:23.260s + 1.532s
17. Pastor Maldonado - 1:23.318s + 1.590s
18. Giedo van der Garde - 1:24.661s + 2.933s
19. Esteban Gutierrez - 1:22.793s + 1.792s [3 place grid penalty]
20. Jules Bianchi - 1:24.713s + 2.985s
21. Max Chilton - 1:24.996s + 3.268s
22. Charles Pic - 1:25.070s

We will commentating on the race live at http://twitter.com/f1weekends, so be sure to follow us.

The Spanish Grand Prix is the fifth round on the calendar to fans, but to the teams its the race where you show off what you can do. Its where all of your development pace is put to the test, whether it be large or small updates, this is the place where we see the teams bring their most crucial developments for the next couple of races in the season.

McLaren

First of all we’ll start off with McLaren. Whilst Bahrain helped McLaren a little bit with the high track temperatures, they haven’t been on the pace so far this year. Their developments include a revised front wing, which they haven’t actually ran yet due to parts just arriving this morning. The new front wing however features similarities to Red Bull’s with some curved endplates present. They also have a couple of unspecified ‘background’ components according to Jenson Button, and revised brake ducts and bargeboard winglets.

They have also adopted a similar side-pod design to their 2011 car - the MP4-26 - curving them slightly as it channels to the rear of the car. They have also bridged their turning veins, so it connects to the sidepod and are using Vortex Generators atop of the sidepod inlet to try and further enhance the airflow towards the coanda exhaust.

McLaren didn’t really get a lot of running in Practice 1, with Button doing only six laps and Perez doing six as well before he had to come in because of a loose brake duct which came off the car. In Practice 2 the conditions improved of course, however McLaren say they won’t be racing their new front wing this weekend because the parts arrived late and they wanted their drivers to get to grips with the car for Practice 3 after lost a lot of time in Practice 1 on Friday.

Ferrari

Ferrari have brought a number of alterations to their car this weekend, including new sidepod wings alongside sculpted undercut sidepods. They have also brought developments for their front wing.

Up close the sidepod developments seem to be the most visible, with a smoother bodywork design near the UPS logo on their car designed to make more air flow alongside that area, rather than have it push down towards the floor. They have also taken away a couple of slots at the bottom on the sidepod close the floor, where are designed to increase cooling performance. These will likely disappear again at events with lower ambient temperatures.

Only Felipe Massa was running with the developments in Practice, as Alonso will be used as the baseline comparison. In terms of how much pace its gained Ferrari, it has largely been similar to what it has been throughout the first part of the season so far in Spain. Both Ferrari’s have been in the top three for every Practice session, their sector times are consistent. Their nearest challengers seem to be Lotus and Red Bull, although Lotus are loosing in areas where Ferrari and in some capacity Red Bull are gaining.

Red Bull

The Red Bull ran with a lot of flow-vis paint on the front-end of their car in Practice on Friday. They have brought a couple of front wing elements to this weekends race and new brake ducts at the front. The rear is where it is happening for them though, they have a new configuration to their rear-wing endplate which has some influence on the diffuser.

They also have a smaller beam wing, which has these roundings on the trailing edge which create more downforce close the centreline of the car, while the reduced frontal area of the beam wing will cause less drag and downforce closer to the rear wing endplates. Its an interesting area for development of the teams, as the passive-DRS system has proved to be too complicated to work in the past.

Red Bull’s pace in Practice was masked slightly by the conditions. In Practice 3 they managed to get up there, showing similar pace to the Lotus’ on the Medium tyre.

Lotus

Whilst they may have lost their technical director during the week, its not stopped the Enstone outfit from bringing some updates to this weekends Grand Prix.

Whilst there isn’t anything fundamentally new on the car, the team have bolstered their chances of eaking out some extra pace with a new front wing endplate, diffuser modifications, remodelled sidepod winglets, and bargeboards, a different upper rear-wing and modified brake ducts.

Both Raikkonen and Romain ran with the new-spec front wing and rear wing on Friday, and will likely use them into Qualifying.

Mercedes

Mercedes have come to Barcelona with small updates to their front wing, a revised suspension layout, and new rear brake ducts. Both drivers ran the new updates through into Practice 3. Rosberg and Hamilton looked good in the final part of the lap, but trailed slightly where everyone else gained. Its still consistent pace though, something hard to achieve around a high speed track.

Toro Rosso

Toro Rosso came to Barcelona probably with the most updates out of any team. Their new exhaust, couple with floor alterations seem to be doing the trick, as they have been faster than McLaren outright all weekend long thus far.

The extra pace came from the new ramp-style exhaust, which uses an undercut that helps channel air underneath the sidepod onto the central part of the diffuser. Whats of particular interest here is that Toro Rosso’s channel is entirely open, whilst other versions by other teams all feature a closed channel.

Caterham

Finally, Caterham have brought a significant upgrade to their front wing after bringing a raft of updates in Bahrain three weeks ago. The new nose features a less flattened, platypus style and more of a curved, aerodynamic look to it. Alongside the new front wing, they have also brought new barge boards.

Whilst the updates have made their car look better, in terms of what its gained them, Caterham were faster than Marussia in Bahrain, and these updates build on that pace.

Lotus have today announced the departure of its chief technical director James Allison, citing Nick Chester as the new person to take up his role at the Enstone outfit. Team boss Eric Boullier said that promoting Chester from his currant position as engineering director would minimise the damage inflicted by Allison leaving the team at this stage.

“Nick is well known to everyone at Enstone having been with the team for over 12 years,” said Boullier. “He is already directly involved with this and next year’s cars, ensuring a smooth transition which has been underway for some time.

He assumes his new position at a tremendously exciting time for the sport. The 2014 technical regulation changes present many challenges, while our current position of second place in both the constructors’ and drivers’ world championships mean we cannot lose sight of this year’s development battle.”

Boullier payed respect to Allison’s contributions to the team, saying “As a team and individually, we would all like to thank James Allison for his efforts during his three stints at Enstone and wish him all the best in his future endeavours.”

Where Allison will end up in all of this is currently unknown. Ferrari CEO Luca Di Montezemolo has downplayed any speculations that he might be making a return to the companies F1 team, saying “its just rumours” at this stage. Mercedes also commented saying they “stopped talks about that a long time ago”

The loss of Allison at Lotus is quite a serious one in the face of car development. Since his promotion as technical director in 2010, he’s overseen the teams re-emergance as a race-winning and perhaps even title-chellenging contenders, playing a key role in how Lotus has been one of the most consistent teams on the grid, which stands out even by F1’s standards.

What effect this will have on the teams form is unknown, Lotus is largely taking expertise internally as opposed to getting talent to come in from other teams. Fortunately that internal talent happens to be some key members at Lotus, both Nick Chester and head of aerodynamics Dirk de Beer, among further factory-based technical personnel. The key now is for Lotus to ensure that the transition is as seamless as possible.

Tyres have been the talk of the season thus far. It would be wrong of me to suggest that they aren’t the most crucial element of todays era of Grand Prix racing, because they are. But the truth is, tyres have always been a crucial element to motor racing, because they are the only thing that separates the car from the road. However, recent times suggest that they are apart of the equation too much, that the tyres are actually starting to affect how the drivers race altogether.

For 2013 Pirelli made each compound of tyre a lot softer in order to have the performance gap between each compound a lot smaller, thus allowing Pirelli to bring more adventurous tyre compounds to each race weekend [i.e. The Soft and the Hard compound tyres as opposed to the Soft and the Medium compound tyres]. In order to make them softer, the thermal degradation needs to be increased alongside the actual structure of the tyre needing to be more flexible.

Thermal degradation is essentially the temperature it takes for the tyre to overheat and degrade, which is when the surface of the tyre starts to wear down and rip off in little chunks. Coupled with a larger contact patch [flexible tyre structure], and it means these react a lot to small things like abrasive track surfaces [Malaysia], cold track temperatures [China], and scorching hot track temperatures [Bahrain].

These types of characteristics play a key part in how tyre degradation happens throughout the weekend, and its down to the teams and drivers to counter-act this in the setup for their car. If you heard the team radio in Bahrain, a lot of the teams were speaking to the drivers about dialling in understeer into their car, so that in the race its kind enough on the tyres to go the distance and make their strategy work.

And thats where I think the argument starts to get fragmented. People in the media, fans and drivers, are all criticising Pirelli for creating these tyres that promote limited running in both practice and qualifying, so that teams have the advantage heading into the race on Sunday.

Mark Webber made the comment on the weekend of the Bahrain Grand Prix in regards to what happened between Sebastien Vettel and Fernando Alonso, after Alonso had already pitted and Vettel was out there on a three stop strategy leading the race. “They were not racing each other Its just a jigsaw and a chess match to see who can get to that last point as quickly as possible.”

Whilst Mark is right that it did affect the progress of the race itself, towards the end it actually provided us with a great race between Hamilton and Vettel which lasted down to the last corner. Its not flat out racing for the majority of the 68 laps they were out there for, but its not like that hasn’t always been the case in a Grand Prix.

Going back to what I said earlier, if you look throughout the history of Formula 1, its always been a case of managing something throughout a race. Sam Michael said to Sky’s Martin Brundle, “if you go back to the likes of Senna and Prost days, you’ll find that they were having to manage tyre degradation because you didn’t want to do pitstops, or if you had to you would try and do one or two. The difference is that we had this period of refuelling, where it was pure sprint racing. Even during the sprint racing though, you still have to look after your tyres.”

Ultimately, we’re never going to have a time in Formula 1 where tyres aren’t a factor in at least 60 or 40 per-cent of the speed. We’re at a period now where we are experimenting with different types of tyre characteristics and seeing how it affects the racing. On some tracks its a case of conservation, on others its a case of being able to confidently push without its affecting your tyre performance too much.

Personally I don’t feel phased by it, all I care about is the race. And so far in 2013, its certainly something we’ve not seen a lack of.

Header image curtsy of http://make-rocket-go-now.tumblr.com/post/49764144450

Caterham managed to find half a second in the upgrades they brought to Bahrain. The team, who have been largely criticised for being off the pace in comparison to Marussia and 2012’s car, brought updates in the for of a new, bulkier nose that copies an idea pioneered by Lotus last year to help clean airflow underneath the high nose. They also brought a new Red Bull-style panel aside of the sidepod, which greatly helps control how air ends up at the back of the car.

Charles Pic ran with the updates throughout the weekend, whilst Guido Van Der Garde ran without the new parts. The result is that Charles Pic managed to finish the race without being lapped and ahead of Sauber’s Esteban Gutierrez, whilst Van Der Garde finished in last place behind his teammate and both Marussia’s.

Its great to see the team move forward after a difficult winter. Whether this means we will see Kovalinen take part in more Friday Practice sessions is also questionable, although given that he is the only yardstick for the team when it comes to development, it would make a lot of sense for them to want his feedback. Of course they do that at the expense of loosing the driver he replaces, setup time out on track.

Ferrari just can’t seem to catch a break in some of these opening races can they?

After looking primed to take a one-two in Bahrain, bad luck ensued on the Ferrari pair once again. Whilst Alonso got a good start off the line, Massa probably never got the one he wanted, being attacked by Paul Di Resta into the first corner and by Mark Webber for what was fifth place by then. Alonso was also latched onto the back of Vettel whilst he battled with Rosberg, incase the pair were to cross each others paths and hand Alonso with the opportunity to take P1.

However, whilst he was battling for second place with Nico Rosberg, his DRS became stuck in the open position and wouldn’t come down without it being banged back in place by one of his mechanics. So thats exactly what Ferrari had to do, pit Alonso and put it back into position. Then on the next lap, when Alonso used DRS again the same thing happened, prompting him to return to the pits after wasting more time the previous lap trying to fix the problem.

The problem came when Fernando opened the flap. It opened up to the point it needed to in order for the effect to work, but under braking, instead of going back down and giving Alonso back some rear traction, it summersaulted backwards and got stuck on the stopper. An unfortunate issue, something Ferrari will want to make sure doesn’t happen in future races.

That set Alonso back, pretty much for the majority of the first and second stint as he tried to regain some of the positions back on raw pace. Felipe Massa was also having to deal with issues of his own. He suffered two punctures in the race on Sunday, both of which were due to debris.

The first puncture was due to Massa’s broken front wing which he sustained on lap one. One of the endplates held on to a single, thin piece of carbon fibre was flapping around, hitting Massa’s front left tyre, eventually causing a puncture which he had to pit for during the first part of the second stint.

The next came rather unexpectedly when the rear tyre delaminated coming out of the final corner. Pirelli say it was due to debris that slashed the tyre earlier on in the lap, and that the kerbing on the outside of turn 14 just escalated the puncture.

Overall an action packed race for Ferrari, but not the type of action that we expected. Alonso did well to bring the car home in P8, Massa however finished in a dismal P15 after they both looked good in Practice and Qualifying.