Front two rows will be Hamilton, Vettel, Rosberg, Raikkonen. This race has some potential, especially since Kimi finally put together a good qualifying.

After all the moaning I did last week, can't believe I'm getting excited again.

Also worth mentioning that Alexander Rossi finished third in the GP2 race after starting from P8 and apparently led a good portion of it.

Bahrain is a track where P2 is often better than P1. If Seb takes the lead, watch out.

I have high hopes for this race. With Vet and Kimi at the front from the start, look out.

No Button and then Massa has problems on the formation lap start. Are we looking at another Austalia?

Edit to add: Great start by the Ferraris but we're back to the status quo now. Not sure I want to watch the Mercedes parade for another hour.

Kimi P2!!! Rosberg imploded!!

Not a great race by Vettel, but phenomenal weekend for Kimi. Love that last stint. What a drive.

Yeah great drive by Kimi. Uncharacteristicly sloppy race by Seb and Nico is clearly a defeated man, although it seems he had brake fade at the end.

MotoGP. Dicing & position changes on the track.

Great race by Lewis and created a gap when he needed to. Also great defending by Bottas on Vettel.

Random thoughts from Bahrain

Hammy is working on stamping his name in the books of some of the greatest F1 racers ever.

Kimi was back to being Kimi and it was glorious.

Seb made some very, very uncharacteristic mistakes.

Nico is officially done as a serious challenger to ever winning a championship.

RBR's whining about their engines looks to be a very real problem. Ricciardo will be on his final engine for the year at the next race after blowing his 200 meters from the finish. Renault who had the most need to improve performance and reliability after last year used the least amount of tokens in the off season, and it's showing.

finally, it's time for Pastor to be put out to pasture. it's bad enough that crashtor maldonado has been involved in an incident 4 of 4 races so far, but this weekend he added "starting from wrong grid position" to his repertoire.

Well that was much improved. And no crying from Nico

I'm wondering if Vettel wasn't pushing a bit too hard, thinking he could challenge Hamilton straight up. Once things started getting out of control (Nico pinched him a couple times after Vettel got ahead) he kind of turned into a head case.

Not to take anything away from Bottas, but Ferrari has proven in every race so far that it's faster than Williams. It was weird that he couldn't get by.

Kimi drove like a race winner down the stretch and given a lap or two more -- and Mercedes imploding brakes -- he would have won.

It's still going to be hard to catch Hamilton, but Ferrari has a legit shot at stealing some more races and maybe even challenging for the constructors title. At least I damn well hope so.

Vettel is at his best in clean air at the front of the pack, he sometimes struggles when he has to fight for position. That off that damaged his wing was strange to see, though.

Nico had a couple of nice passes on Seb, so I was glad to see that he (Nico) has at least a little fight in there somewhere. I don't think he's ever going to seriously challenge Hamilton for the title, though. He doesn't have the mental makeup, it would seem.

I love Kimi, and glad that he's bad. I chuckled at just about every radio communication they played from him on the broadcast. His "yeah, thanks everybody," over the radio at the end of the race in response to the enthusiastic congratulations pouring in from the pit wall was vintage Kimi, and I loved it.

Agreed on Pastor. I never saw a replay of either of the contact incidents he was in yesterday (once with Verstappen and once with Massa, apparently). Whether he was at fault in them or not, he sure seems trade carbon bits with other cars in every race.

Glad Haas is coming in on Ferrari engines next season, and not Renaults! Glad to see a good result in the first GP weekend for Rossi. 3rd in the feature and 4th in the sprint, I believe.

the beauty of crashtor messing up grid position is that he actually moved himself back 2 spots.

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the beauty of crashtor messing up grid position is that he actually moved himself back 2 spots.

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What a maroon!

I hate that this sport takes so much time off. We can't have a French or German GP but we can go 3 weeks between races.

Just saw the 2016 schedule and had to look up Baku on the map. Hey, no big, just a few miles from the Iranian border.

Where did you see the calendar? All I can find is that the Aussie GP will be later than normal, April 3.

so, i should have put this on here first. but, i just got a ticket to the British Grand Prix.

Bad ass!! I was hoping to get to go to the Belgian GP next year, but it looks like it's probably going to be right in the middle of my National Guard annual training.

this all just sort of fell into place. i decided to see what flights i could get with my united miles and i was flexible where and when i could go. booked my flights.

headed to Frankfurt first. will go down to Stuttgart to see the Merc and Porsche Museums. then over to the Nurburgring to drive it.

my flight home is from Heathrow and i haven't been back to london in a decade. it just happens to be that i'll be there the weekend of the GP.

Provisional Schedule

Hey, thanks for making us all jealous, SK.

quote:

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this all just sort of fell into place. i decided to see what flights i could get with my united miles and i was flexible where and when i could go. booked my flights.

headed to Frankfurt first. will go down to Stuttgart to see the Merc and Porsche Museums. then over to the Nurburgring to drive it.

my flight home is from Heathrow and i haven't been back to london in a decade. it just happens to be that i'll be there the weekend of the GP.

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That's awesome. A buddy and I did 2 weeks in Europe several years ago, and one of our stops was the Nurburgring. We had rented a BMW 320i from a company there at the Ring for a half day. Unfortunately, when we got there, the track was fogged in and closed. We waited around for a couple of hours, but it never improved. We got our money back for the rental, but I was bummed we didn't get to drive it.

quote:

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Provisional Schedule

Hey, thanks for making us all jealous, SK

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Damn, I'm done with AT on August 27th. Maybe it will change. It almost always does.

It's Spain week!

Let's see how the first round of updates go.

Can Red Bull get back in the mix for third place? Will McLaren score points? Can Ferrari win again? Does anybody else matter?

quote:

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It's Spain week!

Let's see how the first round of updates go.

Can Red Bull get back in the mix for third place? Will McLaren score points? Can Ferrari win again? Does anybody else matter?

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the break was way too long. i'm ready for some more F1 racing. i've definitely got racing on the brain. this weekend i watched WEC - Spa for a couple of hours, A bit of DTM, and a bit of Talladega.

That Spa race was pretty fun. So was the Tudor race at Laguna Seca.

McLaren may have a **** car. But, at least they decided to make it look kick ass.

Wow, that looks incredible.

Serious upgrade.

Still hard to believe that McLaren doesn't have a primary sponsor.

Mercedes and Ferrari still top of the class in FP1 and FP2.

Also, Lotus has a ridiculous Mad Max-themed show car with big off-road tires and I want it.

Nico finally won a pole, and Ferrari... sheesh. Vettel in third but more than half a second back (in Q3). And Kimi... In 7th behind a Williams car and BOTH Torro Rosso cars.

Kimi has complained about his car all weekend. Can't imagine it'll get much better tomorrow. And short of a huge strategy win or a crash, I expect the Silver Arrows to dominate.

Also worth mention is both McLarens made it into Q2. They were more than a second out of Q3 so scoring points seems overly optimistic... but one can dream.

Man those Silver Arrows are fast.
Rosberg won't win this race and Kimi's going to lose his seat at the end of the season. hope he stays in F1, I like watching him race.

I want to see Kimi go to Haas and give them at least one veteran in Year 1 but all the Ferrari B-team buzz makes me think there's no way that happens.

What caused Alonso's brake malfunction


I saw this once before, but the tearoff went into an engine air intake. Think it was a CART race...Adrian Fernandez, maybe.