Red Bull Emerges From Bahrain

// Race Recap

Amidst the complexities surrounding Sunday's race in Bahrain, Red Bull finally took their first win of the season and re-entered the push for the 2012 championship.  Sebastian Vettel took both pole position and the win in Sunday's race with his teamate Mark Webber finishing fourth position for the fourth time in a row (a record of sorts).

A good qualifying session on Saturday began a great weekend for the Red Bull team, starting first and third in the race and setup for a decisive win.  Sebastian had a good start from the grid and maintained his first position, while both Ferrari's jumped quickly into the top ten after a poor qualifying session from both drivers.

Lotus Renault GP's Roman Grosjean also made up some ground quickly, with a superb start for the newcomer, Grosjean jumped from sixth to fourth in the first turn and then finally into second position after passing Webber and Lewis Hamilton of McLaren.

Battling for position to gain world championship points got interesting very early on as Kimi Raikonnen in the Lotus Renault fought with previous race winner Nico Rosberg and Fernando Alonso before moving into third position.  With nearly half the race complete, Kimi was just behind his teamate Grosjean, chasing Vettel's Red Bull and setting a very quick pace. Raikonnen passed Grosjean on lap 24 of 57 but despite the rumors, there were no "team orders" which forced Grosjean to step aside, Raikonnen's pace was solid and gaining on the leader quickly.

With Rosberg pushing hard to regain last weekend's pace and catch up the the top three, he battled closely with Hamilton, pushing him off track and into the run-off area with a wheel to wheel skirmish which almost cost Hamilton the race.  Action regarding the incident was to be taken following the race, but the FIA Stewards (regulation enforcers) took no action.  Speculation about their abrupt departure from enforcing the incident was cited as a need to leave the track before sundown to avoid entanglement with potentially threatening protests.

Shortly after his close call with Hamilton, Nico repeated the defensive maneuver while also battling with Fernando Alonso; again, no punishment was assigned to Nico for doing so in this situation.

As the counter moved to lap 36, Raikonnen gained on Vettel and was just half a second behind the Red Bull car.  Kimi set himself up to make the move on Vettel on the main straight with both DRS and KERS giving him the speed to do so.  As he made his move to pass on the inside leading up to turn one, Vettel defended with a strong maneuver, keeping Kimi behind for the duration of the race.

The final podium was Vettel, Raikonnen, and Grosjean; all Renault powered cars and the first podium for the Lotus Renault team with returning champion Kimi Raikonnen in 2nd and newcomer, Roman Grosjean in 3rd.

// Mugello Testing

Following Sunday's race, the teams head to Mugello, Italy for a three day test session before the Spanish GP on May 13th.  We'll be following the testing to see how the technical improvements will influence the remainder of the season.