Bahrain 2014 Results and Championship Standings (3/19)

Wow! What a race. So many different battles all throughout the field. Namely the Mercedes' of Rosberg and Hamilton who tussled back and forth - changing positions almost double digits number of times. I also enjoyed the battles of the Williams, Force India and Red Bull drivers, especially a very talented four time world champion meeting his match on the day. Very rare to see the Red Bull team asking Vettel to obey team orders (even temporarily).

"Daniel is faster than you. Do not hold him up"
- Guillaume 'Rocky' Rocquelin, Vettel's engineer

Overall that was one of the most entertaining races in a while so hopefully we can have more of those this year. Mercedes should really be congratulated on letting their drivers fight eachother to the bitter end. However despite all of the excitment, perhaps we could do without a certain driver flipping other cars over though.

Onto the prediction league, its been a long journey to that first win but heartily congratulations to Michael (the winner of the 'Mark Webber' bad luck award last year, soon to be renamed the 'Daniel Ricciardo award' if Malaysia was anything to go by). I have no doubt in my mind that Michael is able to launch a full scale championship assault after finishing in the top 5 last year.

MetalGatherer also jumped on the podium for the second time in the last three races (three top four finishes). Sangan narrowly missed out on the podium, after claiming they were going to achieve a 19 podium streak however fantastic performances this year (three top four finishes as well) see Sangan level on points with Kiszol at the head of the table.

Finally well done to everyone else. I'm pretty confident that this was the highest scoring race of all-time, last year the field scored a maximum of 239 points at Korea however a massive 311 points was scored in the race. Part of this is due to the change in the random points, part of this due to a small increase in competitors. Regardless this was easily the highest average score in PL history. Fantastic.

On to the results and the standings...

Championship Standings

Constructors Championship

  

Read on for more detail.

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Overall results

Breakdown

 
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Random
The random category involved picking between two drivers in a versus mode across qualifying and race. Teammates chosen were given a handicap e.g. Alonso given a 0.15 second penalty against Raikkonen.

The random ended up being incredibly close with time difference deciding quite a few points finishing positions including the race win. Well done to Michael who nailed a 4-point random score to take the overall race weekend.

 

Points input

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Two weeks until China. I'll aim to get the thread out on Monday next week. In the mean time the F1 teams are testing in Bahrain today and tomorrow as part of the new in-season testing. This may have a few ramifications on the European season in terms of car development.

Two last things. Firstly sorry about the wait for this thread. I always aim to get the thread out Sunday or Monday but wasn't able to this week.

Secondly as discussed at the end of the last thread. If anyone has any ideas about a random category they'd like to see (in China), please post on this page - random discussion topic. I'm happy to discuss and refine any ideas people have.    

See you soon!