I have to say I have found the Bahrain Grand Prix boring — well, the aftermath of it. All the same old whingers keep on stomping their feet about their old hobby-horses. They couldn’t wait for this season to start so that they could claim that Formula 1 has been broken by X, Y and Z.

That’s despite the fact that the grand prix wasn’t actually all that bad. Sure, it wasn’t a sizzler. But hardly the end of F1 as we know it. I reckon there were at least a dozen races in 2009 that played out in a similar way. In fact, this Bahrain Grand Prix had much more overtaking than the average race in 2009, even including the mad wet races.

There can not be a set of “fans” that complain more about the sport they follow. And yet, bizarrely, year after year, they carry on watching for some reason. Who’s the sucker here? It sure ain’t me.

Too much hype

The problem was that, as usual, F1 journalists went into overdrive with the pre-season hype. Time and time again we were told that 2010 was set to be the most exciting in years, although not much in the way of evidence was ever provided in support of this.

We were supposed to be excited because of the return of Michael Schumacher. But as I pointed out months ago, he was always bound to be off the pace, and so it proved to be. There will be no eighth world championship. Unless lots of sixth place finishes really get you going, there will be little in the way of excitement round here.

I think the new teams were also supposed to add a new dimension of excitement. They certainly have increased the level of interest in the back of the field — and a good thing that is too. But quite what else we should have expected as a result of their participation is a head-scratcher for me.

I seem to remember journalists banging on about the all-British inter-team rivalry at McLaren this year as well. That has also turned out to be a bit of a damp squib (so far). But it is not exactly a problem with F1 if one of them has so comprehensively outclassed the other already. Is Lewis Hamilton supposed to drop anchor just in order to increase the excitement here?

I sent the hypothetical question out there on Twitter — Can anyone remember the last time journalists didn’t say that the coming F1 season was due to be “the most exciting ever”? Alianora suggested 2004, which is a good thought. Although it was on the back of a really rather good 2003 season (tyre-rules-rigged-in-favour-of-Ferrari-scandal aside), and there was a lot of interest surrounding the radical Williams “walrus nose” (another damp squib).

The forgotten good news stories

No wonder people were upset. Not many races could have lived up to these expectations. What was, in truth, an average race (nothing more, nothing less) has been cited by hordes as definitive evidence that F1 is dying.

But I struggle to understand what people were expecting. Indeed, I have been quite surprised at the sheer number of interesting angles on the Bahrain Grand Prix that appear to have been largely overlooked.

• Fernando Alonso’s winning début — Okay, so this one has been covered extensively, but it is worth underlining. Alonso joins the select group of drivers to win on their Ferrari début — and he set a fastest lap over a second quicker than anyone else to boot. Forget the comeback of Michael Schumacher — Alonso showed his critics that he is the best, and with ease.
• Felipe Massa’s comeback — In his first race since his horrific crash in Hungary last year, Massa put in an admirable performance and finished second.
• The speed of Red Bull and Vettel — Despite the Ferrari 1-2, Red Bull have shown that last year wasn’t a blip, and they are serious contenders this year.
• Nico Rosberg outclassing Michael Schumacher — This one doesn’t fit in with the “Schumacher is the saviour of F1″ narrative, but even so I’m surprised more people aren’t hailing Rosberg’s success after what must have been a rather difficult winter for him.
• McLaren’s sneaky and massively clever pit stop strategy — McLaren appear to have exploited an under-advertised new rule that introduces a 55 metre zone round every pit box, designed to stop unsafe releases. My brother reckons McLaren are exploiting this to their advantage by bringing their cars in on the same lap as rivals that are just the right amount ahead of them, just to delay the release of that car. Genius (both McLaren and my brother!).
• Force India becoming the best of the rest — Most will have expected Williams to be the fifth team, but Force India look like they hold that position quite comfortably just now.
• A steady performance from Russia’s first ever F1 driver — Vitaly Petrov did a solid job in his first ever F1 race, running in a very respectable 11th place until a suspension failure. Petrov’s GP2 career was a slow burner, but his F1 career has got off to a bright start.
• Lotus beating Toro Rosso — This one has been covered extensively too, but it’s still worth highlighting again. Lotus — who have only had five months to design and build their car — have already emerged as the strongest of the new teams. They look to be around equal with Virgin in terms of pace, but definitely have the more reliable car — and even beat a Toro Rosso. Lotus are also bound to improve more than the other teams. At this rate, I’d be surprised if they don’t score a point this season.
• Virgin’s CFD-only gamble not backfiring — The question as to whether avoiding the use of a wind tunnel would be fatal to Virgin’s hopes has been put to bed. The car sets a decent pace, and the biggest problem is in fact reliability.
• Hispania’s miracle breakthrough — After a horrific winter, Hispania turned up at Bahrain having never tested, and did a hugely admirable job. Special mention should go to Karun Chandhok who did a great job in qualifying despite not even taken part in any practice!
• The less said about Sauber the better — although it’s still an interesting story.

It looks to me as though there is plenty for F1 fans to sink their teeth into just now, if only they tried. It is just that there was so much hype about the wrong things that the wood has been lost for all the trees.

But it can be improved

However, like most people I would prefer Formula 1 to have more wheel-to-wheel action. The signs at Sakhir were not particularly encouraging. I will reveal my thoughts on what’s what when it comes to on-the-track action in my next article.

What a grand prix weekend that was. It just goes to show you what a decent circuit can do for racing. Boy, can Spa do it for racing. It also clearly does it for Kimi Räikkönen, who is always mesmerising in this most inspirational of settings.

Räikkönen confuses people a lot of the time with his apparent indifference. Often he simply does not seem to be bothered. But he always goes well at Spa. Indeed, he is the only current driver to have won there. His record includes a remarkable fight to the front from 10th on the grid in what was an otherwise barren 2004 season for him.

There are some parallels between that victory and this year’s one. Like McLaren in 2004, this year Ferrari began the season with uncompetitive machinery, but have developed the car into a winner for Belgium. This victory ends a 25 race drought for Räikkönen; the 2004 victory ended an even longer one.

In a lot of ways, Räikkönen’s victory was among the least surprising things to happen during an extraordinary weekend. The Finn usually gives a good performance in Belgium, but despite winning the race he was overshadowed by Giancarlo Fisichella, a man who would have been sacked at the end of last year if I had any say in such matters.

Question marks remain over a victory margin which perhaps ought to have been longer than one second. Then some say he wouldn’t have won were it not for kers — this is probably true. Others say that he gained an advantage by running wide and taking the run-off at La Source on lap 1.

However, David Coulthard says that Räikkönen will have gained no advantage from running wide, a fact which is apparently corroborated by the fact that Button took a similar line and lost places. It’s more likely that Räikkönen gained those spots by deploying his kers, the exit of La Source being the ideal spot to unleash that kers energy on lap 1 rather than the start itself. See Axis of Oversteer for a good debate on this matter.

Even so, the plaudits are going to Giancarlo Fisichella for his stunning drive to second place in the Force India. Is it a coincidence that he should up his game so much when there is a sniff of getting a Ferrari drive? I don’t think I have ever been so impressed by Fisichella, who I have always seen as a mid-grid sort of guy who only just about deserves his continued presence in F1.

Some of the upsurge can be put down to the car, which the team also expects to do well at Monza. In the sister Force India car, Adrian Sutil looked especially good through Raidillon, giving him an enormous advantage through the Kemmel straight, capitalising too on the grunt of the Mercedes engine, no doubt the best in F1. This led to him making a few impressive overtaking manoeuvres, though sadly for him it came to nothing and ended up in 11th.

Force India weren’t the only backmarkers to rise in Spa though. BMW, for the first time since Australia, looked quick. Both drivers scored points, and indeed Kubica did well to finish fourth despite picking up a substantial amount of damage in the lap 1 mêlée at Les Combes.

Lap 1 was an eventful lap all round, with Fernando Alonso’s race effectively ending at the start. But we were not to find that out until his first pitstop, when the Renault mechanics were unable to satisfactorily change his left front tyre. Renault didn’t want another controversy involving badly fitted wheels, so he toured into the pits to retire. A clever replay from FOM revealed that Alonso’s wheel was actually damaged in a turn 1 collision with Sutil at the start.

It is yet more bad luck for Alonso. Renault will not like the fact that in the Constructors’ Championship they are now behind BMW, a team which has been lamentably poor for most of the season. With the announcement that the FIA is investigating the unusual circumstances behind their victory in the Singapore Grand Prix, all-in-all it’s been a pretty torrid time for Renault. The move to the red car cannot come too soon for Alonso.

As for the sharp end of the championship, yet again three of the major Championship contenders failed to score a good result. This time, Vettel was the only one of the four challengers to have a good race. This makes Red Bull’s decision over whether it should start favouring one driver over the other yet trickier. Vettel now leads Webber in the Championship. But he still faces a massive 19 point deficit with only five races remaining.

Vettel actually had a strong race. In his analysis of the race, rubbergoat reveals that, when you consider competitive laps only, Vettel had the fastest average lap time of all the drivers. But he was hindered in the vital first stint due to being heavy on fuel.

Jenson Button had a DNF as he crashed out in that Les Combes pile-up. It is his first DNF of the season, making his sixth bad race in a row. Yet again, he has gotten away with it relatively unscathed. Another disastrous race, another two point dent in his lead which remains at 16 points. His main challenger is Rubens Barrichello who, with all due respect to the Brazilian, is not the most threatening of his three main challengers — not least because he is in the same team.

This has been a most strange season. Jenson Button couldn’t stop winning in the first half of the season. Now he can do nothing to help himself win. But his Championship chances remain high because the last six races have had six different winners. In stark contrast to the early Brawn dominance, you just don’t know who is going to be strong at a race and I would be a mug if I tried to predict what would happen in Monza. I daren’t even predict which car this week’s second placed man will be driving — I don’t want a wrap on the knuckles like Ian Phillips!

Wow, a day certainly is a long time in F1. I am not sure when I will get round to actually writing about the Hungarian GP, though at least there is a long break until the next race.

But the big news this evening is that the next race will feature Michael Schumacher on the grid. He has been announced as the replacement for Felipe Massa while the Brazilian makes his recovery.

A lot of names have been bandied around over the past few days, and none of them seemed terribly lucky. Optimists suggested that Fernando Alonso or Robert Kubica might be able to get out of their current contracts to move to Ferrari mid-season.

Mirko Bortolotti was another driver on the radar. Last year’s Italian F3 champion has impressed in previous tests with Ferrari. He is currently building up his skills in Formula Two is widely tipped to have a bright future. But it is near enough unheard-of for Ferrari to hire a young rookie.

Some talked up the chances of David Coulthard or Anthony Davidson getting the role. That seemed a bit like pie in the sky thinking though.

The other drivers who currently have relationships with Ferrari are the team’s official test and reserve drivers, Marc Gené and Luca Badoer. But they were unlikely to step in for a whole host of reasons. Neither has a particularly strong track record as a race driver, although you can argue that neither ever had a decent opportunity to show their skills.

But their lack of fresh experience will have seriously counted against them. Gené last raced five years ago for Williams, and faced the ignominy of being replaced by Antônio Pizzonia for being too slow! Meanwhile, Luca Badoer hasn’t raced in F1 for ten years.

The last time Ferrari had to replace a driver midway through a season was when Michael Schumacher broke his legs at the 1999 British Grand Prix. Then, it was widely expected that Luca Badoer, as Ferrari’s test driver, would take his place. Instead, the Scuderia controversially overlooked him and hired Mika Salo.

It was a bad year for Badoer, who came close to finishing 4th for Minardi in that season’s European Grand Prix before his car broke down. He has never had an opportunity to score a World Championship point since.

Luca Badoer has held the test role at Ferrari for a staggering thirteen years without there ever being a sniff of a race drive. If he was overlooked in 1999, he was going to be overlooked today.

Now that testing is banned, it makes you wonder just what the point of a test driver is any more. I recently read that neither Marc Gené nor Luca Badoer have had any mileage whatsoever in this season’s Ferrari F60, in which case the advantage of selecting them over Michael Schumacher — who has loads more talent and, perhaps even more importantly, ocean loads of PR value — is non-existent.

This comes mere weeks after an elaborate re-arranging of deckchairs at Red Bull, as they apparently sought ways to replace Sébastien Bourdais at Toro Rosso without putting Brendon Hartley in the car. Up until the mid-season point, Hartley had been the official Red Bull reserve driver. But mere days before the reserve driver would actually be needed, he was replaced by Jaime Alguersuari.

Other drivers left twiddling their thumbs this year include: Pedro de la Rosa, Gary Paffett, Christian Klien, Romain Grosjean (though perhaps not for long), Adam Khan, Kamui Kobayashi, Nicolas Hülkenberg, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Anthony Davidson and Alexander Wurz.

If a team had to bring in a replacement driver, how many of these would be considered ready and able to race? Not many of them have much in the way of decent mileage of 2009’s cars. Who is to say, for instance, that McLaren would not rather stick Paul di Resta in their car over Pedro de la Rosa? Would Toyota happily give Kobayashi a seat, or would they prefer to take Nakajima?

Just a few years ago it looked like drivers could make a decent living out of being a test driver. Now they never get to test, and they’ll be lucky to get to race.

With the news this week that Toro Rosso will evaluate Takuma Sato for a race seat at a test in a couple of weeks, there have been the same gasps of confusion we hear whenever Sato is linked to another team. The usual question people ask is, “Why don’t they choose Anthony Davidson rather than Sato?”

Let us leave aside the reason why Toro Rosso are pursuing Takuma Sato. As F1Wolf pointed out last week, it makes perfect commercial sense for Toro Rosso to do this, so why not?

What I want to focus on is why so many people think that Anthony Davidson is better than Takuma Sato. Seriously, why? Because I for one don’t see it.

There is absolutely no doubt that Anthony Davidson has a very sharp mind. That is evident from his increasingly frequent forays into the commentary box for BBC Radio 5 Live. And I wouldn’t quarrel with the argument that he is an excellent test and development driver.

But does he cut it as a race driver? I am not so sure. For years, Davidson was always the “what if?” man. What if his first two races were in a team better than Minardi? What if his engine didn’t crap out on him not long after his one and only start for long-time employers BAR? What if he wasn’t driving a boat on wheels when he was at Super Aguri?

Fair points all. However, after his first two abortive stints as race driver, he was shown a lot of faith by Super Aguri who raced him for the whole of the 2007 season, and intended for him to race for all of 2008 (albeit in undoubtedly difficult circumstances). This prolonged period as race driver finally gave us the chance to see what a non-race-rusty Davidson was capable of. Did he impress? I’m not so sure.

You can argue that Takuma Sato didn’t impress much either. But that ignores one small fact… He did impress. At least, he impressed those who paid attention. Don’t forget that Sato earned four points for Super Aguri in 2007 while Davidson’s highest race finish all year was 11th, a whole three positions away from scoring even one point. He even only achieved that twice.

Plus, Takuma Sato’s overtaking move on Fernando Alonso in the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix was just brilliant. Many drivers would have bottled it. But Taku just kept his foot down and pulled the move off with perfection. It doesn’t exactly fit in with his “crash-happy” image.

Show me anything that Davidson has ever done that even comes close to this. I don’t mean just mean a one-off qualifying lap or “he was running in 12th in the Bumshire Grand Prix until his car broke down”. I mean something that genuinely makes him stand out as a great racing driver. Because I never saw it.

The results don’t lie. Even though the Super Aguri was slow, at least it was not too unreliable. This gives us a good opportunity to compare results between team mates. Out of 9 races which both Davidson and Sato started in 2007, Davidson finished ahead of Sato just twice. Meanwhile, Sato scraped up the only points Super Aguri ever scored.

While Takuma Sato has a reputation for being rather erratic and “crash-happy”, he has had moments of great success. Having scored 44 points throughout his career, he is far and away Japan’s most successful F1 driver ever (and there have been many Japanese F1 drivers). He had a series of excellent results in 2004 including a well-deserved podium in Indianapolis. This was good enough to finish 8th in the Drivers Championship.

When you throw in the fact that Takuma Sato has started almost four times as many Grands Prix as Davidson and therefore has bucketloads of experience, I really scratch my head as to why so many people consider Davidson to be better than Sato. I just don’t get it.

Sato is erratic, yes, but on his day he has the pace and the guts required. Davidson is dependable but anonymous and slow. Am I not right? What am I missing?

Magny-Cours was always set to be a boring race. The circuit is not known for its competitive racing, and it’s difficult to imagine a more favourable circuit for Ferrari. The red team did indeed pull off into the distance, but that didn’t stop it being a more interesting race than expected.

Kimi Räikkönen looked good for the win at the beginning of the race. But just when you think you’ve seen everything in F1, something new and unexpected happens — and once again Räikkönen was at the centre of it all for the third race in a row.

Kimi Räikkönen’s season is fast turning into a story of Mark Webber-esque bad luck. First there was his crash in Monaco which was partially his fault but which he had little control over. Then he got the surprise buttsecks treatment in Canada.

Now in France he has suffered from an odd exhaust failure. The component was flapping around in the air causing all sorts of damage to the right rear of his car — both in terms of physical knocks and the kind of heat the exhaust must have been giving off. Initially the problem was causing Räikkönen several seconds per lap but over time he managed to adapt to it. But the exhaust eventually flew off which leads me to wonder if it might have been safer for the stewards to order him to pit to have the exhaust removed before it flew off into the path of another driver.

Despite Räikkönen’s woes, he still managed to finish 2nd which rather underlines Ferrari’s dominance at this circuit. Felipe Massa, in an uneventful race for him, took the win and at the same time takes the lead of the Drivers Championship for the first time in his career. He is the first Brazilian to lead the world championship since Ayrton Senna.

Massa is in fact the fourth different leader of the championship in four races. The championship is very close at the moment — just ten points separate the top four drivers. It is doubtful, however, that either Kubica or Hamilton can prevent Ferrari from running away with it at this stage, with many of the up-coming circuits suiting Ferrari and some of McLaren’s best circuits having been visited already.

BMW in particular struggled badly this weekend. Kubica certainly was struggling with handling problems during practice. And notably, Heidfeld struggled to get through to Q2 during qualifying, setting three laps in a row that were only good enough for 18th on the grid. He did surpass that eventually, but lined up on the grid way back in 11th. His race ended in 13th. It was a far cry from his second place in Canada.

Meanwhile, plaudits have to go to Kubica for wrestling the car into 5th. He had some moments during the race where he looked quite fiery, but he had little potential today to make much of the race.

This underlines just how close Formula 1 is this year. Moving from one circuit to another results in sometimes dramatic changes in the order through the field, particularly from the third-best car down to the eighth-best.

Toyota, however, are showing consistent improvement. I wouldn’t have trusted Jarno Trulli to hold on to third place. At this very circuit in 2004 he managed to lose a position to Rubens Barrichello on the penultimate corner of the race, cementing his reputation as a poor race driver who lacks full concentration over a full race distance.

However, this year he managed to hold off a late charge from Heikki Kovalainen (and, at one point, Robert Kubica) to take third position. It’s Toyota’s first podium for over two years and it is fitting that it should come in the week that the team mourns the loss of its founder team principal, Ove Andersson.

As for Heikki Kovalainen, he had a fantastic race. Starting tenth on the grid following a 5-place grid penalty after impeding Mark Webber during qualifying, Kovalainen stormed his way through the field to take fourth. Just as it was beginning to look as though Kovalainen did not have what it takes, he has managed to salvage something from what was becoming a disastrous weekend for McLaren.

His team mate Lewis Hamilton certainly did not storm through the field. He needed to take pole position for his strategy to work, but it backfired as he qualified third — which meant starting 13th on the grid. On soft tyres and a light fuel load, Hamilton was aggressive at the start and overtook many cars.

However, his first overtaking manoeuvre raised eyebrows. It was a brave move on Sebastian Vettel, but it was a touch too brave and Hamilton ended up cutting the chicane slightly. At that point Hamilton should have let Vettel pass again because Hamilton clearly gained an advantage by cutting the corner. Ron Dennis protests that Hamilton had clearly passed Vettel by that stage, but I have to disagree. Hamilton would never have made that move stick if he took the chicane correctly and the stewards were right to give him a drive-through penalty.

I think Red Bull can be reasonably pleased with their performance today. Mark Webber took another points-scoring position in 6th while David Coulthard was perfectly positioned to take advantage of any front-running retirements in 9th. This was arguably the team’s best result all season.

Renault are also looking like they have more speed in their car now. I think Alonso had the pace today, but his race was seriously compromised by yet another dodgy strategy from Renault. Alonso was very light at the beginning, and was the first to stop after just 15 laps. The team then switched him to a two-stop strategy, meaning that Alonso had to deal with a heavier car and spend longer on the (sub-optimal) soft tyres.

Alonso’s race of unfulfilled potential was underlined by the fact that his much-maligned team mate Nelsinho Piquet overtook him very close to the end after a traffic-related confusion. Piquet certainly looks as though he has turned a corner now. He was on the pace much more consistently all weekend, and did not make any silly mistakes during the race. This could be the turning point of Piquet’s career and he can now point to the fact that he has beaten the most successful active F1 driver in equal equipment.

I have no idea what happened to Toro Rosso during the race. Sebastian Vettel in particular looked great earlier on in the weekend, but it just didn’t come together for him during the race.

I am starting to wonder about Sébastien Bourdais. After a great start to his season in Australia, Bourdais has been anonymous at best and his middling performances are beginning to make him look as though he is not F1 material. Today he finished 17th, ahead only of the Force Indias, and as far as I could see he had no problems. What was that all about?

Williams must also be desperately frustrated with their performance today. Nakajima and Rosberg finished in 15th and 16th, way off the pace. For a team that was touted as the third-fastest in winter testing, this is just not good enough. This season was supposed to be so much better for Williams.

Honda also had a dire race. Jenson Button was the only retirement after he was involved in an accident while Barrichello could only manage 14th. Just as things were looking up to Honda, they suddenly find themselves firmly at the rear of the grid again.

The British Grand Prix is next. I reckon Ferrari will storm away with that one as well. Let’s see. We’ve been treated to some good races recently. Even the French Grand Prix had more drama than anticipated — even if the predicted rain came to nothing.