That's how you race! Button and Perez are given license to duel as Vettel glides to win
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My hero of this race was not standing on the top step of the podium but sitting agitatedly on the pit wall with a pair of headphones on his head.
To Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, a commanding win in the Bahrain Grand Prix and a 10-point lead in the World Championship. But to McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh, laudation for profoundly standing up for true sport. His valiant contribution came halfway through the race when his two drivers, Jenson Button and Sergio ‘Checo’ Perez, were locked in an epic duel on the edge of perdition.
Button skilfully passed Perez, who soon clipped his team-mate’s car as he battled back. ‘He just hit me up the back,’ shouted Button down the radio. ‘Calm him down.’ But a few minutes later they were clashing again. Their wheels appeared to touch. Button, though annoyed by what he perceived as the over-enthusiasm of his adversary, held off the challenge manfully.
Happy days: Sebastian Vettel celebrates his victory in Bahrain
Same old story: Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean were in the top three in Bahrain again
What could Whitmarsh have done in these breathless encounters?
The easy option was to intervene with an order to stop racing each other and instead get the cars home without a scratch on them, the points safely accumulated.
But as he explained afterwards: ‘That is not the way we go racing, and you can’t change your philosophy halfway through a race.’
So he acted in keeping with the traditions of McLaren and, I believe, consistently with the best interests of motor racing.
Another victory: All eyes were on Vettel after he coasted to a fine win in Bahrain
Since the Malaysian Grand Prix last month, when Red Bull team principal Christian Horner tried unsuccessfully to stop Vettel racing against Mark Webber for the victory, a debate over the validity of team orders has raged.
Yesterday, it was the decision taken by Whitmarsh — a silver-haired former British Aerospace engineer rather than a man-and-boy racer — that made the most eloquent case on behalf of those who cherish hard, fast, furious, though fair, competition all the way to the chequered flag.
What Whitmarsh allowed to continue was perhaps the most captivating cameo of a race sprinkled with incident, if devoid of a narrative by the infuriating number of pit-stops brought about by the increasing importance of tyre strategy.
Tussle: Jenson Button and Sergio Perez made contact as they raced in Bahrain
Duel: Button asked his team to calm Perez down after the Mexican clipped his team-mate from behind
Did Perez, new to the team and aged just 23, overstep the mark?
Whitmarsh thought so just once, when he clipped Button. It was a fair assessment, and one he made clear to his gung-ho driver within minutes of the end of the race.
Button was stronger in his rebuke — and, even if he was a little too censorious, we must listen to him because he was in the cockpit travelling at 185mph.
‘The racing was great out there,’ he said. ‘The only person that wasn’t was Checo. He was too aggressive, I would say.
‘At that speed, you don’t expect your team-mate to come alongside you and bang wheels. It was a bit of a surprise, and I’m probably not the only one that feels like that. That’s something you do in karting; normally you grow out of it.’
Leader of the pack: Vettel took early control of the Bahrain Grand Prix
All action: The drivers charged down to the first corner
The hope is that Perez can yet add a touch more maturity and guile, through personal experience rather than by being programmed by his masters on the pit wall.
The freedom he was afforded yesterday served another, more immediate, purpose. It allowed him to start to establish himself at McLaren, a daunting home with a trophy cabinet they measure by the metre. He proved to himself — and to Whitmarsh, who after the last race in China told him he needed to ‘use his elbows more’ — that he could be a worthy rival to Button, the 2009 world champion.
‘I think I was as aggressive as he was with me,’ said Perez, a Mexican. ‘But at one or two points, it was probably too much. We could both have ended our races.’
Aussie Rules: Mark Webber pulls away from McLaren driver Button
Train: Nico Rosberg didn't have the pace to stay in the lead and soon had a number of cars waiting to pass him
Perez finished sixth, his best result in four races for the team, and Button 10th after a fourth pit-stop late on. Paul Di Resta was top Brit, fourth in his Force India while Lewis Hamilton came fifth, four places ahead of his Mercedes team-mate and pole-sitter, Nico Rosberg.
Only 28,000 people saw the race, while many more were stuck on roads around the circuit, victims of delays caused by the laborious checkpoint searches to stop anti-regime protestors entering.
The Crown Prince, whose initiative this controversial grand prix was, nonetheless smiled broadly as he took his leave.
He was already thinking of next year’s race, telling me how he hoped it would be run under lights in the gloaming of evening.
How much progress is made in this troubled land over the next 12 months will determine whether Formula One’s return here will again be the subject of a vexed debate. But, last night, Bernie Ecclestone’s travelling family left quietly.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/formulaone/article-2312478/Bahrain-Grand-Prix--Sebastian-Vettel-wins-Kimi-Raikkonen-Romain-Grosjean-Lewis-Hamilton-fifth.html#ixzz2R92MkaQU
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