Force India are on a mission in Bahrain

It’s hot and humid in Bahrain but the heat was a few hundred Celsius lower than the temperature in the paddocks. Brows of engineers were wet due to undertaking the task of tackling the unknowns. This of course will happen in situations when teams do not have previous data to fall back on. New regulations, a modified circuit and no tyre degradation information being available doesn’t help their cause.
The top four teams - Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes - delivered as expected but only that much.Their timings for top slots were achieved on the soft option tyres whilst Force India achieved top ten statuses on hard compound tyres. This would really mean that the leaders would have to start the race on those very tyres that they qualified with as per regulations.
In fact this applies to the top ten who battled it out in Q3. If they would be forced in to a two stop strategy due to this Sutil and Luizzi would probably be on a one stopper. The mood in the Force India camp is upbeat and it seems that it is a team on a mission. Further, the rest of the 14 cars will have the benefit of starting the race with new tyres. The downside to this could be that the tyres will start operating efficiently only after a few laps.
This could throw up plenty of speculation, as though the leaders could disappear into the distance in the ten laps or so that they would stay out on the track, its unclear how the soft tyres would react to carrying a car with a full tank of gas.
Mallya’s team has done well so far and it would require a lot of bad luck to take away the probability of achieving a top eight position. It’s too early to hazard a guess as to the outcome of Sunday’s season opener but F1 enthusiasts can expect a humdinger of a race! There are bound to be a fair amount of spills in the initial stage of the race due to the aggression and frenzy to establish positions.
Rear end shunts could occur due to the inability of some drivers to stop the heavily loaded monsters. F1 cars ability of stopping on a dime is now history!
The person who kept the coolest head on his shoulders was none other than the Indian ace Karun Chandhok. It was incredible to watch him during the seven laps that he got during qualifying. He was sensible with his mirrors and did what he was expected to do under the difficult circumstances.