Could Ferrari really have won in Bahrain?

Two races down and already it looks as though Ferrari has a mountain to climb if it wants to seriously challenge Mercedes for the Formula 1 world championship. Mercedes holds a 50-point advantage in the constructors' race, and neither of Ferrari's chargers sits inside the top three in the drivers' standings.

Yes Ferrari could have won against the odds with a better strategy call in Melbourne, but the SF16-H was still fundamentally slower than the W07 throughout the Australian Grand Prix. To win that race on what Sebastian Vettel called one of Ferrari's worst tracks would have been opportunistic, and it was ultimately an opportunity missed, but not merited on pace alone.

Bahrain would be different. A better indicator of where Ferrari stood in reality thanks to the Sakhir circuit being a "more normal" track than Albert Park, according to Kimi Raikkonen.

Except it wasn't much different as it turned out.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg qualified one-two again, Ferrari suffered another engine failure, and though Raikkonen finished second here (for the second season in succession) he never really looked like a serious contender to beat Rosberg to victory.

But Ferrari was resolutely confident in defeat. It said without the suspected injector/valve failure that caused Vettel's engine to fail spectacularly on the formation lap he would have been in for a "very good" race; that without Raikkonen's self-confessed finger trouble on the clutch at the start he was quick enough to possibly win it - which by implication means Vettel could have too.

"Kimi had a bit of a problem at the start and I think that penalised him quite a lot," said Ferrari team boss Maurizio Arrivabene. "Maybe - and I underline maybe - he compromised the victory of the race. If you count, it's easy. I'm not inventing anything."

So was Ferrari right to be bullish? Was this yet another genuine opportunity missed? Or did Mercedes - and Rosberg in particular - simply have too much in hand?

As Rosberg put it, the start was "key". The championship leader made another strong getaway from the dirty side of the grid, while polesitter Hamilton fluffed his lines again and found himself relegated to second as the two silver cars descended on the first corner.

Raikkonen's own poor getaway meant he slipped back from third (in the absence of Vettel, but fourth on the actual grid) to sixth at the first corner.

He gained a place back when the fast-starting Williams of Valtteri Bottas clattered into Hamilton as they turned in to Turn 1 - half spinning and severely delaying the Mercedes - but gradually recovered to second place over the first seven laps, which included what Arrivabene described as a "brave" round-the-outside pass on Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull at Turn 4.

But by the time Raikkonen had dispatched Ricciardo's RB12 (damaged after clouting Hamilton's Mercedes in the Turn 1 melee), repassed Bottas's hobbled Williams, and moved into second when the sister Williams of Felipe Massa dived into the pits on lap seven of 57, Rosberg was 11.816 seconds up the road and realistically out of reach.

Three times Ferrari attempted to destabilise Rosberg by pitting Raikkonen earlier than his rival, including for a short middle stint on super-soft tyres. Mercedes simply reacted by bringing Rosberg in shortly afterwards each time and fitting the same compound to cover Ferrari's attacks. Without a second Ferrari in the race, this was a straightforward challenge for Mercedes to meet.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff reckoned the 'undercut' to be worth around 1-2s in Bahrain, which explains why Raikkonen was able to get within nine seconds of Rosberg after the second round of stops - aided by a minor delay in Rosberg's release.

Following the final round of stops Raikkonen closed to within 3.806s, after Mercedes waited an extra lap to bring Rosberg in and Rosberg produced a rather pedestrian out-lap.

So it's easy to see why Arrivabene felt Raikkonen might have had a sniff without that poor start, but analysis of the respective pace Rosberg and Raikkonen showed across the four stints - discounting the first seven laps of the race Raikkonen spent bottled up in traffic - suggests Mercedes always had things under control.

Rosberg was 0.607s per lap faster on average over the four laps they did in clean air on used super-softs in the first stint, which is slightly exaggerated by the extra degradation Raikkonen would have suffered in traffic.

But when both used super-softs again in the middle of the race Rosberg was still fractionally quicker on average - by 0.054s per lap - when you discount the two significantly slower extra laps he did to extend his stint slightly.

RAIKKONEN'S DEFICIT TO ROSBERG IN STINT ONE

RAIKKONEN'S DEFICIT TO ROSBERG IN STINT THREE

On the soft tyre each used for the majority of the race, Rosberg was 0.213s per lap faster on average over the 15-lap second stint and 0.171s per lap faster across the final stint, before he noticeably backed off over the final two laps to the finish.

RAIKKONEN'S DEFICIT TO ROSBERG IN STINT TWO

RAIKKONEN'S DEFICIT TO ROSBERG IN STINT FOUR

Even if you credit Raikkonen back an extra couple of laps to offset the fact his final stint was longer, on account of his earlier stops, his average laptime over the final stint was at best estimate only 0.013s quicker than Rosberg's.

By this stage Rosberg was clearly managing the gap to the end. "I was in control, we were managing the race, strategy-wise, pitstop-wise, taking our time, just bringing the race home," he said.

Perhaps more revealing was how Rosberg could really turn the screw if he needed to. When Raikkonen closed to within four seconds of the leader at the beginning of the final stint, Rosberg punched in a 1m34.482s lap - which stood as the race's fastest - to reassert control. The best Raikkonen could manage was nearly seven tenths slower than that.

Mercedes always seemed to have something in hand when needed. Ferrari trailed by around half a second after Friday practice, found itself behind by the same deficit after qualifying, and was down on pace in the race too.

Raikkonen was consistently quicker than Rosberg in the second sector, but Rosberg cancelled that out by being regularly faster in the first.

Overall Rosberg still had the edge. Sure Ferrari was closer on average over long stints, but that's nothing new, and still probably wouldn't have been enough to challenge Mercedes even with a clean start. Ferrari still has to rely on somehow gaining track position to dictate terms.

The unknown factor in Bahrain was Vettel, who was 0.15-0.25s faster than Raikkonen in qualifying and would have started closer to the Mercedes than his team-mate had the engine not detonated. It's possible he could have applied a tad more pressure, but he never made the start, so really it's a moot point.

Mercedes was simply faster here. Even more disconcerting for Ferrari is the pace Hamilton showed during his recovery drive to third.

He fell back to ninth after that poor start, which he said was unrelated to the one he suffered in Melbourne and unrelated to the new rules surrounding reduced radio communication and clutch procedures, and the first-corner collision with Bottas, for which the Williams driver was penalised.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff estimated Hamilton's car was "almost a second down on downforce" thanks to the "substantial" damage done to the W07's floor in the impact, but Hamilton raced back up to third with relative ease despite this.

The team realised he wouldn't be able to recover further ground without a slice of luck, so switched the reigning champion onto the medium tyre at his first pitstop in hope that a safety car might bring the race back towards Hamilton.

"The interesting thing in the race is that the medium didn't work at all," said Wolff. "We didn't expect that. Because the car was almost a second down on downforce we soon found out that there was no way of really closing the gap to Kimi on the same tyre, so keeping him [Hamilton] out there would have given us a chance in case there was a safety car. That was the only chance really of making second."

Hamilton's tyre choices for the remainder of the race matched the two cars ahead. He was quicker than both over an equivalent number of laps on the super-soft, before degradation set in, and was around seven tenths slower per lap on average than team-mate Rosberg during the final stint on softs.

For the first seven laps of his final stint he was quicker than Raikkonen and only fractionally slower than Rosberg, before dropping his pace substantially - suggesting either the car damage affected tyre life more than outright performance, or that his rivals were simply holding back, knowing the contest was over bar the shouting.

HAMILTON'S CHASE OF RAIKKONEN IN THE FINAL STINT

"I guarantee you Nico wasn't pushing from lap 10 and I bet you Kimi wasn't pushing 15-20 laps from the end either," said Hamilton. "Same for me."

Hamilton is clearly still frustrated by a formula that prioritises efficiency over flat-chat driving. It seems that is presently giving him more cause for concern than the two bad starts he's suffered this year.

"I'm not really worried about it," he said. "The first one was clutch related and the second one was something else. It's not entirely my fault but it's [also] my reaction that cost the time.

"It's something we'll work internally on and fix for the next race. It's not a big issue at all, but it has a domino effect. I actually had a good start once I got going."

Mercedes is nevertheless calling in some expertise from parent company Daimler in an attempt to improve the clutch and make Hamilton more comfortable.

"We believe it's more of a hardware issue than just a control electronics problem and you can't solve that from one race to the other," explained Wolff.

"The collaboration with Daimler is around optimising the hardware and that needs a bit of time. I am not sure when we will have results."

Hamilton also seems unruffled by the fact he's failed to win either of the first two races of this season, while team-mate Rosberg has now won each of the last five grands prix they've contested.

Hamilton knows the experience of winning the past two championships - particularly the way he recovered in adversity to triumph in 2014 - means he doesn't need to force his hand.

"I feel really positive even though we've lost the first two races, because the foundation work I've been doing with my engineers and the communication is better than ever, so I know it's going to come good," explained Hamilton, who trails Rosberg by 17 points in this year's title race already.

"Nobody likes losing - we easily had the pace to convert to a win - so we all feel the pain, but there's a long, long way to go."

That will also be some comfort to Ferrari, which despite its best efforts still lacks those crucial tenths of raw performance that would allow it to really put pressure on Mercedes.

The early pattern already seems similar to last year - Mercedes with a crucial few tenths in hand if the drivers execute properly in qualifying; Ferrari a bit closer in the races where tyre degradation and energy management play more of a role.

Rosberg, though, is convinced Ferrari has yet to show what it can really do.

"Kimi showed good pace in the race, and we know that Ferrari is super close - we saw that in qualifying," he said. "We need to keep pushing because they haven't shown what they are capable of yet - they've had so many mishaps which have cost them dearly.

"We need to be careful because they are coming at us strong. We haven't seen the real Ferrari yet."

Maybe not. But if that is true, the real Ferrari could do with turning up pretty damn soon, before this season becomes another two-horse Mercedes race.