Ferrari's Bahrain edge goes beyond straightline speed

The Bahrain Grand Prix was the turnaround in the season that Ferrari desperately needed. The team's performance was back to what we saw in pre-season testing at Barcelona, with an advantage of around three tenths of a second in qualifying.

So the big question is: how do you explain the swing since the performance in Melbourne?

Rumour has it, as suggested by Red Bull's Helmut Marko, that Ferrari had cooling problems in Australia. But I don't agree with that idea because even if the cooling isn't right then it will be OK for one lap in qualifying. But Ferrari was well off both in qualifying and race conditions.

Mercedes seems to have focused on the fact that Ferrari was gaining all of its time in Bahrain on the straights. Team boss Toto Wolff suggested this was worth "almost half a second", but I don't agree that it's that simple. Every circuit requires a compromise of aerodynamic drag to engine power and then that dictates your downforce level. I think in Bahrain Ferrari achieved that compromise better than the other teams.

Qualifying, where all the drivers want to get a clean lap not following another car and they can all use the DRS to the same extent, is the best time to compare speeds.

The start/finish line in Bahrain has a speed trap and then you have the main speed trap at the end of that straight - 144 metres before Turn 1 to be precise - which is a good place to compare the acceleration and the terminal speed. I've done so below with the Mercedes and Ferraris, plus the fastest and slowest overall at those points for context.

Start/finish line speed trap and overall position

1 Norris (McLaren-Renault) 186.7mph
3 Vettel (Ferrari) 185.4mph
5 Leclerc (Ferrari) 184.6mph
10 Bottas (Mercedes) 183.0mph
12 Hamilton (Mercedes) 182.7mph
20 Kubica (Williams-Mercedes 180.9mph

Speed trap at end of pit straight and overall position

1 Vettel (Ferrari) 203.6mph
8 Leclerc (Ferrari) 201.1mph
10 Hamilton (Mercedes) 200.6mph
13 Bottas (Mercedes) 200.4mph
20 Magnussen (Haas-Ferrari) 196.4mph

Delta speed between these two speed traps and overall position

1 Stroll (Racing Point-Mercedes) 21.1mph
8 Vettel (Ferrari) 18.2mph
11 Hamilton (Mercedes 17.9mph
12 Bottas (Mercedes) 17.4mph
14 Leclerc (Ferrari) 16.4mph
20 Norris (McLaren-Renault) 12.8mph

So what does all that tell us? When you consider that you are not allowed to alter the rear wing aerodynamics between qualifying and the race, then going into qualifying top speed without the DRS open is important if you are going to stand any chance of not being overtaken in the race by another car with the benefit of it. On top of that, you get the benefit of the DRS speed in qualifying like anyone else.

As you can also see by listing who was fastest and who was slowest, the engine does not dictate the speed performance - otherwise why is Kevin Magnussen with his Ferrari engine slowest in the speed trap? As for Lando Norris, it looks like McLaren was running too high a downforce level or that McLaren's DRS when open doesn't give the speed shift of others.

The set-up of a car for each individual circuit is all about the compromises and making the correct decisions is no easy task. Each team will run through thousands of simulations before deciding on the levels of spring stiffness relative to roll stiffness and cambers comparing braking efficiency against cornering efficiency.

I'm pretty sure Leclerc would have been devastated. He just has to remember the four drivers behind him had a total of 134 wins and nine world championships to their credit at that moment

Then the two most important factors are energy deployment against energy harvesting, and drag against engine power. This in the end dictates downforce and I think Ferrari learned a lot from getting it badly wrong in Melbourne, which made those in the team scratch their heads and get it more right than the others at Sakhir.

The Bahrain Grand Prix was as good a race as I have seen in a long time. There didn't seem to be a dull moment from the start lights going out until the chequered flag. But credit where credit is due, the new kid on the block had them all covered.

It must have been a very proud moment for Charles Leclerc sitting on pole position. The two front rows of the grid had drivers with 146 pole positions between them and he had just joined that club with his first pole - becoming the 99th driver in world championship history to get one.

In the race, after a bit of a tardy start and first couple of laps he got up to speed and passed Vettel for the lead, then totally dominated until lap 45 of 57 when he had what Ferrari described as a combustion problem on one cylinder. The loss of power, which would probably have been about 130bhp, meant he was a sitting duck.

First of all Lewis Hamilton then Valtteri Bottas overtook him, pushing him back to third. Fortunately for Leclerc at that point both Renaults fizzled out at Turn 1 and caused the safety car to come out, which meant Max Verstappen wasn't able to overtake him and the race finished under caution.

Ferrari has had this cylinder problem before and it was down to a broken spark plug. It is most likely something like that again, an ignition coil or fuel injector or some single cylinder component failure. If it was an internal mechanical problem the engine would have been spread all over the track.

From dominating the weekend, it all ended up with him standing on the lowest step of the podium. He still got the extra point for the fastest lap and it is still his first podium, but I'm pretty sure he would have been devastated. None of it was down to him and without doubt he will be on the top step before very long. He just has to remember that while everything was going as it should have done on lap 44 the four drivers directly behind him had a total of 134 wins and nine world championships to their credit - with Hamilton going on to make it 135. Not bad for a driver in his second season of Formula 1 and making his second start for Ferrari.

Vettel needs to tidy up his act and not get flustered so easily, otherwise his team-mate will give him a thrashing

The story of the race behind Leclerc was interesting. It made for great viewing but once again mistakes were made by both teams and the drivers.

At Hamilton's first stop on lap 15, Mercedes fitted new softs. This was wrong because after starting the race on soft if you take the soft again you are then committed to two stops and you have made your intentions public knowledge. By going with the mediums, Ferrari hedged its bets and had the possibility to go all the way on one stop.

But if this turned not to be possible it could choose which tyre was best for the short run to the end and given that would be a short stint and on low fuel the softs would have had a better chance of survival, allowing the driver to take the extra performance out of them.

Hamilton's second stop on lap 34 meant that to comply with using two different tyre compounds as per the rules during the race he had to fit the mediums. Vettel pitted on the next lap and had the luxury of choosing which tyre to fit to cover Hamilton.

Once again, Ferrari fitted mediums but he came out of the pits only just ahead of the Mercedes. Then, in the heat of battle with Hamilton, Vettel spun and badly flatspotted his tyres. That created a dramatic vibration that led to his front wing falling off, which required another pitstop.

This could just be Vettel showing he has learned nothing from last year's mistakes. He needs to tidy up his act and not get so flustered so easily. Otherwise his new team-mate is going to give him a thrashing and he is going to have to live through another year like 2014, when his then team-mate at Red Bull, Daniel Ricciardo, showed that young drivers can sometimes overcome car limitations as their lack of experience actually means they can push on.

Credit where credit is due, all the new young blood are doing a fantastic job. Leclerc's performance spoke for itself and Norris drove very well, scoring his first points. Alex Albon is a match for the more experienced Daniil Kvyat and George Russell in the troubled Williams is keeping his head down and doing a solid job.

He deserves a better car, but hopefully now that Patrick Head is back out of retirement and back on side he will get that - though at best it will be mid-season.

Renault still has a lot of work to do. I think we can safely say that its compromise (that word again) of performance relative to reliability is a bit too one-sided. Honda has definitely stepped into that third-best engine slot and with all four of its cars finishing it will have got a lot of data and motivation that will help it move forward even more.

Will the next race be a Mercedes or a Ferrari weekend? Who knows, all I can say is I can't wait to find out.