Vettel beat Hamilton to win Bahrain Grand Prix Thriller

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel beat Lewis Hamilton to win the thrilling F1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix and gave him a seven-point lead over Hamilton, in the F1 Championships. Mercede’s Hamilton was penalized five seconds for driving slowly on pit entry to hold up Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo.

Team-mate Valtteri Bottas was ordered to let Hamilton pass by so he could chase Vettel, but 12 seconds in nine laps was too big a job to beat Sebastian. Kimi Raikkonen with a poor start left him behind but recovered to take the fourth place ahead of Ricciardo. Red Bull\s Max Verstappen crashed out after 11 laps with brake failure.

Mercedes still lead the constructors’ stakes with 109points to Ferrari’s 100, with Red Bull on 47 ahead of Force India on 17, Williams on 16 and Toro Rosso on 12, Hass on 8 and Renault on 2.

Vettel now has five race wins for Ferrari, level with Gerhard Berger.

No	Driver	Team	Points	Time	Avg. mph
1	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	25	!:33;53:374	196.979
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	18	+6.660sec	196.746
3	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	15	+20.397sec	196.268
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	12	+22.475sec	196.196
5	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	10	+39.346sec	195.612
6	Felipe Massa	Williams	8	+54.326sec
7	Sergio Perez	Force India	6	+62.606sec
8	Romain Grosjean	HAAS	4	+74.865sec
9	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	2	+80.188sec
10	Esteban Ocon	Force India	1	+95.711sec