MOTORSPORT: 4 + 4 = 3 for Ricciardo

It was a familiar story at the Bahrain Grand Prix with two Mercedes drivers and one from Ferrari on the podium, but another brilliant drive by Daniel Ricciardo has him third in the Formula One World Championship after two rounds.

Like Mercedes’ world champion and pole-position starter Lewis Hamilton, Ricciardo’s Red Bull suffered front-wing damage in contact with the Williams-Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas at the first corner but the Australian soldiered through the difficulty to repeat his fourth-place finish in Melbourne two weeks earlier.

“Daniel got absolutely everything out of the car he could to deliver another excellent race,” Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner said.

Nico Rosberg won again – not only his second victory this season but his fifth in a row, and the eighth straight for Mercedes, which dominated the first two years of the hybrid V6 cars and looks like continuing that this season.

Rosberg now has 16 career wins – the same number as the great Stirling Moss. They also share the honour of the most race victories without having been world champion.

However, Rosberg already has a 17-point lead this season over Hamilton, the champion of the past two years as well as 2008, when he was with McLaren which then had Mercedes power.

Kimi Raikkonen was the Ferrari man on the podium this time, rather than Sebastian Vettel – who did not make the start after his power unit blew up on the formation lap.

The cause of Vettel’s woe was not immediately clear, but he thought it unlikely to have been the same as that which put Raikkonen out in Melbourne with flames flickering from his airbox.

Raikkonen’s second place last night, 10.2 seconds behind Rosberg, was the fifth time he’s been runner-up on the Middle Eastern island’s Sakhir circuit, and three times he’s been third without ever winning there.

Hamilton fought his way back to third, half a minute behind Rosberg in what he called “damage limitation” after the contact with Bottas that dropped him to seventh early in the race and earned the Williams driver a drive-through penalty.

However, Bottas and teammate Felipe Massa collected world championship points for ninth and eighth place respectively. Williams is the only team other than Mercedes to have had both its cars in the points at both races this season.

Far more stunning in Bahrain though was Frenchman Romain Grosjean’s fifth place for the new American team of industrial tools tycoon Gene Haas after sixth on debut in Melbourne.

It is the first US team to score points in consecutive races since Australia’s 1980 world champion Alan Jones finished fourth and sixth in Italy and Belgium in 1986 for the similarly named Team Haas that was owned by the unrelated Carl Haas, best-known as an IndyCar team owner.

Grosjean is fifth in this year’s drivers’ championship – higher than he ever was in six seasons with Renault and Lotus, while Renault is yet to score a point in its return as a fully-fledged constructor this year after its takeover of the Lotus team and using the same power units it supplies to Red Bull.

One of Renault’s drivers, Jolyon Palmer, had a hydraulics problem on the formation lap last night and immediately retired, while Kevin Magnussen started from the pit lane as penalty for a weighing infringement on Friday and finished 11th.

Rookie Stoffel Vandoorne, deputising for Fernando Alonso after the Spaniard was ruled out by doctors because of the after-effects of his huge Melbourne crash, outqualified McLaren-Honda teammate Jenson Button and picked up the last world championship point for finishing 10th – while Button retired early with a power unit failure.

The exits of Vettel and Button, and Alonso staying around for the weekend only to lend advice to Vandoorne, meant that there were more world champions from this year’s field looking on (three) at Sakhir than on the track (two – Raikkonen and Hamilton).

Vandoorne became the first Belgian to score points in F1 since Thierry Boutsen finished fifth for Ligier in Adelaide in 1992.

Teenager Max Verstappen was sixth last night in his Toro Rosso-Ferrari, while all the 11 finishers behind him were lapped.

The first of those was Ricciardo’s Red Bull teammate Daniil Kyvat, who was another to incur damage on the opening lap after starting 15th.

“All in all, it was a decent weekend for us with some valuable points in the bank,” Red Bull chief Horner said.

Ricciardo was happy to come away with another fourth place, albeit more than a minute behind Rosberg, after an “interesting” start from fifth on the grid.

“I didn’t get off the line very well and I could see it was getting a bit chaotic into turn one,” he said.

“I tried to capitalise on it but ended up with damage on the front wing when Bottas and I came together.

“There was a moment that I thought I would have to pit for a new wing as the chunk that came off looked pretty substantial, but we were able to hang in there for a few laps, racing with the Williams.

“The damage didn’t affect me too much and we had a good race, although a little lonely towards the end.”

The qualifying format for the remaining 19 GPs this year remains unresolved after officials and teams could not agree at a meeting in Bahrain before the race. Further talks have been scheduled for this Thursday, with the governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and commercial rights holder, represented by Bernie Ecclestone, opposed to simply reverting to last year’s format.

The FIA made a proposal in Bahrain, but those at the meeting refused to reveal what it was.

Formula One World Championship driver standings after two of 21 rounds – 1. Nico Rosberg  (Germany, Mercedes) 50 points; 2. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 33; 3. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 24; 4. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 18; 5. Romain Grosjean (France, Haas-Mercedes) 18; 6. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Ferrari) 15; 7. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 14; 8. Max Verstappen (Netherlands, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 9; 9. Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 6; 10. Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Red Bull-Renault) 6; 11. Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Williams-Mercedes) 6; 12. Carlos Sainz Junior (Spain,  Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 2; 13. Stoffel Vandoorne (Belgium, McLaren-Honda) 1.

F1 constructor standings – 1. Mercedes 83 points; 2. Ferrari 33; 3. Red Bull Racing 30; 4. Williams 20; 5. Haas 18; 6. Toro Rosso 11; 7. Force India 6; 8. McLaren 1.

Power rises in Phoenix but Dixon a class apart
Team Penske dominated qualifying for the weekend’s IndyCar race under lights at the 1-mile (1.6km) oval at Phoenix, Arizona, but Chip Ganassi’s New Zealander Scott Dixon came out the winner.

Penske’s Australian Will Power picked up third place and 35 points after missing the opening race two weeks earlier at St Petersburg in Florida with an ear infection, initially thought to have been concussion, after taking pole position there – worth one point.

Penske’s Frenchman Simon Pagenaud has finished second in both races this season and leads the championship.

Brazilian Helio Castroneves and Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya led most of the first 100 laps at Phoenix for Penske but both suffered right-front tyre blowouts, leaving Dixon to lead most of the last 60 per cent of the race.

A four-time series – and reigning – champion, Dixon notched his 39th career victory, drawing level in equal fourth on the all-time list with Al Unser Junior and only three behind Michael Andretti.

Eight of the top 10 finishers in the return of Indy racing to Phoenix after an 11-year absence had Chevrolet power, while the top driver with a Honda engine was Graham Rahal in fifth.

Dixon’s victory was his 20th on an oval, he has now won at least one race every season for 12 years – a record – and he said he “definitely, definitely had some speed in reserve” at Phoenix.

Pagenaud has 83 points, Dixon 79 and Montoya 74, with Power – the 2014 series champion – 12th on 36.

“It’s a very long championship and you’ve got a couple of double-points races (the Indianapolis 500 next month and the season finale at Sonoma, California) – I think I can crawl back,” Power said.

The next round, on April 17, is on the streets of Long Beach, California, where Dixon won last year.

Reigning NASCAR champion Kyle Busch has scored his first win in this year’s Sprint Cup at Martinsville, Virginia, driving for Joe Gibbs’ Toyota team, but he still trails Chevrolet drivers Kevin Harvick (Stewart-Haas) and Jimmie Johnson (Hendrick Motorsports) on the points table.

Penske drivers Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski are fifth and sixth in the series, behind another Gibbs driver, Carl Edwards.