When Nico Rosberg shot to the second pole position of his career at the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend, he thought he could steal the show once again.But it was right from the start of the race that the German came under intense pressure from Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso, who were swimming all over him. And it was on lap three that the Mercedes driver eventually gave in and Vettel took the lead – going on to win the race. And it was an impressive win – 9.1 seconds ahead of Lotus pair Kimi Raikkonen and 19.5 seconds ahead of Romain Grosjean, who finished 2nd and 3rd respectively.

While they worked their way up from 8th and 11th on the grid, perhaps the most impressive performance came from Scotland’s Paul di Resta, who drove an astonishingly fast race to finish 4th – the highest-placed Mercedes-powered car on the grid.But Kimi Raikkonen was stereotypically disgruntled with 2nd place – having not brought in the full 25 points. “Second is obviously better than third place but we haven’t won and that’s what we try to do,” he said. “Today we got good points, we didn’t lose too many to Sebastian but obviously it doesn’t help to finish second if he’s winning all the time. So we try to find something but all of them have been improved, in a way.”Sebastian Vettel, who has won the last three Formula One World Championships said that he had ‘a flawless race from start to finish’. “The car was very quick and it just started to get better and better towards the end,” he explained. “Really, a beautiful race where you could push every single lap. We took care of the tyres, so overall very happy. Also to have a woman on the podium is good. I think it’s not happening every day. Gill Jones, she takes care of our electronics in the team, she looks after the boys, so great to have her up here as well.”

Speaking on the fast wear of the Pirelli tyres, he added: “The fact that you can’t push as hard as you like every lap, you have to work with the tyres and sit at a certain pace and go from there. To some extent, it is less enjoyable than in the past.”Lewis Hamilton overtook Sergio Perez on the last lap to finish 4th. And while Perez has had a falling out with Jenson Button after a clumsy incident involving the pair during the race, Hamilton was ‘massively happy’ with the result. "The race started so badly,” he explained. “I wanted to get a good start, but I got a terrible start. Then I was so slow. I was nowhere, no speed at all."No matter what I did to the car, it didn''t get any faster. All of a sudden something happened after the second pit stop, all of a sudden the car started reacting differently and I could push again. It must have been something that happened to the car in qualifying when we changed the gearbox, and it sorted itself.

"At the beginning I was a sitting duck, and then it was great to be able to do some overtaking. All of a sudden, the car was amazing."And the driver of the day Paul di Resta, who finished 6th in last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix, narrowly missed out on a podium place. “That was probably my strongest grand prix,” he said. "The podium was very close, but with our strategy we were always going to be vulnerable, especially to Grosjean who had two new sets of medium tyres."We will get on the podium one day, hopefully soon, but for now we can be very happy with the points we''ve scored today."

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