Bahrain Grand Prix: Sakhir Round-Up

"The pace was phenomenal, the car was great.  I could push every single lap and look after the tyres." ...Sebastian Vettel

We had an exciting first few opening laps as Vettel battled with Alonso and Rosberg, but once Alonso encoutered DRS problems it became a fairly straight forward victory for Vettel and he found himself in the happy position during his final stint of being told by his team he could take it easy.

Onto my tips and I had more losses than wins this race.  This is how my tips got on...

Post-Qualifying Tips:

Race Winner:
10 points eachway* (20 points total) on Nico Rosberg at 8.0 - LOSS
Nico fought hard during the opening laps to keep Sebastian Vettel behind him, but it was clear that there was only going to be one inevitable conclusion.  Once Vettel made his way past, Rosberg was unable to make his rear tyres last as well as other drivers and quickly fell back down the running order and eventually finished in 9th position.

Podium: 
20 points on Sebastian Vettel at 1.44 - WIN 29 points
I proved to be too conservative with this bet as after some exciting battles with Alonso and Rosberg on the opening laps, Vettel then took the lead and made it look easy as he cruised to his second victory of the season with a comfortable 9.1 second margin.

Top Six Finish:
20 points on Lewis Hamilton at 2.1 - WIN 42 points
Lewis had a subdued start to the Bahrain Grand Prix but his strategy was all about the long game and after an intriguing battle late on with Mark Webber, he eventually crossed the line in 5th place.

To Finish In The Points (Top Ten Finish):
20 points on Nico Hulkenberg at 2.25 - LOSS
With the exception of Paul Di Resta, the top ten was made up of drivers from what you would generally class as 'the big five' teams, so Hulkenberg had to settle for his lowest finish of the season (excluding Australia where he didn't start) in 12th place.

Lap 1 Retirements:
10 points on Lap 1 Retirements - None at 1.5 - WIN 15 points
This was another race where the field got away cleanly and in fact Jean-Eric Vergne on lap 16 was the only retirement of the Grand Prix, so the bookies were proved right to make 'No Retirements' the odds on favourite bet in the 'Lap 1 Retirements' market.

Match Bets:
10 point accumulator on:
Di Resta V Sutil - Di Resta at 1.73
Alonso V Vettel - Vettel at 2.2
Raikkonen V Rosberg - Rosberg at 1.91
Di Resta and Vettel were comfortable winners in their respective match bets but this accumulator failed at the final hurdle as Raikkonen finished comfortably ahead of Rosberg by 7 places.

Pre-Qualifying Tips:

The only one of my pre-qualifying tips which came up was Winning Margin - 6 Seconds Or More at 1.73 and that's now three out of four Grand Prix so far this season where this has been a winning bet.


We now have a three week gap until Barcelona, so over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be looking at the betting statistics so far this season and compare which drivers have been statistically the best bets in each of the most popular betting markets.


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Odds were current at time of publication but are subject to change.