F1 Drivers Championship after Spain

F1 Drivers Championship after Spanish Grand Prix

Pastor Maldonado after his win in Spanish Grand Prix broke into the top ten. He is currently 9th in the championship race with 29 points. Fernando Alonso with the second position in Spain picked up 18 valuable points to tie up with Sebastian Vettel at 61 points on top of the table.

Lewis Hamilton with 53 points is currently third on the race. With the amount of blunders committed by his McLaren team, there is virtually no hope despite his individual brilliance.

Kimi Raikkonen is at 53 points. Due to a bad strategy by Lotus, Kimi could not challenge for the first position. He had a longer first stint and a short last stint. So it was difficult for him to challenge for the top two steps of the podium. At the end he was 3.8 seconds adrift of the first position and only 0.6s behind the second placed Fernando Alonso.

Ranking	Driver	Team	Points
1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull	61
2	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	61
3	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren	53
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Lotus	49
5	Mark Webber	Red Bull	48
6	Jenson Button	McLaren	45
7	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	41
8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	35
9	Pastor Maldonado	Williams	29
10	Sergio Perez	Sauber	22
11	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber	19
12	Paul de Resta	Force India	15
13	Bruno Senna	Williams	14
14	Jean-Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso	4
15	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	3
16	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso	2
17	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	2
18	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	2
19	Timo Glock	Marussia	0
20	Charles Pic	Marussia	0
21	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham	0
22	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham	0
23	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT	0
24	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT	0

F1 Drivers Championship 2012 after Bahrain

Sebastian Vettel is now leading the F1 2012 Championship after Bahrain Grand Prix.

There is not much difference between the top 5 drivers, so that championship is wide open.
Michael Schumacher who has been in the first two rows in qualifying in Australia, Malaysia and China has only 2 points to his name after Bahrain. It again reinforces the fact that the proof of the pudding is in eating ie. finishing the race in points scoring positions in F1.

The interesting thing is at the bottom of the table. Timo Glock and Charles Pic of Marussia are 19th and 20th at the moment due to their higher finish. Marussia finished in 14th and 15th position in Australia where as the best place finish of Caterham was 16th and 18th in Malaysia. So Marussia is now in the 10th position. If non of them last three teams ie. Marussia, Caterham or HRT finish in the points and if Caterham and HRT doesn't finish above 14th position, then Marussia will get the 10th position. That is vital because only the top 10 teams get money for the championship. That is many millions of dollars for the 10th placed team and it makes a huge difference to them.

Position	Driver	Team	Points
1	Sebastian Vettel	Redbull	53
2	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren	49
3	Mark Webber	Redbull	43
4	Jenson Button	McLaren	43
5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	43
6	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	35
7	Kimi Raikkonen	Lotus	34
8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	23
9	Sergio Perez	Sauber	22
10	Paul di Resta	Force India	15
11	Bruno Senna	Williams	14
12	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber	9
13	Jean-Eric Vergne	STR	4
14	Pastor Maldonado	Williams	4
15	Daniel Ricciardo	STR	2
16	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	2
17	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	2
18	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	2
19	Timo Glock	Marussia	0
20	Charles Pic	Marussia	0
21	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham	0
22	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham	0
23	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT	0
24	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT	0