Conclusions from the 2014 Bahrain GP

In the lonely defence of Pastor Maldonado
So Pastor Maldonado made a clear and obvious mistake. That much is indisputable. But go careful with those demands for an instant race ban. It's argument which, once the subjectivism of antipathy towards a driver with a big temper and an even bigger wallet, and the very natural reaction that Something Must Be Done after Esteban Gutierrez was spent spiralling airborne has been removed, doesn't stand up to scrutiny. First and foremost, mistakes happen, even bad and unnecessary ones, and if Maldonado's misjudgement was worthy of an instant suspension then so, too, for instance, would Rosberg's thoughtless swerve into the path of Sergio Perez in Practice One. And once F1 starts to dish out race suspensions - the F1 equivalent of a red card - with regularity then it's inevitable races will soon be littered with the yellow card equivalent of drive-throughs. We want less interference from officialdom and the stewards, not far more. Nor can a race suspension for Maldonado be justifiably advocated on the basis that Daniel Ricciardo suffered a ten-place grid penalty for an infringement already twice punished, or that the Lotus driver's mistake put the Sauber rear over front; for the former, them the rules and, for the latter, that's the urgent concern the governing body ought to be investigating this week. Maldonado can't be punished just because his infringement revealed an apparent safety flaw in the new car designs. No, the only justifiable reason for banning Maldonado is that he has form - and plenty of it. But that's precisely why the totting-up process was introduced at the start of the year. If Maldonado continues to be a serial offender - and he almost certainly will - then he'll get his just desserts in due time. Whilst we may not instinctively like it, let F1's justice take its fair, if slow, course. Big Ron is back
If you've not seen Ron Dennis' withering denouncement of F1's ridiculous 'Ratnering' - as it must be called after Pat Symonds' equally-eloquent denouncement of the sport's current self-loathing - then don't prolong the mistake a moment longer. It's a tour de force in reasoned, trenchant argument. There is, of course, absolutely no reason to link the quality of a team's off-track public pronouncements with an expectation of better times ahead on the tarmac, but, even still, you can't help but feel that McLaren will, like their boss, be back in power again soon. The contrasting middle management of Hulkenberg and Perez
Too frequently anonymous but occasionally sensationally brilliant, Sergio Perez will never be a seven-out-of-ten driver. When driving for a top team, as we saw last year, the bouts of anonymity are anathema to retention. But for a midfield outfit, as Sauber and now Force India can testify, frequent anonymity is a small burden to accept in return for the occasional race-long flash of brilliance. Especially when the results are priceless: Sunday's breakthrough was Force India's first podium score since 2009 while Perez's hat-trick in 2012 still accounts for three of Sauber's four top-three finishes since the days of BMW. It's that capacity to suddenly deliver invaluable goods which makes Perez the perfect midfield-team driver. The problem for the Mexican, of course, is that whereas at Force India or Sauber a couple of good races can add up to a great season, the axe can fall at a team like McLaren entirely because of a couple of bad races. Which brings us on to the Nico Hulkenberg quandary. He's first-rate, no question, but will consistently delivering seven-out-of-ten performances ever be enough to persuade a big team to come a calling? It hasn't yet and the thought is beginning to prosper that until Nico stops driving with the razor-sharp precision of a top-team driver and risks all in a couple of races - note his surprise and irritation at the irrationality of Perez's opportunistic move past him on lap 27 - then the call might never come. It's ironic, and a symptomatic of the strange world of F1, but Hulkenberg's best bet of breaking out of the midfield mould might be to start driving like a midfield driver. Let the pole-sitter decide where he wants to sit
There was a triple giveaway, surely, that the pole sitter started on the wrong side of the grid on Sunday. First, Nico Rosberg lined-up at the start pointing to the opposite corner of the track. Second, he was beaten to the apex of the first corner despite actually holding the lead all the way to Turn One (watch the replay again and note that Rosberg's car is fractionally ahead of Hamilton's all the way to the pit-exit before swinging back to the left-hand side of the track to keep a car's width of tarmac for his opponent). Third, a driver invariably preferred to hold the inside line whenever he was wheel-to-wheel with another into the first corner for the rest of the race. The semi-official reason for putting the pole-sitter on the left-hand side of the track is that it's considered, with unanimity, to be the clean side and therefore advantageous. Yet has anyone thought about asking the pole-sitter on which side he'd prefer? Or, to put the question a different way, wouldn't it be a fun addition to the weekend's jamboree if the pole-sitter was permitted to choose where he'd like to start after qualifying? Ferrari are nowhere on and off the track
While Ferrari's insistence that their criticism of the new regulations is borne of benevolence towards the sport itself and entirely detached from self-interest, it's inevitable that the symmetry between their on-track struggles and the scale of their off-track opposition will not be considered a simple coincidence. It reeks and the sooner they realise as much the better. PG