"There were many surprises in this race. The poor performance of McLaren on track and in the pits, for example. But the biggest was the way the Lotus cars of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean took on the Red Bulls. They managed to beat Mark Webber fairly easily, but Raikkonen couldn’t quite do enough to beat Vettel to the win.

Lotus has had a good car at every race this season, but hasn’t quite got the strategy right before. In China, for example, they tried to do a two stop race with Raikkonen, but timed the stops wrong and on worn tyres he was vulnerable to the three stoppers at the end of the race, falling from 2nd place to 14th.

In Bahrain they got it almost perfect. The strategy planning began in qualifying, where the Finn did only one lap in the Q2 session, intending save a new set of soft tyres. Here Lotus made a small mistake, which turned out to be a benefit as they sent him out too early and underestimated the track improvement at the end of the Q2 session."

"Raikkonen was disappointed after the race. He had a chance to win, just as Perez had a chance to win in Malaysia. The strategy was good enough to give him a chance, but not perfect. Perhaps with a little more ruthlessness by Lotus, moving Grosjean aside, it could have been perfect."

Full Article: jamesallenonf1.com/2012/04/how-raikkonen-nearly-won-in-bahrain/