Phil: Yesterday in Bahrain, the race that shouldn't have happened but everyone's secretly glad that it did reminded us yet again how close this season is - and there's every reason to think it will stay that way. As if the stat above wasn't enough, here's another - in 2011, seven men stood on the podium all season, and five of them monopolised it for all but the first two races. So far this season, eight men have stood on the podium, after only four races.
The balance of power in F1 seems to shift on an almost weekly basis. Last weekend in Shanghai, Mercedes were the class of the field. This weekend, Red Bull and Lotus had the advantage, Mercedes were lacklustre and erstwhile championship leaders McLaren really had a race to forget. David Coulthard made a very interesting point pre-race in that this is what you get when you have stability in the rules - each team has time to figure out what makes the fastest teams fastest, and copy it. The result is a very close field, which in turn makes for exciting races.
There's only time to note really that Raikkonen's second and Grosjean's third were the first podium positions for Lotus cars since Nelson Piquet in 1988. There's a great pic on the BBC website of race winner Vettel (oh yeah, forgot to mention, the reigning world champion took his first win of the season) marking the occasion by giving Raikkonen the bunny ears during the podium photo session.
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