After the mixed weather of the previous few days at Sakhir, the race took place on a hot and sunny day with track temperatures around 40 degrees Celsius. Jarno and team-mate Ralf Schumacher lined up in 9th and 14th places respectively on the grid. Both lost ground at the start before an early accident brought out the safety car. Ralf's day was tough but he brought his car home in 12th place to maintain the team's 100 percent reliability record.

Toyota will now look to build on this solid start to the season make up ground on the front-runners. The next major test is scheduled for Barcelona beginning on April 30 in preparation for the next round of the championship, the Spanish Grand Prix, which will take place at the same circuit on May 13th.

Ralf Schumacher: "It's been a difficult weekend for me since the beginning and it was another hard day out there starting from so far back. Jarno's points show that it was not a bad race but I made my life hard and struggled to adapt the car to suit me since Friday."

"Today we didn't get away well off the line and that meant I was always going to be in traffic. If you have a less than perfect set-up then it is difficult to make up ground. So it was not a good day but we can't change that. Now we need to work hard and analyse everything. We have a new aerodynamic package coming to Barcelona so we hope that brings us further forward."

John Howett TMG President: "That was despite a top speed which was down compared to qualifying so we will have to analyse the reasons for that. The starts did not go as well as expected either and we lost positions with both cars. We have to solve that because there's no point in fighting so hard in qualifying if we are going to lose out off the line."

"Ralf always had a hard race from where he was on the grid but he did well to bring the car home. Now we have to help him and make the car more driveable for him. Overall it was a solid race and we finished where we thought we were after qualifying - the fourth fastest team - so it's good to see concrete evidence. This weekend we have shown a continued improvement of our performance after Melbourne and Sepang. So although we are not where we want to be and we still have to improve the overall pace, it's encouraging."

Ralf Schumacher
Chassis: TF107/03
Race Classification: 12th
Gap: +1 lap
Tyre Strategy: Soft Soft Hard
Qualifying Classification: 14th
Time: 1m 33.294s (+1.935s in Q3)
Grid: 14th

Race results

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time
1	F. Massa	Ferrari	1:32:27.515
2	L. Hamilton	McLaren	+ 2.360
3	K. Räikkönen	Ferrari	+ 10.839
4	N. Heidfeld	BMW	+ 13.831
5	F. Alonso	McLaren	+ 14.426
6	R. Kubica	BMW	+ 45.529
7	J. Trulli	Toyota	+ 1:21.371
8	G. Fisichella	Renault	+ 1:21.701
9	H. Kovalainen	Renault	+ 1:29.411
10	N. Rosberg	Williams	+ 1:29.916
11	A. Wurz	Williams	+ 1 laps
12	R. Schumacher	Toyota	+ 1 laps
13	R. Barrichello	Honda	+ 1 laps
14	C. Albers	Spyker F1	+ 2 laps
15	A. Sutil	Spyker F1	+ 4 laps
Did not finish
16	A. Davidson	Super Aguri	+ 6 laps
17	M. Webber	Red Bull	+ 16 laps
18	D. Coulthard	Red Bull	+ 21 laps
19	T. Sato	Super Aguri	+ 23 laps
20	V. Liuzzi	Scuderia Toro Rosso	+ 31 laps
21	J. Button	Honda	+ 57 laps
22	S. Speed	Scuderia Toro Rosso	+ 57 laps

 

Photos from Bahrain