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2015 Bahrain F1 Grand Prix puts a dark horse in the desert [spoilers]

Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen had said after Malaysia that Ferrari can challenge Mercedes-AMG Petronas purely on pace, beyond the scope of tire wear, in the dry. We didn't see that in China, where Lewis Hamilton easily kept everyone behind and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel only got close to Mercedes' Nico Rosberg when Rosberg slowed down to conserve his tires. But the Iceman's words seemed prescient during qualifying for the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix. At the front, nothing has changed so far this year: four races, four pole positions for Lewis Hamilton. Instead of teammate Rosberg next to him, though, he'll look over to see the scarlet Ferrari of Vettel, who took advantage of Rosberg's cautiousness to snatch second place on the grid. In Q2, Rosberg tried to conserve the tires he'd start the race on and said he couldn't get into a groove in Q3, putting in a time 0.147 seconds slower than Vettel. The second Silver Arrows will share his row with the second Ferrari, Raikkonen – yet again – saying he might have left some time on the table during his hot lap but getting around just one tenth off Rosberg's time. Williams is established as the best of the rest behind two teams this year instead of just one last year, Valtteri Bottas claiming fifth ahead of Felipe Massa. Daniel Ricciardo of Infiniti Red Bull Racing said he wants to fight with the Williams', he'll be helped with a good start off the line for the first time this year. Nico Hulkenberg got Force India into Q3 for the first time since the Italian Grand Prix last year and into eighth on the grid, ahead of Carlos Sainz in the Toro Rosso and Romain Grosjean putting in another excellent day's work for Lotus. Come race time, it turned into Mercedes power against Ferrari strategy. When Sky F1 commentator Martin Brundle talks about the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team he often mentions how their engine advantage leads to other advantages throughout the car. Not having to use aerodynamic changes to make up for power unit deficiencies, for instance, means they can run the aero setup they want, which optimizes speed and tire wear throughout a lap. It equates to advantage on top of advantage on top of advantage. That's where Lewis Hamilton is right now, so fundamentally dialed in to his car and his racing that he run the races he wants to run. From the front spot, the Brit ripped off another perfect start and led the field into Turn 1, relinquishing the lead only during pit stops.

Lotus hops into Extreme E with Jenson Button ahead of first race weekend

The Extreme E racing series is filling out with a host of interesting names, and Lotus is the latest manufacturer to join the fray. Lotus is hopping in as technical partner to the Jenson Button Extreme E team, making it quite the British powerhouse. A single photo of the rally vehicle is above with a simple JBXE and Lotus livery. Seeing Lotus hop into electric racing makes sense given that it will be pushing the Evija hypercar out the door soon. The company says it will be leveraging the experience it gained in development of that car to help it succeed on the motorsports side. “We are on the cusp of an exciting new era of electrified motorsport, and weÂ’re delighted to support the JBXE team as Technical Partner,” says Matt Windle, managing director of Lotus Cars. “The complex technicalities of EV racing present a fascinating challenge, and using our learnings from more than a decade of electrifying sports cars – most recently with the Lotus Evija hypercar – we can bring valuable knowledge to the team.” Jenson Button is acting as both the team owner and driver of the car in the Extreme E series. Other notable car companies hopping into the series include GMC (a Hummer partnership), Fisker, Hispano Suiza and Cupra. Other racing outfits are also hopping on without the support of major car manufacturers. The field has just nine teams right now, but the slow trickle continues with promising entries. This latest development with Lotus and Jenson Button is just another feather in the seriesÂ’ cap. "Lotus is a great British brand that is inextricably linked to motorsport, so we are delighted to welcome Lotus Engineering to JBXE,” Button says. “Extreme E is a unique and exciting formula, full of 'world firsts' and challenges, and to announce that a brand such as Lotus Engineering is coming on this journey with us is a proud moment for myself and the team. We are very excited about our new technical partnership and canÂ’t wait to show what we can do in the first race this weekend.” That first race — termed the “Desert X Prix” — will take place in Saudi Arabia this weekend. ItÂ’s airing on Fox Sports in the U.S. The second race is nearly two months after this upcoming one and will take place in Senegal.

European commission investigating F1 finances and anti-competitive accusations

The Kingdom of Formula One reminds us of renaissance Florence - ruled by a singular chieftan behind a mask of representative involvement, rife with spectacularly convoluted machinations, awash in innovations that help define our world and far-flung, vindictive misery. If we found out Bernie Ecclestone's real last name was de Medici, well, it would explain a lot. Now after a bit of back-and-forth, the European Commission (EC) has taken aim at the kingdom, investigating whether F1 is anti-competitive and if the FIA has abused its antitrust agreement. The reason for EC scrutiny is that a British member of the European Parliament who represents an area in southwest England, Anneliese Dodds, has fielded complaints from engineering companies in her constituency that recent moves in F1 have put them out of business. She wrote to the EC to question why the FIA now has a stake in F1 when it signed an agreement in 2001 to be solely a governing body and abdicate any stakeholding in the sport. She also questioned the F1 Strategy Group, a group of the six top teams in F1 that makes decisions about the direction of the sport; she says that the Strategy Group not only appears to be a case of the F1 shirking its rule-making duty, it has resulted in unfair treatment of the small teams that aren't in the group. Dodds has a bit of a point. In 2001, the FIA sold F1's commercial rights to Ecclestone for 100 years for a sum of $313.7 million. That was done to placate European regulators who insisted that "the role of FIA will be limited to that of a sports regulator, with no commercial conflicts of interest." Although the rights are ultimately owned by the FIA and bring in a $10M fee every year from Formula One, those rights bring in $1.6 billion each year to Formula One Management (FOM), the company that owns F1. When Ecclestone was trying to get the new Concorde Agreement signed in 2013 that governs the running of the sport, the FIA wouldn't sign, saying it wanted F1 to share a larger slice of its revenue – the FIA has been losing money for years, see. To the get the FIA to sign, Ecclestone sold it a one-percent stake in F1 for $460,000 and gave the FIA a $5M signing 'bonus;' whenever F1 has its IPO, that stake is estimated to be worth about $120 million - not a bad return. Yet, according to the aforementioned 2001 agreement, the FIA can't have that equity stake.