Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel made it two from three to take the championship lead over Mercedes man Lewis Hamilton when he beat the British driver to victory by just over 6 seconds in the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Vettel got the jump on Hamilton right from the start and began harrowing his teammate, pole sitter Valtteri Bottas. Unable to get past the Finn, Vettel opted to pit for fresh rubber, a decision that could have handed him the victory. Soon after, a safety car was called after Max Verstappen's Red Bull suffered brake failure and Mercedes opted to double stack their drivers.

Hamilton, who was second to his teammate, came into the pits too slowly and held up the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo behind him and as such incurred a five second time penalty.

As hard as Hamilton tried he was unable to close the gap to Vettel and was forced to settle for the second step of the rostrum instead with teammate Valtteri Bottas third.

“Today's race reminded us once again that we are in a very different competitive situation this year, racing against Ferrari - and I am confident that this is a challenge we will rise to as one team,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said. “After a winter of massive regulation change, we have been in the hunt for race wins at every weekend and that is the big positive for us. But today was another reminder that we need to get everything right in order to deliver.”

“That's a challenge we relish as sportsmen and women. Ultimately, this was a day of marginal losses which cost us the win - however, as we saw particularly with Lewis, the pace was there in the car at the times when we were able to extract it. Our first loss came on the grid when a generator failure left Valtteri with too high starting pressures; that limited his pace in the opening stint, meaning we could not open a gap to the field and, with Lewis running behind Vettel, our strategic choices were pretty limited.”

“ We were on the back foot and then Ferrari played the undercut perfectly to come out ahead. We got lucky with the Safety Car which gave us an opportunity to recover but a problem with the wheel guns meant we lost time and positions with both cars. With the cars running different tyre compounds, we had to make the tough unpopular call for Valtteri to let Lewis pass; it's not something we like to do but, when the moment comes that the race win is in danger, we will always do what we need to in order to get it. After that, we offset Lewis' strategy as much as possible to give him the chance of closing down Sebastian in the final laps, but after he had served the five-second penalty, it left him with too much to do. We leave Bahrain with a lot more learning and still more work to do, in order to perform at our best and convert the car's speed into race wins. “

Only 13 drivers finished the race: Stoffel Vandoorne failed to start while his teammate Fernando Alonso lost power just a few laps from the end while Max Verstappen, who was having a strong run, crashed out just after his pit stop.

Bahrain GP race result
1. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari,
2. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, +6.660
3. Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes, +20.397
4. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, +22.475
5. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull, +39.346
6. Felipe Massa, Williams, +54.326
7. Sergio Perez, Force India, +1:02.606
8. Romain Grosjean, Haas, +1:14.865
9. Nico Hulkenberg, Renault, +1:20.188
10. Esteban Ocon, Force India, +1:35.711
11. Pascal Wehrlein, Sauber, +1 Lap
12. Daniil Kvyat, Toro Rosso, +1 Lap
13. Jolyon Palmer, Renault, +1 Lap