Whitmash: Today was not the best show

It was supposed to be the start of the greatest season in Formula One, but sadly for a lot of people the Bahrain Grand Prix was a bit of a letdown.

In an attempt to spice things up this year F1's rule makers decided to ban in-race refuelling, but if the first race is anything to go by, then we could be in for another boring season.

Michael Schumacher admitted after the season opener was a bit dull.

"It's the start and then after it is just sort of go your pace and not do mistakes," he said BBC.

Lewis Hamilton, who finished third, echoed his comments. "It is a different challenge," he said. "It definitely didn't make the racing more exciting in terms of overtaking. I wasn't able to follow in the first third of the circuit."

Hamilton's boss at McLaren Martin Whitmarsh admitted the race wasn't very entertaining and says more needs to be done to keep people tuned in.

"Formula 1 has to be entertaining, people have to be switched on to what is going to happen in the race, if it's processional they are not going to be," he told BBC. "Today was not the best show, we know that and we have all got to work together to improve it.

"I personally believe that more challenging tyres will help the spectacle of the show. I also personally believe that we should have two stops mandated because we want to stop this. Today, if we had had a safety car on lap five, we'd have all piled in [to the pits] and we'd have all gone on the prime tyre and run to lap 49 without a stop. That was a real danger.

"I think that the tyres are allowing you to do that, I'm not trying to pass the blame [on to Bridgestone]. We are all in this together.

"We do need to look at mandatings stops, we do need to look at the tyres and make them more fragile, and we do need to work on making the cars capable of racing close together and easier to overtake."


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