Lewis made a fantastic start, converting fifth to third after vaulting both Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel into the first corner. On the opening lap, he was even able to look up the inside of Jarno Trulli's Toyota for second, but prudently dropped back. At the start of lap two, he was relegated to fourth by a charging Button. "My start was quite good," said Lewis. "Unfortunately, I was not able to keep third place - Jenson was just so fast through the corners so he was on my tail all the time."
Nonetheless, he remained in fourth through the first round of stops (he stopped at the end of lap 15 and was stationary for 7.6s), jumping Timo Glock but being usurped by Vettel. Settling in behind Vettel and Trulli for the middle stint, the team remained hopeful of claiming a podium position but the pace of the lead cars left Lewis a solid fourth after his second pitstop (on lap 37, 8.0s).
"I'm delighted with fourth," he said afterwards. "The Toyotas, Red Bulls and Brawns were so fast in the high-speed corners that it was just impossible to keep up. But this is another encouraging step for the team, we just need to keep working on the car because we're not really fighting back quite yet, we are collecting points. And the gap will be bigger when we go to Barcelona because it's a high-downforce circuit. We should challenge for the top 10 there, but another top-five will be harder."
Lewis's third consecutive points finish moves him to seventh in the drivers' championship.
MARTIN WHITMARSH - team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
"A great drive by Lewis today; he made no mistakes during the race and pushed aggressively. Without the pace to match the Toyotas, Brawns or Red Bulls, fourth place was a very strong result and it's even more pleasing that we are steadily moving closer to their pace. A podium was in our grasp today but we didn't quite make it. With Heikki, we fuelled him long and took a risk starting on the prime tyre. But we had to stop earlier than anticipated and lost too much time among other cars attempting a similar strategy, so that was disappointing. Overall, however this circuit possibly flattered us a little, but we've nonetheless made substantial progress over the past few weeks. Our competitors won't stand still but we will keep improving until we get back to where we expect to be - at the front."
NORBERT HAUG - vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
"This was a step forward, no doubt. Likewise I think the nature of this racetrack at one of our home races here in Bahrain and Lewis's driving skills helped us as much to achieve this result as our KERS hybrid, which is worth nearly half a second per lap around here. As for Heikki his race was basically over in the first lap traffic jam. Everybody in the team is well aware of the fact that we need to produce further dramatic improvements to MP4-24 in order to come back to where we used to be. Congratulations to BrawnGP for the third win in their fourth race ‘powered by Mercedes-Benz.' Again, our engine guys did everything to keep the customer satisfied, and that is a very good feeling for everybody involved at Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines in Brixworth as well as in Stuttgart. Well done!"
