Fresh from Nico Rosberg’s dominant win in China on Sunday, it would be easy for Mercedes to feel supremely confident ahead of this weekend’s 2012 Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix. The German team, however, aren’t planning on swaggering into the paddock, but are instead determined to stay level-headed in their approach to the Sakhir race

Williams’ return to their championship-winning heydays may still be some way off, but they are undoubtedly enjoying an excellent resurgence in form in 2012. And after drivers Bruno Senna and Pastor Maldonado claimed the outfit’s first double points finish since 2010 in Shanghai on Sunday, the overwhelming feeling in the British team is one of optimism. Chief operations engineer Mark Gillan reviews Williams’ performance to date, looks back at the Chinese race and reveals his hopes for this weekend’s Bahrain round…

When Mercedes took over then reigning champions Brawn ahead of the 2010 season, they probably didn’t expect to have to wait quite so long for a win.

Innovative and quick, the Mercedes F1 W03 was a hot tip for success following pre-season testing, but at the opening two rounds the 2012 Silver Arrow failed to shine. In Shanghai on Saturday, however, it finally bared its teeth, as Nico Rosberg stormed to his maiden Formula One pole position and the first for the team in its current form.

Mercedes’ innovative front wing helped Nico Rosberg to the first pole position of his Formula One career on Saturday afternoon in Shanghai, when a mighty lap of 1m 35.121s left him well clear of Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren and Michael Schumacher’s sister car, with respective laps of 1m 35.626s and 1m 35.691s. But Hamilton’s five-place grid penalty makes it the first all-Mercedes front row since the 1955 Italian Grand Prix at Monza

For a long time Red Bull’s Mark Webber was the only man who went really quickly in the opening practice session in China on Friday. Affected by drizzle and a damp track, nobody could get much meaningful running.

After Sebastian Vettel’s domination of Formula One racing over the past two seasons, it’s been quite a surprise – to outsiders at least – to find him missing from pole position and the top step of the podium in 2012. Vettel himself is pretty calm about the situation, safe in the knowledge that Red Bull and technical guru Adrian Newey are more than capable of turning things around when needed

After two races of speculation over its legality, Mercedes’ much-discussed ‘F-duct’ rear wing became the subject of an official protest in Shanghai on Thursday, ahead of this weekend’s 2012 Formula 1 UBS Chinese Grand Prix. The protest was lodged by Lotus and comes after Mercedes’ F1 W03 car again cleared scrutineering, just as it did in the previous two rounds in Australia and Malaysia, where the FIA gave Ross Brawn’s team’s controversial system the all-clear

Ahead of this weekend’s 2012 Formula 1 UBS Chinese Grand Prix, McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton believes that consistency will be paramount in what is turning out to be a close and so far unpredictable world championship fight. “I won’t deny that I’m disappointed to have had two pole positions and not to have been able to convert either of them into victories, but I prefer to think of it that luck just hasn’t been on my side, and that it will swing my way sooner or later,” he says after the first two races yielded two third-place finishes

Making an impression second time around is never the easiest of tasks, but Nico Hulkenberg is tackling just that challenge this season. Sixteen months separated his last Grand Prix for Williams in 2010 and his first for Force India in Australia in March