Fernando Alonso won the Bahrain GP first time out for Ferrari today. To the Maranello teams delight Alonso was followed home by his team mate Felipe Massa who afterwards said he was pleased with the result and thankful to be back in F1 following his horror crash last season. Alonso benefitted from an exhaust problem that struck the early and dominant leader Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull and allowed the Spaniard to catch and pass him on Lap 35. Massa immediately followed suit and so did Lewis Hamilton, the top four finishing the race in that order. It looked as though Vettel would also be passed by the Mercedes GP cars of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher in the closing stages but he nursed the car home ahead of the chasing Silver Arrows. Jenson Button finished in seventh place never really in contention with the leaders and afterwards hinting that he may have been slightly too conservative in the care of his tyres, something he would need to work on going forward. Mark Webber finished eighth after dropping back early on following a spin and although he recovered was not able to claw his way back to the leaders despite having what looked to be a faster car. Vitantonio Liuzzi made a good debut for the Force India Team taking ninth place, with the Williams of Rubens Barrichello closing out the top ten. Robert Kubica was next up for Renault, a disappointing eleventh ahead of the Force India of Adrian Sutil in twelfth. There were only three other cars running at the flag, Jaime Alguersuari, Nico Hulkenberg and the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen. So it was a strong start to the season for Ferrari but also an ominous message was sent out to everyone from the Red Bull team of just how fast the 2010 Adrian Newey designed car is, for certain Vettel would have won the race but for the exhaust failure.