2013 season is off to a flying start with three different drivers winning the first four races of the season. The new generation of Pirelli tyres are one of the talking point of the season, as they were in 2012. Lotus and Force India are the two teams who are able to maximise from the new tyres, while Mercedes are struggling to manage them. Apart from tyres, use of two DRS zones in first four races of the season have grabbed attention. The rule has made overtaking way too easy and the car in front finds it hard to defend its position. Meanwhile, Jules Bianchi has proved himself to be the most impressive rookie of the year with some amazing drives during the first four races of the season. So we analyse in details the key talking points of the season and performance of the top 5 teams.

Rosberg puts on a Perfect Lap to take Pole

We all came into qualifying knowing that Mercedes don't have pace to fight for pole. The Bahrain Circuit is in direct contrast with the Shanghai International Circuit which hosted the Chinese Grand Prix last week. While the front limited features of the latter suits the Mercedes, the Bahrain International Circuit is rear limited i.e. harder on rear tyres, something Mercedes have always struggled on. But Nico Rosberg put on a perfect lap, extracting every bit of his car to take second pole position of his career and first consecutive pole position for the German team since 1953. He was helped by the fact that Fernando Alonso couldn't improve on his final run and thus could only qualify in 3rd place. 

The 2013 Chinese Grand Prix saw a parallel fight between those drivers who started the race on soft tyres and those on the mediums. The first seven drivers on the grid started on much less durable soft tyres while the rest of the field had both soft and medium tyre starters. Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button were one of the two drivers who started on the medium tyres.

At the chequered flag, Alonso, Raikkonen and Hamilton - who all started on soft tyres filled the three spots on the podium while Sebastian Vettel, who started on the medium tyres finished in 4th place. So does that mean that starting the race on softs and doing the remaining stints on medium tyres the right strategy? Was something wrong with Vettel's strategy of starting on medium tyres or it was just that he didn't fully exploit the strategy? 

The 2013 Chinese Grand Prix turned out to be an enthralling race with lots of drivers impressing us, either through a strong race result or by effectively carrying out their strategies. Fernando Alonso recorded his 31st win after starting from 3rd on the grid, Kimi Raikkonen finishes in 2nd place despite having a damaged nose while Jenson Button scored 10 points following a 5th place finish on a two stop strategy; but who was your driver of the day? We asked the same question yesterday on Twitter and got some amazing answers. We've embedded those tweets at bottom of this page. If you didn't answer that question yesterday, don't worry, you can provide your opinion today in the poll or through the comments section at bottom of this page

The showers during qualifying and just before the race made the Malaysian Grand Prix an interesting one from strategic point of view. Teams started the race under the intermediate tyres but soon disposed them off for slicks. But instead of opting for faster options tyres and then doing the remaining stints with more durable prime tyres, teams tried various strategies in this respect. A wet qualifying session meant that teams had plenty of fresh tyres for the race and they exploited this to their maximum advantage. Many drivers including Sebastian Vettel did the final stint on medium(option) tyres to overtake as many drivers on low fuel. Mercedes did only one of the four dry stints on hard tyres. Lotus was one of the teams to do only three dry stops(four in total), further showing the Enstone based team's ability to manage their tyres.

In this strategy analysis, we dive deep into Sebastian Vettel's race explaining how he lost first place during the first round of pitstops, second place in his second stop before fighting his way back to the top in a rather awkward fashion.

Sebastian Vettel took 38th pole position of his career in a rain affected qualifying session at Sepang, outpacing the Ferrari duo of Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso. Light rain hit the track in the middle of Q2 - the track wasn't wet enough for intermediates nor dry enough to beat earlier times on slicks. This meant that Lotus of Romain Grosjean and Force India of Paul di Resta failed to make into Q3 while the McLarens of Jenson Button and Sergio Perez made into the final part of the session. 

In Q3, Vettel, Massa and Alonso took the right decision of using new sets of intermediates in later part of the session and will occupy the first three positions of the grid. Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg decided to continue on a single set and could only qualify in 4th and 6th place respectively. The German team looked strong in wet conditions in FP2 and was also strong in dry but a strategy error prevented them from starting the race from the front row. Another man who was disappointed after qualifying was Adrian Sutil. After an impressive comeback in Australia last weekend, the German driver topped the first part of qualifying(which was completely dry) and was hoping to finish in top 5. However, the Force India lacked pace in the wets and he could qualify only in 9th place(8th on the grid after Raikkonen's penalty). We now analyse each team's qualifying performance.

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time(1:23.282) on Day 4 of Barcelona test but it was the man who replaced him at McLaren, Sergio Perez who set the fastest lap of the test session. Perez's laptime of 1:21.848 was just a tenth slower than Hamilton's pole lap in 2012. But in 2012 teams were allowed to use DRS as per their discretion in qualifying, while this year it is limited to the DRS zone. Also, teams deliberately didn't run on qualifying fuel load in order to prevent rivals from getting hint of their actual pace.

Moving away from lap times, Adrian Sutil's return to Formula 1 made headlines this week as the German driver tested the Force India VJM06 on Day 3 of Barcelona test. After a one year absence, his laptime of 1:22.877 was 1 second off Alonso's pace and 7th fastest of the day. 

Teams reported high tyre degradation on the new Pirelli rubber and that they start to lose off pace after just one proper flying lap. However, this was mostly due to cold weather conditions at Barcelona. It is expected that this degradation will ease off during warmer conditions in the main season. Another major story was the controversy regarding Williams and Caterham exhaust designed which were banned by the FIA. More on that in our team by team review.

2012 was a truly fantastic season. Seven different winners in the first seven races, more twists and turns that the Monaco Grand Prix and Sebastian Vettel clawing his way to just winning the World Championship. After the insipidity of the 2011 season, 2012 came as a shock to the system and as such, and now we'll try to second guess the 2013 season.

Here's how the 2013 grid looks after Max Chilton's seat being confirmed at Marussia. 

In the first part of our season review, we had a look at the three backmarkers - Caterham, Marussia and HRT. In the second part we focus our attention to the midfielders - Mercedes, Sauber, Force India, Williams and Toro Rosso. Thanks to the ultra-tight season and Pirelli tyres, these midfielders were able to challenge for podiums and even. Now we take a look at each of them separately.