Lewis Hamilton wins China GP

Lewis Hamilton won the Chinese Grand Prix comfortably ahead of his teammate Nico Rosberg on Sunday as Mercedes tightened their grip on the season with their third one-two finish in a row.

The British former world champion got away smoothly from pole position and finished 19 seconds ahead of Rosberg, with Ferrari's Fernando Alonso third.

The two Red Bulls were behind, with Australian Daniel Ricciardo fourth, a massive 26.978sec behind Hamilton but well ahead of his teammate Sebastian Vettel, who was fifth just over 51sec behind the winner.

Vettel, who had a strained relationship with his previous teammate - Australian Mark Webber - appears set to earn the ire of his Red Bull bosses.

The German was instructed by his team to let his younger teammate, Ricciardo, pass him for the second race in a row.

Instead of acceding, however, the four-time defending champion initially fought off Ricciardo's attempts to get by.

Vettel asked his team what tyres Ricciardo was using and when told they were both on mediums, Vettel responded: "Tough luck."

At the start of lap 26, though, Vettel did finally make way for the faster Ricciardo and was unable to challenge him again.

Ricciardo nearly caught Alonso at the end but ran out of time, falling short by 1.2sec.

It would have been the first podium finish of his career - he had finished second in Australia but the result was stripped after he was found to have breached new fuel regulations. Despite winning three races in a row for the first time in his career, Hamilton still trails Rosberg by four points in the title race as he seeks his second world championship.

"I can't believe how amazing the car is. I was able to look after the tyres and then I was racing myself," said Hamilton on the podium after the race.

"I'm really happy Nico's up here with us. It's great points for the team."

With four races out of 19 gone, Mercedes already have a stranglehold on the constructors' standings with 154 points, 97 more than second-placed Red Bull.

It was a solid race for Force India, with Nico Hulkenberg sixth and Sergio Perez ninth.

Williams driver Valtteri Bottas was seventh, Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen eighth, and Toro Rosso's Daniil Kyvat finished in 10th, another impressive showing by the 19-year-old debutant.

Hamilton Won Bahrain GP 2014; Force India Thrillers Others

As the sand settled on the greatest Formula One race for years, Lewis Hamilton thanked his Mercedes bosses for allowing him and his team-mate Nico Ros-berg to battle it out until the end of the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday.

It was Hamilton who won the absorbing race after Mercedes simply demanded that the drivers did not crash. “It was great they allowed us to fight and didn’t get in the way of us,” he said. “We are working hard, and being respectful of each other, and that’s what got us through and I hope that will continue.

“He [Rosberg] was fair and I like to think I was. It was close, but I like to think we didn’t damage each other’s races. The team put that trust in us, which is great.”

Hamilton has now won back to back races after Rosberg won the opener in Melbourne last month. “I’m 11 points behind after two awesome races and I’ve got to stick at it because he’s had a win and two seconds,” said the 29-year-old. “His track record so far is better than mine, even if it’s through no fault of mine [Hamilton was forced to retire his car in Australia].”

Mercedes’ executive director, Toto Wolff, was equally thrilled by the gripping nature of the race and believes it showed why team orders are bad for the sport. He said: “It doesn’t get any better advertising for F1 at a moment when lots of people were talking F1 down.

“You need the drivers to know that it is important not to risk the image of such a brand. We are representing a big brand and they need to know what to do, and they did it in a fantastic and spectacular way. Imagine if we’d imposed team orders from lap two or something. What a terrible thing that would be for F1 and the Mercedes philosophy in motorsport.”

The executive director, Paddy Lowe, who runs the team in partnership with Wolff, said: “It is a great result for Mercedes and the team. But more than that, it is a great result for Formula One because there has been so much negative stuff around – I have to say not generated by us, but generated by some of our competitors, putting in doubt the nature of this new formula.

“What was shown here was the perfect outcome. We have shown that we can bring all this new technology but at the same time the spirit of racing is still there. I cannot remember a more exciting in the last decade, in terms of wheel-to-wheel racing.”

Asked about his display of defensive skills, Hamilton added: “It’s not so often you have opportunities like that where you can really show it. In karting you show it every weekend, in F1 once in a blue moon. I was able to show I still have it. I’m trying to be the strongest I’ve been in my life.”

Windows Phone OS became Free-ware for lesser than 9-inch screen Mobile Hardwares

Windows Phone OS in HTC Hardware

Microsoft took an enormous step forward this morning. It unveiled a free version of its Windows operating system.

Revealed at the company’s annual software developer conference in San Francisco, this new OS is called Windows for Internet of Things, and Microsoft will license it for free when hardware makers use the software on devices with screens smaller than nine inches. The door is still open for the company to charge Windows licensing fees for PCs, tablets, and other larger devices, but Microsoft will compete head-on with Android — Google’s free mobile operating system — on smartphones and wearables.

It’s a big, bold move, but it’s one that Microsoft needed to make. Because the code behind Android is open source, anyone can use it without paying a penny, and that has made life difficult for Microsoft in recent years, as the company continued to charge manufacturers about $10 for its Windows Phone operating system on each smartphone and tablet. In a world where Apple is also pushing operating system prices towards zero, Microsoft must forgo its licensing fees just to get Windows onto a more substantial number of devices.

Presumably, Windows for Internet of Things will use the same code base as Windows Phone 8, and Microsoft says it will only run mobile apps, not desktop software. But today, the company also announced a new system for building applications that can run on both Windows and Windows Phone as well as XBoxes. So there could be ways of bridging that gap. It’s not clear whether home users and independent developers — and not just commercial hardware makers — will be able to download and install the new operating system on their own devices.

There was no talk about open sourcing the Windows code base, a la Android. That means serious hackers can’t get into the guts of the operating system — and ensure the code is sound and secure — and it probably means that this new version of Windows won’t spread nearly as far or as fast as Android. But the move does show that Microsoft is serious about competing in the mobile market, and that the company is slowly shifting its business strategy, so that it relies more on revenue from cloud services instead of OS licensing. In other words, it’s transforming itself into a company that operates more like Google.

The transition won’t be easy. Windows has always been a cash cow for Microsoft. It makes sense for the company to keep some of that revenue for now, especially on the desktop, where it faces less competition. But the cloud is where the industry is headed. Everything from Apple consumer service iCloud to IBM’s enterprise cloud services like SoftLayer is pointing in that direction. For its part, Microsoft now has a number of cloud services services that can lead the way into the future, ranging from Skype and OneDrive for consumers and professionals, to enterprise services such as Azure, Dynamics CRM, and Office 365.

Convincing people to buy from Microsoft and not one of its myriad competitors will be a challenge in itself. But at least Microsoft realizes what it has to do.