The return to Bahrain was organised to make up for the round cancelled at the German Grand Prix. It left a bitter-sweet taste because the DAMS failed to make the most of its potential. The team had an excellent qualifying session with Pierre Gasly setting a brilliant pole position (the fourth in the last five rounds for DAMS), so the French squad was hoping for better than Alex Lynn's third place in the sprint race. Nonetheless, the pugnacity of the two rookies helped DAMS to retake third in the teams' championship. Next weekend on the Abu Dhabi circuit on which the Sarthe-based team generally goes well, second place overall in the championship is within their grasp. Qualifying: P1 for Pierre and P4 for Alex. Superb charge by Gasly who snatched pole from Vandoorne by 4/100th of a second. The first four were covered by 1/10th of a second. Main race: Gasly made a reasonable start but he was unable to fight off Vandoorne under braking for the first corner. The French driver was suffering from understeer and fell back to fifth before the pit stops. He then lost another place despite a strong finish to the race, which unfolded in the same fashion for his English team-mate. Lynn fought his way back nto the points after a poor start and clinched pole for the sprint race. Sprint race: Lynn made a great start while Gasly had to go very wide in the first corner to avoid getting caught up in the chaos in front of him falling back to 11th place. After a safety car intervention Lynn continued to lead the pack dominating the first half of the race and setting the fastest lap. But his tyres started to go off which slowed him and he was passed by Evans and Vandoorne. Even so he managed to score a well-deserved third-place finish. Behind, Gasly despite problems overtaking made a great comeback scoring the points that went with seventh place. Pierre Gasly: "I was really happy with my qualifying performance and I had high hopes for the race. But our setup to offset tyre degradation didn't work so I had to drive a defensive race, which was very frustrating. On Sunday it was better, but I lost too many places avoiding spinning driver in the first corner. This ruined my result because we could have scored a top-three finish. However, I feel very optimistic for the final in Abu Dhabi because of our level of performance." Alex Lynn: "I'm pleased to give the team another podium finish, but I feel we could have done much better this weekend. The first race was very long and I had to fight to hold on to eighth place. We tweaked the setup for Sunday and the car was much more at home on the track. But I suffered very high tyre wear and I couldn't do better than third. I'm feeling very confident for the last round given our level of performance." François Sicard, Managing Director: "Another pole position, a top-three finish and a fastest lap in the race isn't too bad, but we had what it took to win. We opted for very conservative setups for the main race to cope with the very high tyre degradation on the rears. We adjusted them again for the next day but overall we feel frustrated after this weekend. Despite this, we're in the running for second place in the teams' championship, and I think we can achieve this objective given the performance of the cars and drivers." Bahrain in figures Pierre Gasly : P6, P7 Alex Lynn : P8, P3 Classification drivers' championship: 1. S. Vandoorne, 316,5 points ; 2. A. Rossi, 169,5 ; 3. S. Sirotkin, 139... 6. A. Lynn, 106 ; 7. P. Gasly, 96. Classification teams' championship: 1. ART, 385 points ; 2. Racing Engineering, 221,5; 3. DAMS, 202. Next rendezvous : Abu Dhabi, 27-29 November