While no one expected a repeat of the fireworks from the previous race in Bahrain, the Chinese Grand Prix was not lacking talking points, including Lewis Hamilton’s dominance and the way Red Bull handled Sebastian Vettel’s race.
Starting on the dirty side of the track, Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Rosberg struggled with wheelspin that prevented them from getting traction. Somehow Felipe Massa weaved his way around them both and if he hadn’t hit a wall in the shape of Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari he could have gained as many as four places on the start.
With no-one putting a serious challenge on Hamilton in the first lap, the race was his to dominate. Ricciardo and Vettel both lost places during the first round of pitstops, Red Bull being schooled on the art of the undercut that had previously been their signature move.
Despite being within a second of Alonso in the early stages, Vettel didn’t have the pace to keep up with him nor challenge for second. The German instigated a tyre-saving strategy and backed away from Alonso, demonstrating that he is a patient and thoughtful driver who understands the importance of running a full race.
Or so it seemed. By pitting later than his teammate, Ricciardo pulled up to the back of Vettel on fresher tyres and clearly had a faster car wrapped around him. When the team requested Sebastian let his Australian counterpart through, he asked if they were on the same tyres and, upon confirmation that they were, wasn’t shy in returning fire – “Tough luck.”
No racing driver takes joy in being asked, for the second race in a succession, to move over for his teammate. Ricciardo pulled into Vettel’s slipstream down the start/finish straight, made a move to the inside line and, even with Vettel leaving the racing line to defend the pass, was as good as done. Vettel out-braked himself in Turn 1 before realising resistance was futile and pulling out his usual counter-punch.
After the race, Red Bull denied there were any tensions between their superstar driver and team management, and Vettel claimed he understood Daniel was faster and he let him through in an act of selflessness. He may have reconsidered his position once Daniel made his move stick, but his actions and words tell the true story.
With an early pitstop, Red Bull seemed to signal that they would three stop Vettel’s car. However the team asked him to go long in the second stint to open up a window for stopping twice. With the RB10 slower down the straights and Vettel harsher on his tyres, they needed to be able to cut through the resulting traffic that an additional stop would present, and it wasn’t clear that this would be possible on his form to that point in the race.
Running on depleted tyres Vettel was passed by Kamui Kobayashi, who was attempting to unlap himself thanks to some fresh tyres. Although perfectly entitled to do so, it provoked the German’s ire and he vented his displeasure over the team radio. His taunting words from only a few laps earlier returned to mind, and his second and final pit stop could not come soon enough.
Nico Rosberg suffered a telemetry failure just before the race start. Without the assistance from his garage to massage the car into form, his driving was made difficult and, despite taking second, clearly left him frustrated, again wondering what could have been.
It wouldn’t have been a modern Formula One race without some last-minute controversy. Hamilton informed his race engineers that he thought he’d seen the chequered flag waved on the penultimate lap. An error had been made at the end of lap 55 and the race result was declared in accordance with Article 43.2 at the time of the leader crossing the finish line prior to the flag being shown, meaning the final two laps were largely processionary.
In the final corners, Kobayashi and Jules Bianchi were caught up in what Mark Webber would call a “ding-dong battle” for the minor positions. Despite Kobayashi claiming the honours on the track, the chequered flub gifted the position back to his rival.
So we look ahead to Spain with a few weeks for teams to develop their cars and hopefully come up with an answer to the dominance of the Silver Arrows. Although last year the Red Bull cars came to life and turned their year around, the first half of the season was fairly mixed, with their rivals taking points off each other week and week. This year, by the time they eradicate their performance gremlins it may be too late.
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