You must admit, that was one hell of a race! Thanks to Pirelli, the DRS and KERS this year’s F1 is more interesting than ever.
It’s difficult to pick the star of the race but somehow it just has to go to Mark Webber. From 18th to 3rd is a hell of an achievement. Webber also took the fastest lap of the race at 1.38,993, a second and a half faster than Lewis Hamilton’s best lap. So let’s hope this was a turnaround race for Webber and we’ll be seeing more of him on the podium — this could be his last year with Red Bull Racing.
In the post-race press conference Webber said “it was great to see someone else win for a change”. Meaning that he was happy to see Lewis Hamilton win! I thought that was an odd thing to say so perhaps there are still some unresolved issues from last year still lingering on in the Red Bull team, which may be the reason why the team is not in a hurry to resign Webber.
Lewis Hamilton won the Chinese GP for the second time, the only man to have won the GP twice. The team’s strategy to save tyres for race-day paid off. Hamilton was on a three-stop strategy and he was able to overtake two-stopper Sebastian Vettel with just four laps remaining. There was nothing Vettel could do, he had no grip left in his tyres and Hammy cruised to victory. Good call from the McLaren team.
Jenson Button’s fate was also sealed. With just two laps remaining Webber was catching him fast and it was clear Mark wasn’t going to settle for fourth. If there had been just one more lap in the race Webber would have also taken Vettel. He finished just 2.3 seconds behind Vettel.
The top three were: Hamilton, Vettel, Webber.
The Mercedes team continues to improve. Nico Rosberg even lead the race at some stage and was looking strong for a podium spot. Rosberg finished fifth and beat team mate Michael Schumacher yet again. You have to wonder what is the motivation for Schumacher to continue racing when things are not working out. He’s been beaten by his team mate in just about every race so far.
Ferrari had high hopes this year but it is not working out. However it’s good to see Felipe Massa beating Fernando Alonso again for position, which means team orders are not in play. I guess that means that Ferrari have already given up on Alonso winning the title this year. In 2009 Ferrari stopped the development of the F60 and focused on building something new for Alonso for 2010. Things haven’t exactly gone to plan so Ferrari will probably look towards 2012, which also happens to be the last year of the current contracts with Massa and Alonso.
The race top 10:
1. Lewis Hamilton
2. Sebastian Vettel
3. Mark Webber
4. Jenson Button
5. Nico Rosberg
6. Felipe Massa
7. Fernando Alonso
8. Michael Schumacher
9. Vitali Petrov
10. Kamui Kobayashi
The points standings:
68 Sebastian Vettel
47 Lewis Hamilton
38 Jenson Button
37 Mark Webber
26 Fernando Alonso
24 Felipe Massa
17 Vitaly Petrov
15 Nick Heidfeld
10 Nico Rosberg
7 Kamui Kobayashi
6 Michael Schumacher
4 Sebastien Buemi
2 Adrian Sutil
2 Paul Di Resta
Next race is the Turkish GP on 8 May, 2011.