Ricciardo pulls off stunning upset in China for Red Bull; Bottas savages second for Mercedes, Raikkonen P3 for Ferrari; Vettel and Verstappen tangle

A Safety Car on Lap 31 upended the prevailing order of an already unpredictable Chinese Grand Prix this Sunday, opening the door for some canny strategy by team Red Bull. That enabled their most senior driver, Daniel Ricciardo, to stun the main contenders and take a massive upset win for the team after nearly missing out in Saturday qualifying due to turbo issues. Once again Formula 1’s peculiar open pit rules came into play when the Safety Car was deployed after the leading quartet or Mercedes and Ferraris had passed the pit entrance but just as the Red Bulls were just approaching. This enabled the team to call both their drivers in for back-to-back pit stops that switched their men off the long lasting but slow Medium Pirellis, which the other contenders had also switched to, and back onto the grippier Soft tire compound that they had started the race on. When proceedings resumed it was clear that the new tires had given the Red Bulls a decisive performance advantage. Ricciardo was then able to pick off the front runners one by one, vaulting by first the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel and then the leading Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas with a forceful move on Lap 45. Riccardo would’nt be seen by the rest of the field after that, steaming home to his first victory of the year in this eventful 56-lap GP. It made up for some recent bad luck and the affable Aussie was all smiles after the race.

Pics courtesy GrandPrix24.com

However, Ricciardo’s teammate Max Verstappen once again took one too many risks even though he had a decisive advantage over the competition and would have been better served biding his time to make clean passes. The 20-year-old Dutchman has been driving like his hair is on fire on these first 3 rounds of the World Championship so far this year and it was no exception in Shanghai. First he tried a couple of over ambitious passes on Louis Hamilton that resulted in Verstappen running off track and losing positions. Then when he finally did get by Hamilton he bashed into Vettel at the hairpin on the very next lap, spinning both cars and destroying Vettel’s race. Verstappen was later handed a 10-second penalty for causing the accident which cost the wunderkind a likely podium finish if not the win and dropped him down to P5. Vettel never really recovered from the contact and burning out his rear tires trying to get his Prancing Horse pointed back in the right direction. The pole-sitter limped home a forlorn P8, even suffering the ignominy of being passed by Fernando Alonso’s McLaren on the closing laps, as the Spaniard took an opportunistic P7.

It was a stunning turnaround for Vettel and Ferrari, who had reason to hope for overall victory after they showed blistering speed all weekend long. In truth, however, while the team could do nothing about the fortuitous track position of the Red Bulls when the Safety Car was deployed Ferrari had somewhat botched their strategy earlier in the race. They unwisely kept the at that time front-running Vettel out a lap too long while Mercedes executed the undercut with Valtteri Bottas to perfection. Bottas came around in the lead as Vettel exited the pits and Vettel was all of a sudden the hunter rather than the hunted. Obviously it all came a cropper after his contact with Vertsappen but it is still worth remembering that the pit wall of Ferrari dropped the ball even before that dramatic later incident.

Bottas managed to keep his incredibly degraded Medium Pirellis under him long enough to secure a P2 finish, his second consecutive second place. Raikkonen managed to avoid his teammate’s troubles and secured the last place on the podium in P3. Hamilton had a desultory race and could only secure P4 and that only after Verstppaen was demoted. Mercedes need to figure out how to make the car more to their 4-time champion driver’s liking, as so far this season it appears that  Bottas is much more in tune with his machine. Nico Hulkenberg took advantage of the chaos to bring his factory Renault home an impressive P6, while his teammate Carlos Sainz snuck across the line in a valuable P9 despite running out of the points for most of the day. The Haas of Kevin Magnussen rounded out the Top 10 with the last points paying position, another good day for the hard-nosed Dane who is off to a good start to his campaign for the American team.

Top 10 finishers of the Chinese GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is in two weeks time on April 29th from Baku in Azerbaijan. Last year’s race on that street circuit was an absolute cracker so hopefully F1 can keep the excitement from today’s  unpredictable clash in China going. Hope to see you then to find out!