Tag Archives: Chinese Grand Prix

2016 F1 Grand Prix of China — Results & aftermath

Mercedes’ Rosberg scores hat trick in China; Vettel recovers from first lap collision to take P2 for Ferrari, Kvyat P3 for resurgent Red Bull

When people say Formula 1 is a boring form of motor racing it’s probably best to ask if they’ve seen an F1 race in the last three years. The Chinese Grand Prix’s opening lap once again put the lie to such ignorant bloviating, as collisions amongst several contenders scrambled the running order and made the 56-lap contest a desperate struggle for survival much less points. In the end, pole-sitter Nico Rosberg avoided the melee at the start and ran a flawless race, winning by a whopping 37.7 seconds over the damaged field. It was his third straight victory for Mercedes to open the season and his remarkable sixth straight win dating back to last year. That puts the previously much maligned German in the elite company of Sebastian Vettel, Alberto Ascari & Michael Schumacher as the only F1 drivers to achieve such an impressive win streak. It also continued a perfect points haul for Rosberg in 2016, consolidating his early season lead in the quest for his first ever Drivers’ Championship.

Pictures courtesy GranPrix247.com

Pictures courtesy GrandPrix247.com

Better yet for Rosberg, his arch nemesis and teammate Lewis Hamilton had a nearly disastrous weekend. The reigning champion was not only relegated to the rear of the field due to mechanical issues in qualifying but also saw the team’s decision to start him from the back of the grid rather than the pit lane backfire spectacularly. Hamilton got caught up with the dreaded backmarker scramble and lost his front wing to a collision with Sauber’s Felipe Nasr down into Turn 1. That required a desperate rethink by Hamilton’s strategists to get him back in the points, which eventually led to a mind numbing five pit stops for tires and repairs. In the end, however, Hamilton pulled off an epic drive in a badly damaged Siver Arrows to come home P7, a valuable points haul a long season when a lesser driver may well have settled for early retirement and nothing at all.

Ferrari’s quixotic 2016 continued with good results that still could have been much better. Teammates Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen collided at the start when Red bull’s Daniil Kvyat tried to make an overtaking move inside of Vettel into Turn 1, forcing the two Prancing Horses into each other. Vettel’s car was damaged less so than Raikonnen’s but both Ferraris required premature pit stops for repairs. With determination and excellent strategy after that unfortunate incident, Vettel was able to will himself to an amazing P2, while Raikkonen drove a gritty race of his own for P5. Vettel was contrite towards Raikkonen for his part in the shunt after the race but spared no words of contempt for Kvayt in the podium green room for the Russian’s perceived recklessness.

Despite Vettel’s harsh condemnation of his aggressive driving at the start, Red Bull’s Kvyat unapologetically claimed his opportunistic P3. His teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, who showed impressive pace all weekend, was hobbled by an early puncture after running over debris which hamstrung the Aussie’s overall ambitions of taking the fight to Ferrari. Ricciardo still managed to finish P4 and the combined results showed that the improved Red Bull chassis has the pace to challenge for the podium once again after an off year in 2015.

Williams had an OK result with Felipe Massa taking P6 and Valtteri Bottas coming home P10. But they have got to be concerned about their rivals’ steady improvement to start the year, which appears to be pushing them backwards in the results. In fact, the ostensibly inferior Toro Rossos of Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz split the Williams team with a solid P8 and P9 respectively.

All in all it was crazy contest, with Ferrari showing championship challenging pace and Red Bull making remarkable strides to put themselves back into serious contention. But it looks like once again they’ll all be chasing Mercedes for the Championship. Only this year the racing gods seem to smiling on Rosberg rather than Hamilton.

Top 10 finishers from China:

1 NICO ROSBERG GER MERCEDES 1:38:53.891 25
2 SEBASTIAN VETTEL GER FERRARI +37.776s 18
3 DANIIL KVYAT RUS RED BULL RACING +45.936s 15
4 DANIEL RICCIARDO AUS RED BULL RACING +52.688s 12
5 KIMI RÄIKKÖNEN FIN FERRARI +65.872s 10
6 FELIPE MASSA BRA WILLIAMS +75.511s 8
7 LEWIS HAMILTON GBR MERCEDES +78.230s 6
8 MAX VERSTAPPEN NED TORO ROSSO +79.268s 4
9 CARLOS SAINZ ESP TORO ROSSO +84.127s 2
10 VALTTERI  BOTTAS FIN WILLIAMS +86.192s 1

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race weekend is in two weeks, April 29 – May 1 from Sochi, Russia. Hope to see you then!

2016 F1 Grand Prix of China — Qualifying results

Mercedes’ Rosberg continues hot start with pole in China; Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo sneaks into P2; Ferrari start a disappointing 3-4, while Hamilton relegated to the back

Sanity ws restored on Saturday as Formula 1 undid their gimmicky new 2016 qualifying format and went back to the tried and true down-to-the wire knockout qualifying that has served them in such good stead through the years. As a result, fans were once again rewarded with nail-biting tension as the teams rolled the dice and played strategy games right up until the Q3 checkered flag flew.

Coming out on top of all that late scrambling was Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg, whose charmed start to the season continued with his first pole of the year. While it looked for most of the last session that Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen might just grab the top spot, Rosberg was able to put in a corker of a last lap at 1:35.4, advancing his ambition to rack up a hat trick of victories in the first three races. Making things even sweeter for the German points leader his teammate Lewis Hamilton, who was already facing a 5-spot grid penalty for a gearbox change, failed to emerge from Q1 with an ERS problem. The current reigning Drivers’ Champion will start from the back on Sunday and will have to pull of a typically furious Lewis Hamilton sort of drive to secure decent points. As well as the prior two years have gone for the Englishman, 2016 has so far been nothing but star crossed.

Ferrari may be once again rueing strategy calls, as they waited until the dying moments to send out their ace Sebastian Vettel for his one and only Q3 lap. But in the tricky damp and windy conditions at the Shanghai Circuit, the German could manage a time only good enough for P4 against the more practiced drivers ahead of him. They included his teammate Raikonnen, who nonetheless must have been disappointed with his P3 after dominating the leaderboard for so much of the final session. Pipping him was Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo with a very fast P2, a mere .5 behind Rosberg, showing that the Red Bull chassis has improved greatly over last year’s pig and is back in the mix for solid points and perhaps at Ferrari’s expense.

Williams’ Valtteri Bottas laid down a strong final lap good enough for P5, Ricciardo’s teammate Daniil Kvyat was P6 and Force India’s Sergio Perez was a solid P7 after a very bad race for the team in Bahrain. However, Perez’s teammate Nico Hulkenberg was undone by a loose wheel nut that caused his tire to come off early in Q3. While Hulkenberg technically finished P10 he was demoted to 13th on the grid for the unsafe release infraction. (That moved Williams’ Felipe Massa into P10.) Rounding out the Top 10, the dueling Toro Rossos of Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen were P8 & P9 respectively.

Top 10 Qualifiers in China:

POS. NO. DRIVER TEAM Q1 Q2 Q3 LAPS
1 6 NICO ROSBERG  MERCEDES 1:37.669 1:36.240 1:35.402 16
2 3 DANIEL RICCIARDO  RED BULL RACING 1:37.672 1:36.815 1:35.917 13
3 7 KIMI RÄIKKÖNEN  FERRARI 1:37.347 1:36.118 1:35.972 13
4 5 SEBASTIAN VETTEL  FERRARI 1:37.001 1:36.183 1:36.246 10
5 77 VALTTERI  BOTTAS  WILLIAMS 1:37.537 1:36.831 1:36.296 13
6 26 DANIIL KVYAT  RED BULL RACING 1:37.719 1:36.948 1:36.399 14
7 11 SERGIO PEREZ  FORCE INDIA 1:38.096 1:37.149 1:36.865 15
8 55 CARLOS SAINZ  TORO ROSSO 1:37.656 1:37.204 1:36.881 15
9 33 MAX VERSTAPPEN  TORO ROSSO 1:38.181 1:37.265 1:37.194 15
10 27 NICO HULKENBERG*  FORCE INDIA 1:38.165 1:37.333 10

*Hulkenberg penalized 3 grid spots for unsafe release after tire came off on track.

Complete qualifying results available via Formula1.com

The broadcast for the Chinese Grand Prix begins at the ungodly hour of 2AM Eastern on NBCSports. Unless you plan to load up on NoDoz I suggest you set your DVR and watch it at your leisure. Hamilton fighting his way from the back of the field should be worth the price of admission alone.

2015 F1 Grand Prix of China — Results & aftermath

Hamilton dominates for Mercedes in China leaving Rosberg a disgruntled 2nd; Vettel strong again for Ferrari in 3rd

Lewis Hamilton sailed to victory on Sunday after a dominating race weekend in China as Mercedes put the sting of their Malaysia defeat at the hands of Ferrari and Seb Vettel in the rearview mirror. Winning at the Shanghai circuit for a record 4th time, the English points leader and defending World Champion looked miles ahead of the rest of the field: he started from Pole, got away to an aggressive start that put teammate and rival Nico Rosberg decisively behind him and then managed the race from the front for a seemingly effortless win. With Rosberg taking 2nd place about the only thing that did not go according to script for Mercedes were their number two driver’s gripes in the post-race news conference that Hamilton had been deliberately slow and so forced him back into dicing with Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari rather than competing for the win. Truth be told Rosberg’s words sounded like a man desperate to regain an edge after being thoroughly dominated by Hamilton at the end of last season and into the first three races of 2015. It simply doesn’t seem that Rosberg has the pace — or the psychological fortitude after watching last year’s title hopes slip away — to threaten his supremely confident teammate anymore.

Vettel was rather fortunate to grab the last place on the podium because, while he drove a typically strong race, his Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen was actually catching him up as the laps wound down. But a Safety Car brought out by hard luck Toro Rosso rookie Max Verstappen’s on-track engine failure on Lap 54 insured that the race would finish under yellow and that Vettel & Raikkonen’s positions were fixed. Nonetheless, it was encouraging to see the Finnish former champion, who had started from 6th on the grid, begin to really get to grips with the performance of his SF15-T, blowing by both Williams early in the race and bringing the fight to Vettel at the end. If Ferrari’s win two weeks ago in Malaysia was probably more of a fortunate victory rather than a true challenge to Mercedes dominance there could at least be the spectacle of a good intra-team rivalry brewing at the Scuderia going forward.

2015F1GPChina

Further back in the top 10, Williams provided more evidence that despite their Mercedes power they have not been able to match Ferrari’s improvements so far this season. Continue reading →

2015 F1 Grand Prix of China — Qualifying results

Mercedes roars back in China: Hamilton seizes Pole, Rosberg 2nd; Vettel strong again for Ferrari to grab 3rd on the grid

Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton reasserted their authority in China on Saturday, with the English reigning World Champion and points leader laying down a blistering qualifying lap for Pole for Sunday’s race that no other challenger could match. After Ferrari’s Malaysian upset two weeks ago that saw the Mercedes brain trust ruing tire strategy and questioning their overall performance the Silver Arrows were back to their untouchable ways, with Nico Rosberg a mere four one-hundredths behind Hamilton but nearly .8 ahead of previous Grand Prix winner Sebastian Vettel’s Prancing Horse. While fans and pundits had hoped Ferrari’s impressively improved form heralded the beginning of a true two-team battle for the Constructors’ Championship it seems more likely now that Malaysia was the exception not the rule.

The two Mercedes-powered Williams of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas struggled with handling at times but not flat out pace and claimed P4 and P5 respectively. That split the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen, who also appeared to have a hard time holding on to his car, away from his faster teammate and left the Finn settling for 6th on the grid. Daniel Ricciardo had a good run for troubled Red Bull, taking a strong P7. But as if to reinforce the RB-11’s vulnerabilities, his teammate Daniil Kvyat was plagued by rear brake and ERS issues and was out in Q2. The young Russian will start a lowly P12. Romain Grosjean had a strong performance for Lotus with a P8, again showing that the team has the pace to compete for points if not quite the reliability or consistency from their drivers (Pastor Maldonado was out in Q2 at P11). The two Saubers of Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson continued to show that they had inherited the title of “little team that could” from scuffling Force India and rounded out the Top 10 with P9 and P10 respectively.

Despite showing significant improvement over the each of the first three race weekends, the McLarens of Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso still could not make it out of Q1. They will start at the back of the field in P17 and 18 ahead of only the two hapless Manor-Marussia cars.

Top 10 Qualifiers here:

Pos No Name Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Laps
1 44 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:38.285 1:36.423 1:35.782 12
2 6 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:38.496 1:36.747 1:35.824 12
3 5 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1:37.502 1:36.957 1:36.687 17
4 19 Felipe Massa Williams 1:38.433 1:37.357 1:36.954 15
5 77 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1:38.014 1:37.763 1:37.143 15
6 7 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1:37.790 1:37.109 1:37.232 17
7 3 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing 1:38.534 1:37.939 1:37.540 18
8 8 Romain Grosjean Lotus 1:38.209 1:38.063 1:37.905 20
9 12 Felipe Nasr Sauber 1:38.521 1:38.017 1:38.067 16
10 9 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 1:38.941 1:38.127 1:38.158 15

 

Complete qualifying results available at Formula1.com.

Tomorrow’s race is another overnighter here on the East Coast and airs live on NBCSN at 2AM. Let’s see if anyone has anything for Hamilton and Mercedes. I tend to doubt it.