Fernando Alonso made the best use of a competitive Ferrari to take a dominant victory at the Chinese Grand Prix. The Spaniard, starting his 200th race, showed tremendous pace to effectively lead more or less throughout whilst the various pit strategies played themselves out. Kimi Raikkonen finished second in a damaged Lotus ahead of pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton.
In something of a damp squib of a final qualifying session - only eight of the ten runners went out at all, doing just a single lap - Hamilton came out on top narrowly from Raikkonen, Alonso, Nico Rosberg in the second Mercedes and Felipe Massa's Ferrari. Jenson Button was the best of the cars starting on primes in eighth, with Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel in ninth having not set a time.
Hamilton made a great start from pole as the lights went out on race day, with the Ferraris of Alonso and Massa both making superb getaways to move immediately into second and third. Raikkonen meanwhile was rather tardy off the line and fortunate to hang on to fourth place, ahead of Rosberg and the second Lotus of Romain Grosjean.
Hamilton found himself under immediate pressure once DRS was activated. Alonso made his move at the end of lap 4, making use of the latter zone along the start/finish straight to seize the lead of the race into the first turn of lap 5. Massa also dived up the inside of the Mercedes at the same corner, moving into second.
Hamilton was the first of the leaders to head to the pits to switch from option to prime tyres, doing so at the end of the fifth lap along with teammate Rosberg, with Alonso and Raikkonen pitting the following lap. Massa and Grosjean lost time by pitting a lap later, getting stuck behind several drivers who had started on primes.
This meant that Sauber driver Nico Hulkenberg was now in the lead, having made his way past fellow prime runners Vettel and Button in the opening laps. Once the young German pitted along with Vettel at the end of lap 14, Button assumed the lead until he was passed by a charging Alonso at the first turn of lap 21.
Hamilton and Raikkonen - who sustained minor damage to his nose and front wing in a botched attempt to pass Sergio Perez's slower McLaren at turn 6 - made their second stops together at the end of that lap, with Alonso returning to the pits for a fresh set of primes on lap 23.
With Button making his first pit-stop at the same time as the Ferrari driver's second, it was Vettel who then took the lead of the race. Alonso however caught the championship leader rapidly with the help of his fresh rubber, moving back into the lead in a brave overtaking move at the unusual location of turn 13 on lap 29.
Meanwhile Hamilton picked off Button to re-take a net second position at the first corner, with Raikkonen doing likewise at the turn 14 hairpin to move up to a net third a couple of laps later. In order to attempt to overhaul Hamilton, Lotus emmployed the 'undercut' strategy, Raikkonen making what would be his final stop at the end of lap 34.
With Hamilton pitting three laps later, the Mercedes driver resumed behind Raikkonen and would have to wrest back second place on track. Despite closing to within a second of his rival, Hamilton appeared to lack the pace on the prime tyre and would have to soon switch his attentions to safeguarding third place.
Having made his second stop on lap 31, Vettel was back into the lead of the race when Hamilton, Raikkonen and Alonso (who made his final stop on lap 41) all pitted. Still with the option tyre to run, Vettel stayed out until lap 51, relinquishing the lead at the start of lap 43 to Alonso.
Now equipped with a brand-new set of the soft compound tyres combined with a relatively low fuel load, Vettel set about reducing the 14-second gap that stood between him and Hamilton in the remaining five laps. Catching at a rate of around three seconds per lap, Vettel had closed to just over a second behind when his bid was derailed by backmarking traffic.
That meant Hamilton would narrowly cling on to the final podium position behind Raikkonen and Alonso, who cruised to a 31st career victory which draws him level with Nigel Mansell in the all-time winner's list. Vettel would have to be content with fourth, Red Bull's strategy of not setting a Q3 time failing to pay dividends, with Button coming home a solid fifth for McLaren with a two-stop strategy.
Massa's pace on the prime tyre was disappointing, the result of which being that the Brazilian could do no more than a lowly sixth place. Behind him finished Toro Rosso driver Daniel Ricciardo, who did a superb job to haul his car onto seventh place on the grid - a position he maintained with an aggressive but mature drive that saw him take his best ever F1 finish in spite of having to change his nose at his first pit-stop.
Eighth position went to Paul Di Resta, who survived an early skirmish with teammate Adrian Sutil and showed some very strong pace on the primes en route to a creditable eighth place. Sutil meanwhile had his race brought to an abrupt end by Sauber's Esteban Gutierrez, who locked up his wheels in the braking zone for the turn 14 hairpin and clattered into the rear of the hapless Force India driver.
The Mexican will take a five-place grid penalty at Bahrain for that indiscretion, while the other Sauber of Hulkenberg had to be content with tenth behind Grosjean, whose race pace again was lacklustre in comparison to that of his teammate. Perez failed to make a two-stop strategy work for him, coming home in eleventh place, just ahead of the second Toro Rosso of Jean-Eric Vergne.
Vergne's race was compromised when he was hit by Mark Webber, which just one incident in an utterly atrocious weekend for the Australian driver. A refueling issue during qualifying saw Webber run out of fuel during Q2, and subsequently unable to supply the required fuel sample to the stewards - resulting in his demotion to the back of the grid.
Webber's race started well enough from the pitlane, starting on options and ditching them after a single lap in favour of the primes. The Red Bull driver was well into the midfield after all the soft tyre runners made their first pit-stops, but was too late to commit to an overtaking move on the inside of Vergne at the turn 6 hairpin, resulting in a collision that cost both drivers considerable ground.
Whilst Vergne recovered to finish twelfth, Webber pitted at the end of the lap to replace his front wing, whereupon there was a problem fitting the car's rear-right wheel. Webber cruised during the following lap in an attempt to return to the pits, but the offending wheel detached just a couple of corners from the pit-lane - causing several cars, including teammate Vettel, to take avoiding action.
Behind Vergne finished the off-the-pace Williams duo of Valtteri Bottas and Pastor Maldonado, with Jules Bianchi continuing his unbeaten record amongst the 'new' teams in 15th place ahead of Charles Pic, Max Chilton and Giedo van der Garde. Rosberg was the only other retirement of the race, losing a likely points finish to suspension failure.
No comments:
Post a Comment