Chinese Grand Prix Review

Two wet races in succession. This time Red Bull made a great 1 – 2 in China. Their first grand prix win and sure enough they did it with a 1 – 2. It was good to see Vettel win again after doing the same for the sister team at Monza last year. Mark Webber did an excellent job as always but Vettel seemed to just have the legs on him at first and then managed to peg him all the way to the end. Things may have been closer if Mark hadn’t made that mistake and ran wide loosing time fighting back past Button. But it never really looked like anyone else’s grand prix to take.

Button did an excellent job although it was apparent that the Brawn GP isn’t as dominant in the wet. Their diffusers create aerodynamic down force. So when going slower in the wet they just don’t have as much grip. Whereas the Red Bulls don’t and rely on mechanical grip enabling them to handle excellently in the wet.

Both McLaren and Renault had new diffusers for the race and both improved in the dry qualifying. However Alonso’s decision to pit early and run a light fuel load in Q3 didn’t do him any favours and he spent the day playing catch up not being able to utilise the effect of the new diffuser in the wet. McLaren didn’t fair much better struggling in the wet with Hamilton making more spins and offs than anyone else it would seem. However he was sufficiently fast to make the difference. This made for some interesting racing as he sliced through the field.

The weather yet again threw up some great racing with drivers slipping off and then racing back. The whole two hour race was full of dicing for places too many to mention. It was noticeable how close 5th to 12th seemed to be all the time. Even in the dying stages any one of about five people could of taken the final few points places.

I hope this is the case as we go on through the season and not just indicative of the weather. As of yet we haven’t had a ‘normal’ grand prix where the weather or a unique track hasn’t effected the outcome. I am looking forward to Bahrain and hopefully we can have something more of an ordinary race. But hopefully still with all the excellent racing.

Noticeably Ferrari had yet another abysmal race with Massa having electrical problems and Kimi complaining of a lack of power. Ferrari however have been optimistic in the press that their new development pieces will help them be much more competitive when introduced in Spain. They need it to stop the worst start to a season for them since 1981. If they hadn’t of had reliability problems they would of probably picked up a couple of points and maybe nicked a podium by now. Having said that it’s not excuse.

My heart goes out to force India who seem destined to always have a great points place snatched from them. In the last few laps Sutil crashed out with aquaplaning. They were unlucky last year at Monaco as well with Kimi Raikkonen hitting them. I hope they have more luck in future. Their a plucky team and who can’t support the underdog?

With only a week separating the Chinese from Bahrain Grand Prix there will be no time for teams to change much on the cars and the pecking order will no doubt be very similar to China. Let’s just hope the racing is as close and exciting.