F1 Talk: Another Mercedes 1-2 in a Static 1000th Race

Mercedes made it a hat-trick of 1-2 finishes as Lewis Hamilton took his sixth race win in China and with it the World Championship lead.

There was so much hype around the Chinese Grand Prix being the 1000th race. As Formula One made a big deal of the event on social media with the hashtag, #race1000. That said, it was not exactly a huge celebration. There were some old, classic cars in the paddocks along with some steering wheels and trophies; Damon Hill drove his father’s 2-time Monaco Grand Prix and Alain Prost waved the chequered flag. Prost and Hill are at most Grand Prix anyway these days doing their respective duties. Apart from that, there was not much extra for those attending, so it was actually not that much different to a normal Formula One event.

Some of the drivers changed the livery of their helmet but there was no “retro livery” which we see in many championships around the world at least once a year, the format was exactly the same and it all felt pretty gloomy – just like the skies of Shanghai.

As you can tell, this is going to be a pretty negative article and I haven’t even got onto the race yet.

Valtteri Bottas took a great pole position, looking on it throughout the weekend as Hamilton struggled. But, he lost the lead immediately as he suffered from a lot of wheelspin, he says due to the paint just in front of his gridslot.

Very quickly, the Mercedes pulled away from the rest of the field. Ferrari had the conundrum of telling Leclerc to let Vettel by because Vettel was “faster”. That is exactly what happened, except that Vettel could hardly pull away so Ferrari lost two seconds by swapping positions and it was pretty pointless as Vettel did not have a pace advantage over his teammate.

The first round of pistops then happened and Ferrari opted to leave Leclerc out for an extra 4-5 laps which was a mistake. Verstappen nearly undercut Vettel and he knew that his best chance would be to overtake Vettel just as the German came out of the pits with cold tyres. He attacked at the hairpin from a long way back but Vettel wisely tucked underneath and took the place back on the exit.

That was the only bit of excitement at the front.

There was a second round of pitstops, triggered by Verstappen and yet again Leclerc was left out there on old tyres – this time to try and slow up Bottas. He did his best but Shanghai is a tyre eating track so Bottas simply had more grip coming off turn 13 and onto the back straight, used the slipstream and the DRS and got the move done into the hairpin.

Leclerc did eventually pit for a new set of tyres but by then, he had lost far too much time to his rivals so Verstappen and Vettel were well up the road and the 21-year-old could not catch them. Ferrari gave Leclerc a really bad strategy. Had he stayed on the one stop he would have beat Verstappen, or had they committed to a two stop strategy rather than going for a halfway house strategy which left Leclerc nowhere at least Ferrari would have gained two more points.

It really does show that Ferrari are not on top of things when it comes to strategy. It is not the first time we have seen this, in fact the last four years have been plagued by strategic errors from the Italian team.

Even the midfield didn’t create any fireworks. Kimi Raikkonen had a good race with some decent overtakes to keep up his consecutive points-scoring streak for this season.

Daniel Ricciardo also scored his first points this year with a 7th place and he seemed much happier with the balance of his Renault. Its the first time he has been at least on par with teammate Nico Hulkenberg which is a very good sign of things to come. However, Renault are still very far away from Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari – further away than I think they thought they would be.

Sergio Perez also had an excellent race, scoring points when the Racing Point arguably is not a car that is fast enough to do so. Nevertheless, a mighty start for the Mexican going around the outside of Daniil Kvyat, Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen through turns one, two and three before outbraking Nico Hulkenberg into turn six.

Perez made the one stop work with good tyre management, something he has shown a lot in his F1 career and he really is underrated. He may have been beaten in the qualifying head to head by Esteban Ocon last year but he is so good on Sundays, and that is when it matters. Perez did finish higher in the championship compared to Ocon, four places higher and Perez has had many brilliant podiums in his career. I am not saying he is a top-team driver but he is doing a great job at the moment.

The one collision in the race was just after the start at turn six as Kvyat clashed with the McLaren drivers of Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz. I have already discussed my view on this in the latest Driver Ratings article, which was that Kvyat should not have had a penalty. I don’t see what he would have done in that situation, it was a simple “three into one doesn’t go” situation. If you blame Kvyat for squeezing Sainz, then you surely have to blame Norris too.

For me, it was a racing incident with nobody to blame. I feel Kvyat’s reputation from past incidents meant the stewards gave what was a very harsh drive-through penalty rather than a 5 or 10 second time penalty. You should only be judged on that very incident, the past has to be forgotten and left out of the equation when an investigation is happening, did that happen on Sunday? I don’t think so.

Alexander Albon was praised highly after going from the very back to 10th place. To take some of the shine from it, he was the reason why he started last after heavily crashing in free practice three. If he didn’t crash, he would have been scoring more points. The Toro Rosso was very quick in Shanghai and one solitary point is a bad weekend for them when they could have scored a lot more. Kvyat’s collision and Albon’s crash meant that their results were not maximised.

Overall, for the 1000th world championship race, not Grand Prix it was dull, unentertaining and one of the worst races for quite a long time. It was probably the worst Chinese GP of all time, considering the track has gave us lots of great action and excitement over the years.

The top 10 in qualifying lining up in a Noah’s Ark fashion sums it up really. One team is easily ahead of the rest at the moment and the sport it too predictable. Then, with the race for some reason the director was atrocious and quite frankly should be sacked – the pictures we got in the UK were not good with the camera cutting to the main straight randomly multiple times in the race and the director electing to not show the few battles that were happening in the midpack.

In the last 100 races, 12 times have a driver from outside a top three team had a podium. Alarmingly, no team other than Red Bull, Mercedes or Ferrari have won a race in the turbo-hybrid era.

I am not completely ruling out that Ferrari will come back but can they really beat a team that is brining the best results possible every single weekend. A team that is minimising mistakes no matter how good or bad the car is. You have to credit Toto Wolff and the leadership at Mercedes for doing something that no team has managed since Ferrari with Ross Brawn and Jean Todt over 15 years ago.

Shanghai was meant to suit the Ferrari car but as the weekend progressed it became evident that Mercedes had a clear advantage. Without getting ahead of myself too much and thinking the championship is over, lets not forget that Ferrari did have the pace in Bahrain but they failed to secure the win or a double podium through a driver error and unreliability.

But, there are not many tracks with similar characteristics to Sakhir. Of course, the development race will decide how the season pans out but if the previous five seasons have told something; it is that Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton will only get stronger as the year goes on.