Round 3 - China 2015 - Race (Delayed)

Greetings Internet, 

I know, I know - today is Monday, which is not quite the conventional day for these sort of things but there were some mitigating circumstances wherein my presence was required elsewhere. So while I was outside listening to various loud music based things in Newcastle no actual blog writing got done - especially due to the fact that a traditional Sunday post generally takes upwards of four hours to write out. But although I can imagine the vast majority of you lot out there on the internet will be rather pleased at the lack of contributions from my dismal corner of cyberspace it is time to pick up where I left off over the weekend.

Today I shall attempt to recount the events of yesterday's Chinese GP, which is all but a distant slightly faded memory - bearing in mind that remembering what happened this morning is a challenge all of its own. One thing that I do remember is that there was an intriguing degree of animosity making a reappearance in the pit-lane. Some might say that in-fighting and grumpiness does not make for a good image for the sport or reflects poorly on those involves. Here in Blog HQ, I think pairs of grumpy drivers is magnificent - hearing their snide little comments and accusations is rather amusing. I mean during the race at Malaysia, some of the most comical highlights can be pulled from Hamilton's radio transmissions. Then again in Shanghai we have several intriguing messages being broadcast from Kimi Raikkonen's car - then again many amusing things a generally heard from that particular cockpit. So arguments aside there was a race taking place yesterday - mostly amongst several better tempered competitors.

The Race 

Hooray, or some such, expression - for yesterday was the first race in the 2015 calendar where we actually got to see all 20 cars lining up on the grid, not in the pit-lane and not in the garage. It is something of a miracle, that Manor have made it this far and maintain a 100% finishing record  is still quite impressive. On the grid there was one oddity, and that was Lewis Hamilton - even more so than the normal oddity that he seems to have devolved into, with his increasingly 'gangsta' persona... This time it appeared Lewis, in accordance with gangland tradition, parked his Mercedes at an aggressively jaunty angle. Pointed directly at Rosberg... and this just summarised how the day was going to play out.

Off the line - the two Mercedes made an even and uneventful start - one belying the aggressive stance. While they were boring, Ricciardo had a notably disastrous venture towards the first corner, the car was rather reluctant to start and ultimately dropped down the order to join the rest of the Red Bull fraternity in the melee of the lower mid-field. It wasn't all doom and misfortune as there were gains to be made - Raikkonen managed to negotiate his way past the two Williams cars in front of him while they were a little pre-occupied battling with one another.The opening lap wasn't without a little bit of contact where the two Red Bull teams decided that instead of arguing with Renault - as there would be time for that later - Kyvat and his death stare was in the midst of a little push and shove with Carlos Sainz in the Toro Rosso. Both cars survived a the little bit of wheel to wheel contact on the exit of turn six, but Sainz  ran into more difficulties on the following lap where he simply drifted out wide in turn one and span into the most dull spin he could have mustered. 

After it all settled down for a bit, it was time for some people to start making progress  - Maldonado and Verstappen seemed to be having the most fun, and the Saubers were constantly on the receiving end. It seemed as if Sauber had finally found a way of getting more than three cars onto the grid - in every shot there was a blue and yellow car under pressure from someone different. Pastor Maldonado was the first assailant, taking on Marcus Ericsson round the outside of turn one before dealing with Felipe Nasr in much the same way. At this point in the race the commentators were lavishing praise on Maldonado for completing two well executed overtakes... oh how things would change by the end of the race, to the point where references to his accident prone past were brought up once more. So while one driver was temporarily defying his eccentric reputation - another driver was carving his own impression. Little Max was quickly growing into Mad Max as he waged war against Marcus Ericsson in the third or fourth Sauber... I'd lost count of how many there are at this point. Out of nowhere the Swede suddenly found the junior Dutchman barrelling down the inside of the final hairpin. Despite the crazed nature of the manoeuvre Verstappen remained completely in control of the car and Ericsson demonstrated cat-like reactions to get out of the way of the errant Toro Rosso. The Sauber was so scared of the pass that it dropped into anti-stall mode before eventually rebooting.

Even further back, we found Ricciardo caught up behind Daniil Kyvat in the other Red Bull car - 75% of the Renault powered brigade were a long way from the points. Down in these lower reaches of the pecking order - it was odd to see the Red Bull battle marginally ahead of McLaren. Two teams responsible for five of the last seven championships arguing over 14th place... At the front of the queue Daniil was, encouraged to allow Ricciardo through - but slammed the door on his Australian team-mate as he considered a pass on the inside of turn

one. If this was the end of the intra-team misgivings then the news over the intervening days before Bahrain would be a lot less interesting. The only member of the Red Bull cohort who was having a day worth mentioning was Mad Max, who again made a very late but very controlled pass on Felipe Nasr at the hairpin. But the prospect of further battling was temporarily put on hold as some pit stops intervened.  Except for Hulkenbergs case, as his Force India dropped out of the race with a gearbox failure. Daniil Kvyat also encountered technical difficulties... ones that may warrant another disagreement in the Renault camp, as the Renault engine disintegrated, reduced to a cloud of smoke.

Once the engine smoke had settled - and a liberal amount of fire extinguishant as well - we were left with what will probably not be known as the infamous middle stint. The stint which is the source of all the controversy within the Mercedes team - because Hamilton was playing a sly game, a completely legal and justified game, but a devious one nonetheless. Lewis was saving tyres, driving well within the pace of the car - this ultimately slowed Rosberg down allowing Vettel and Raikkonen to close in. As Rosberg saw the Ferrari's appear larger in his mirrors - he demanded Lewis pick up the pace - Mercedes also noted the threat Vettel posed and relayed the instruction to the leader. Hamilton obliged - driving just to the lap delta instructed by the team, not a tenth more.

This did not appease Rosberg who was trapped in the turbulent air behind his team-mate - Nico couldn't close in on Lewis because although he had more pace the turbulent air would ruin the tyre life and make him even more vulnerable to a Ferrari counter attack. A second call was made to Lewis asking for a little bit more pace - a four tenth improvement - but it wasn't fast enough to drop the Ferraris or keep Rosberg happy. We all assumed Hamilton was having tyre conservation difficulties... but after Rosberg and Vettel pitted to complete the stint Hamilton magically set a series of storming fastest laps... So much for being on the limit of tyre degradation. Seeing these laptimes post race... just added more fuel to the smouldering fires within the Mercedes team... and made for a very displeased German.

Away from this fight we saw another magnificent duel forming at the tail end of the points involving Daniel Ricciardo and Marcus Ericsson, driving the seventh Sauber. The problem Ricciardo had was small, French and increasingly unfavoured - because Ericsson was in possession of the more powerful Italian equivalent making overtaking the Sauber very difficult. But Daniel fought on, eventually passing round the outside of outside of turn one/two but he ran wide in turn six giving up the position he worked so hard to claim. So while Red Bull were ruing their power-plant, Toro Rosso were having difficulties with theirs... or at least Carlos Sainz was as for a brief time as his car was crawling down the back straight with more gearbox issues. But the Spaniard was able to reset the car and get going again, not before losing a considerable amount of time. It took a while but Ricciardo finally managed to overtake the Sauber... but they would both have to pit again and battle would be resumed later on. Speaking of difficulties, Pastor Maldonado was turning his originally positive day into a slightly more errant affair. To start off he missed his braking point arriving in the pit-lane and only just missed the barrier - on site marshals pushed the car back into the race as the Lotus team looked on, wondering where their car had gotten to. When he rejoined, the Venezuelan contributed to the self-destruction of his Sunday morning by power sliding the car through turn 7 and spinning off the track. The car was undamaged and Pastor continued on.

Pit-stops over and done with, pairs of battling racers started to emerge on the run to the flag - Verstappen was at it again making more late braking passes first Sergio Perez in the Force India, then it was Felipe Nasr in the twelfth Sauber. Speaking of Saubers - again - Marcus Ericsson this time driving what I can only assume was the twenty-third Sauber found himself under-pressure from Ricciardo once more for the final world championship point. Just like last time the Red Bull had nothing for the straight line speed of the Sauber - but was considerably faster in the corners. The Australian made another go of it in turn one - but Ericsson stayed alongside to reclaim the position - this time Daniel was a lot more decisive throwing the Red Bull down the inside of turn 6 not leaving too much room to spare. The only other real battle of interest belonged

to our good friend Maldonado, after his various misadventures he became embroiled in a battle with the two McLarens well outside the points. Only Sainz and Manor were further back. As the Lotus was faster it was being held up by Alonso and Button. The process started with a brilliant duel with Fernando through the high speed sweepers, the ones that Pastor span off on earlier. The duel eventually ended in Maldonado's favour under braking for turn 9. Pastor's attack on the second McLaren was a lot less straight forward - as Jenson proved in Australia, he quite enjoys getting involved in the little battles the McLaren finds itself in. After successfully re-passing Pastor, Jenson fell behind again on the back straight - the second effort at re-taking the position didn't quite work. Button considered having a look down the inside of turn one but only ended up ramming the Lotus instead. Jenson sustained front wing damage, but Maldonado was forced to retire due to the damage. The real winner was Fernando Alonso who instantly gained two places...

At the front there was the feint hint of a battle brewing at the tail of the lead quartet as Raikkonen on fresher tyres was closing in on Vettel for the final podium place. But on the way Raikkonen encountered some slightly inconvenient lapped traffic - prompting some good old Kimi complaints. "get this McLaren out of the way" was the first command in relation to lapping Alonso, only to be followed up with "get these two cars out of the way" referring to the Maldonado/Button battle which hadn't cleared itself at this point. I was rather enjoying the idea of an all Ferrari fight for in the remaining laps... but there was a problem. And if a certain Red Bull overlord is to be believed all the world's problems are Renault related... in this case it proved to be accurate. The transmission in the back of Mad Max's Toro Rosso ground itself into oblivion - making the kind of noises that would bring an engineer to tears on the main straight. As the rear wheels locked the car was stranded in a rather dangerous position. A safety car had to thrown to safely clear the car... it set up the race

for a magnificent one lap shoot-out... all that needed doing was to wheel the Toro Rosso through the nearby gate in the middle of the pit straight. But thing's didn't go at all to plan - instead of moving the car, the marshals rammed it repeatedly into the wall... attempting to turn it through an impossible angle. In the end the Toro Rosso team had to remove the nosecone manually because the marshals refused to reposition the car for a better entry. The length of this annoying and slightly amusing delay meant the race couldn't be restarted and thus finished under the safety car... no fun...

Hamilton crossed the line in an anti-climactic false restart ahead of a still grumpy Rosberg and the Ferrari pair. Contrary to popular belief Williams were in this race and finished a rather anonymous fifth and sixth places. Grosjean drove a trouble free race for Lotus to pick up their first points of 2015 ahead of Felipe Nasr in the 36th Sauber, Ricciardo in the only fully functioning Renault powered creation. Marcus Ericsson in the Nth Sauber rounded out the points in tenth.

The Bonus Points Championship Points Winners

The race was a story of contrasting fortunes, conflicting views and close contests - so plenty of scope for bonus points... both positive and negative.

• 25pts - Mad Max Verstappen - Many high risk overtaking manoeuvres but all under complete control
• 18pts - Marcus Ericsson - Brilliant defence against Ricciardo and good reactions to avoid Verstappen
• 15pts - Pastor Maldonado - Easily the most entertaining driver of the day, good early passes and good old fashioned hilarity later.
• 12pts - Fernando Alonso - Great fight with Pator and Jenson - two wide through the sweepers with the Lotus was brilliant
• 10pts - Jenson Button - Enjoyed his defiance in re-passing Maldonado, but lost points in ramming the Venezuelan
• 8pts - Sebastian Vettel - His continued pressure forced the hilarious shenanigans at Mercedes
• 6pts - Kimi Raikkonen - Was setting up a marvellous race conclusion, but also contributed more Kimi radio magic
• 4pts - Mehri/Stevens - Another two car finish for Manor, 
• 2pts - Lewis Hamilton - Race winner, fastest lap, devious individual - only two bonus points for you today/yesterday...
• 1pt - Daniil Kvyat - Gets a point for adding to the musical radio contributions of Vettel and his 'Blue flag, Blue flag' remix with Kvyat's new single "I'm on fire, fire, fire"

• -1pt - The Chinese Marshals - The handling of Verstappen's car was borderline farcical
• -1pt - Lewis Hamilton - That was a little devious but acceptable - having no idea of how close Nico was and dismissing the threat is a little underhand

Looking ahead to Bahrain

For a circuit traditionally held as a relatively dull tilke-drome out in the middle of the desert - the 2014 race was one of the best races of the entire season. It had the first - and only really lap on lap battle between Lewis and Nico, it had Maldonado delivering his most dramatic act of Maldonado-ism in flipping Gutierrez. There was a huge battle between Force India and Williams for the final podium place and many angry faces on the Ferrari pit-wall as their cars were overtaken by everything in straight line. If next weekend's race is half is good as that I'll be very happy thank you very much.

Bahrain 2014 was the first race when Mercedes turned the pace up to 11 and showed what they are really capable of and it was brutally quick. This time I can't see that happening - Ferrari and Williams will be closer, and I suspect closer to each other. For some reason things get a little crazier under the lights for a night race.