Chinese Grand Prix Review

The Chinese GP weekend began in dramatic fashion, with Hamilton being tried by Youtube as a spectator's home video shed new light on the incident between Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel behind the Safety Car at Fuji, and prompted an investigation by the stewards into Lewis' driving. The video showed clearly that Hamilton had suddenly slowed dramatically and gone to the outside edge of the circuit, causing Webber to almost come to a standstill as Vettel ran into the back of the Red Bull.

As the race leader, it was Hamilton's prerogative to take whichever part of the track he chose, and this did not excuse Vettel from his sheer brain-fade in failing to watch where he was going. But what Lewis did was extremely dodgy, to say the least. He did exactly what you would expect from a car pulling off to retire from a mechanical failure, and in so doing he invited a typical motorway accident. He set the tone for all this 'sprint-stop' practice which, as we said in our Japanese GP review, the FIA must clamp down on.

And for a while, it looked as though surely Hamilton would get penalised, either with a grid penalty in China, or perhaps with some kind of time penalty added onto his Japan result, which would have handed the victory to Heikki Kovalainen. Webber voiced his anger at Lewis' antics and it seemed as though he was in the majority. But, strangely, after the Friday evening stewards meeting in Shanghai, Hamilton was let off the hook and Vettel had his ten-place grid penalty replaced by a mere reprimand!

Had Hamilton been penalised in some way, even if it retrospectively changed the result of the Japanese GP, we would have had no trouble with that. If subsequent evidence can ensure a just result, that is more important. Giancarlo Fisichella was awarded the 2003 Brazilian GP days after the race. In recent days, Floyd Landis has been stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title over a year after the event. Peter Brock was not awarded the 1987 Bathurst 1000 until six months after the race and several court appeals.

The official line was that the FIA decided to be lenient because of the difficult conditions at Fuji. Excuse me - aren't these the best drivers in the world?!? More to the point, was Webber pressured by Red Bull (which of course owns Toro Rosso) to defend Vettel? Is Webber angling for a McLaren drive in 2008? Was the FIA bowing to these new Gen-Z stars in Hamilton and Vettel at the expense of the journeyman Webber? After all, even Bernie Ecclestone has melodramatically declared Hamilton to be the saviour of F1!

If you are of the majority view that the punishment meted out to McLaren over Spygate was unwarranted, and the not-quite-so-majority view that the FIA has rigged the constructors title to hand it to Ferrari, then this almost seemed to be the FIA trying to hand the drivers title to Hamilton, after intervening so one-sidedly in Hungary, and having taken no action against Lewis here. But if that was enough of a sickening thought, then Hamilton, Alonso and Ron Dennis were all doing their bit this weekend to reduce their own credibility and respectability.

During the steward's investigation, Hamilton came out in the press and bemoaned how he was being victimised having tried to Òjust be fairÓ all season. Pass the bucket, please! Maybe the tissues and the violin as well, especially when he hinted at leaving F1 if his negative press continued. Clearly, in Lewis' self-centred and spoilt world view, 'being fair' includes screwing your team-mate's qualifying strategy in Hungary, and behaving erratically behind a Safety Car and playing a major role in causing a concertina accident between your rivals. Don't think the others in the field haven't taken note.

Then Dennis lamented how Alonso had not publicly defended the team's equality policy. He just doesn't get it, does he? Equality is not just about machinery and opportunity. It's also about team atmosphere and affection. Although Fernando has not helped his cause, is there any doubt about Hamilton's status within McLaren as Ron's precious baby? Ron's pitiful, helpless gesturing at the monitors when Lewis got stuck in the gravel said all you needed to know about his paternal relationship with Hamilton.

Thankfully, for the second weekend in succession some inclement weather ensured that we would get an exciting race to help shift attention away from all the off-track shenanigans. A few key factors turned out to be decisive in the ever-changing conditions on Sunday afternoon. The first was set-up, which largely had to be determined the previous day before qualifying. Everyone adopted a slightly different compromise between wet and dry settings to cover for the possibility of rain on race day.

As a result, some shone in the early going when the track was wet and slippery, such as Hamilton, David Coulthard, Vitantonio Liuzzi and Ralf Schumacher, whereas others such as Webber, the Renaults and Jenson Button were noticeably vulnerable. The other side of the coin, however, was that set-up also decided how each car would treat its tyres, especially its wets, and it meant that some who were weaker in the wet, such as Button, came into their own as the track began to dry out.

The other key factor was fuel strategy, and how this interacted with the weather and tyre choices. Again because teams sought to pre-empt the likelihood of rain, there was a wide range of strategies on the grid, from more traditional two-stoppers, to late two-stoppers, which blended into a one-stop window. It just so happened that the transition point from the wet/intermediate tyres to dry tyres also happened around that late two-stop or one-stop window.

Those who were on a traditional two-stop plan suffered, including the McLarens and Ferraris as well as Coulthard and Liuzzi. Having had no choice but to keep their warm wets at their first stop, a few laps later when dries became available, it was too early to fuel to the end. A further brief shower caused a conundrum, as their wets had worn. But even when it dried out again, pitting for dries and fuelling to the end compromised their strategy, meaning that they spent the entire middle third of the race on fullish tanks.

With a 12-point lead over Alonso coming into this weekend, Hamilton's strategy was obviously to get in front and to stay in front. Ferrari had been faster all weekend, so it didn't take a genius to work out that Lewis' pole was due to a lower fuel load. The initial wet conditions suited his set-up perfectly, but his early first stop and the drying track brought him back into Raikkonen's clutches. It quickly became clear that his wets were wearing out, and fast.

That put him right into the dilemma that the traditional two-stoppers faced - that plus a certain conservatism or indecisiveness when it comes to tyre choice in changing conditions that we first saw at the Nurburgring. As they say, once bitten, twice shy. Hamilton went from wets to dries too early at the Nurburgring. Since then he got scared, and later in that race held off too long before changing back to wets. Here, he again dallied before changing from his shot wets to dries. It was several laps too late.

Raikkonen had caught and passed him and he was losing ten seconds a lap. Even Alonso was catching him, and the lapped Jarno Trulli in the Toyota passed him not once but twice. One must wonder why the team did not call him in earlier, and ultimately whose call it was. The combination of useless tyres, a slippery pit lane, and turning into the left hander in the pit entry too soon and too quickly such that he had to correct and attack the corner at a shallow angle, left him in the gravel trap from which he never emerged.

It was almost as humiliating as Coulthard's crash in the pit lane at the 1995 Australian GP, and his first retirement of the year as well as his first mistake of serious note. For his strategic and driving errors at such a crucial stage in the title, we hand Lewis the 'Reject of the Race' award. His DNF left the way clear for Raikkonen and Alonso to cut swathes off his points lead, as Raikkonen took the win and Alonso cleared Felipe Massa mid-race to take 2nd place.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Lewis Hamilton
Earlier tyre-change would have avoided gravel beaching

Alonso is only four points behind Hamilton, but in truth his drive in Shanghai was solid but not spectacular. After his spectacular first lap tussle with Massa, he had little answer for the Ferraris in the wet. He only leapfrogged Felipe because, despite changing to dries six laps after the Brazilian, which should have been a disadvantage, the Ferrari had been weighed down by such a cumbersome fuel load and had struggled to generate heat quickly into the dries.

Given the way the points are distributed, Fernando's best hope in Brazil is to win with one of the Ferraris getting in between himself and Lewis, such that he and his team-mate are equal on points but Alonso wins on count-back with more race victories. But given Ferrari's recent form at Interlagos, that's easier said than done. Should one of the red cars win, Fernando's task will become immeasurably more difficult. Hamilton must still go into the title decider, the first three-way shoot-out since 1986, as favourite.

Arguably, the real stars of the race came in 4th, 5th and 6th. Vettel has gone through the proverbial rollercoaster of emotions in the last seven days. He went from hero to zero in one fell swoop in Japan, but his ten-place grid penalty was extinguished on Friday night, only for him to cop a further five-place penalty for baulking in qualifying. After a consistent opening stint, it was really the one-stop strategy that catapulted him into a brilliant net 4th place that he would not relinquish.

His team-mate Liuzzi's drive was equally stellar, but it was hidden because he paid the price for being on a traditional two-stop strategy. The qualifying efforts of both the Toro Rossos and the Red Bulls showed how well the Adrian Newey chassis was dialled into the Shanghai track, but in the first stint in the wet Tonio was sensational, leaping from 11th on the grid to 7th on lap one and passing Nick Heidfeld as well. In direct battle against Coulthard for a net 6th, a later second stop for dries made the difference.

Button ended up slotting in between the Toro Rossos in 5th after another tremendous drive in drying conditions. He struggled early in the wet which was a mild surprise given his wet-weather expertise, so one can only surmise that his set-up wasn't to his liking. But as one of the late two-stoppers, he could take on dries at his first stop rather than his second, and his middle-stint was blisteringly fast. There are few drivers who are quicker on dry tyres on a semi-dry, semi-wet track.

That meant he accounted for Liuzzi in the battle for 5th, but because the Honda had to make a further stop on lap 42, he had to concede 4th place to Vettel. Could he have converted to a one-stop strategy at his first stop? Kovalainen pitted on the same lap and thereafter ran to the end. But if he did, he would still have been behind Vettel and he wouldn't have been as fast in the middle stint. Still, all in all four points are a massive boost to Honda, and at least it put them back in front of Super Aguri!

Heidfeld came in 7th on what was meant to be a one-stop strategy, but he had actually been victim to the fact that his only fuel stop actually came too late. Rather than that stop falling perfectly in that gap from laps 22 to 26 when he could have switched to dries, Nick's stop came at 28 - right in the middle of that brief shower that spooked several drivers into mistakenly going for wets when in fact the rain barely lasted more than a few laps. At this stop, Heidfeld accordingly put on fresh wets, wrongly as it turned out.

At the time he was well clear of Vettel, and without an extra stop four laps later to put on dries, he would have claimed 4th after a miserable weekend filled with hydraulic problems. Indeed, it was hydraulic problems that cruelly stopped Robert Kubica whilst the Pole had taken the lead. That was because Kubica had done a Button and was presumably on a late two-stopper, but he was higher up the field than Jenson at the time. Without his DNF, Robert was also in with a chance at finishing 4th or 5th.

So Coulthard eventually took the last point for 8th, but out of the traditional two-stoppers had he lost the most in that middle segment when he stayed on increasingly ineffectual wets. It was in this period of the race that Liuzzi effectively got past him, and from there DC never really recovered. That was a pity, for this had been his best weekend since Spain. His 5th on the grid was his best since Australia 2005, and his point for 8th put him into the top 10 in the drivers' standings, extending his lead over team-mate Webber.

Kovalainen pressured Coulthard for that last point towards the end of the race, and Fisichella likewise tried to find a way past Webber, but both Renaults had lost way too much ground in the wet early on. By the time they put Kovalainen's one-stop strategy, and Fisi's late two-stop plan into operation, they were coming from too far back. Thus Heikki's points-scoring run from Silverstone onwards ended, but this was a weekend where the Finn didn't really impress, and neither did Giancarlo who missed the Q1 cut.

Surprisingly, neither did the other man who along with Kovalainen has been one of the unlikely drivers of the year, namely Nico Rosberg. Williams were completely off the boil in China. Nico, who has been so brilliant in qualifying this year, was bottom of the timesheets in Q2. Mid-race, he fell into the same tyre trap as Webber, although he must have been especially compelled to switch back (wrongly) to wets after a massive spin at turn one. For the rest of the race, he was a non-entity.

Even Alexander Wurz gained a little more spotlight than his team-mate for once. He was the first of the late two-stoppers, and thus the guinea pig whose competitive lap times showed that dries were the way to go. But, like Fisichella, he was coming from a long way behind and he didn't have Button's sheer speed in the middle stint to really catapult up the order and stay there. After missing the Q1 cut again, in now announcing his immediate retirement from F1 racing Wurz has simply jumped before he got pushed.

But he was also a loser in the brief mid-race shower, not because of an over-reactive tyre choice but because he spun off on his dries at the last corner. But at least he caught the eye far more than team-mate Trulli, whose race form has meandered for a very long time, but in both Japan and here his qualifying form has been little better. He one-stopped, but before the stop he was two places behind Vettel; by race's end he was nine spots adrift, showing how much he struggled on full tanks.

Of the rest, Rubens Barrichello disappointed again in the second Honda, once again being unable to capitalise on the conditions as Button did, compounding his over-ambitious move on Anthony Davidson which resulted in a spin for them both, with making the same mistake mid-race with tyres as Webber and Rosberg. Interestingly, both Barrichello and Davidson are the only two men who have driven all season who are yet to score a point.

Unless something miraculous happens at home in Brazil, both Rubens and Anthony look unlikely to trouble the scorers this year. In the other Super Aguri, it was a good race for Takuma Sato on a one-stop strategy, which enabled him to jump up to 14th by race's end. However, it must be galling for the team which has been sitting on 4 points since Canada, to now lose its 7th place in the constructors crown in one go, with Toro Rosso and Honda now relegating them back to 9th.

Despite Adrian Sutil's point for Spyker at Fuji, Spyker are pressing ahead with their customer car arbitration. They will do so now with increased vigour no doubt after Toro Rosso's stunning points haul, but this has dragged on all season and one hopes results won't be amended too much and points re-distributed as a result. Both Spykers had a race to forget after starting bizarrely on extreme wets, Sutil eventually crashing and Sakon Yamamoto languishing after also making too many stops for tyres.