SHANGHAI 2011 will go down among the all-time F1 classics. Alongside Monza 1969 and 1971, Monte Carlo 1982, Silverstone 1987, Spa 1998 and Suzuka 2005 – this race will utterly breathless from start to finish. This was the day when the 2011 Formula 1 One World Championship totally came alive.
This was the day when Red Bull Racing realised that if they don’t get their KERS issues sorted soon, they will lose both championships. The only flaw in the Adrian Newey design is the tightly-packaged chassis, which means that KERS doesn’t have the room required to operate properly. At least, they now have three weeks to sort it out. My views on KERS are crystal clear – an expensive waste of time! However, when it doesn’t work, it is costing nearly 0.5seconds a lap, so it is an essential tool to have. Once again, both devices failed on Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber during the race and it was a KERS issue in morning practice on Saturday that started Webber’s qualifying mess too. Red Bull can’t let the matter head into the European season undeveloped, especially with McLaren hot on their tails.
Shanghai’s long backstraight is the second longest on the F1 calendar, and this meant that the DRS system came into its own. The FIA’s decision to not allow the wing to be activated until halfway down the straight on Saturday morning seemed like a rather questionable move. However, they got it spot on. Unfortunately, the amount of overtaking seemed quite DRS based, unlike in Malaysia. It is tough to criticise one of the greatest innovations of recent years in the sport. However, the FIA still need to work on how to make the racing even better. Either two opportunities a lap or for the defending driver to be given the chance to use the device have to be thought about between now and Istanbul.
Thank you Pirelli was David Coulthard’s final few words in his BBC commentary and he was spot on with those. Bridgestone did give an impeccable service to F1 for fifteen years. However, they never came up with a dynamic tyre and Canada aside last year, it made race strategy fairly non-existent. Now, Pirelli have produced the perfect balance of a tyre that when it loses grip, that’s it – it’s game over, rather than the tyre coming back to life. They also have produced a tyre which does have the ability to do more than ten laps at least, or even more – as in Sergio Perez’s case in Melbourne. I predict a very sweet relationship between Pirelli and the teams for some time to come.
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| WRONG PIT: An embarrassing error from Jenson Button! |
Jenson Button’s elementary mistake of stopping in the wrong pit box was a blunder of the highest magnitude. It is bad enough to see a rookie driver doing that, but this was a former world champion, completely caught out in a moment of crisis! Button got what he deserved, as Vettel jumped him at the first round of pitstops. The Red Bull mechanics should have been crafty and quickly removed a wheel from Button’s car, whilst they had the chance! Unfortunately for Jenson, he struggled to hide his embarrassment afterwards. It is one of those moments that will appear on blooper DVD’s at Christmas and the ‘What Happened Next’ round on A Question of Sport forever! Having cut a chicane blatantly in Melbourne whilst trying to pass Felipe Massa there, this suggests that Button is feeling the heat more than ever this season. Desperate and clumsy moves however will not will you championships, and Jenson should know that by now.
Reliability continues to shock everyone and it is getting to the stage where there is general shock when a mechanical failure occurs. If it wasn’t for a Toro Rosso mechanic failing to tighten up Jaime Alguesuari’s left-rear wheel at his first pitstop, every single car would have finished the 2011 Chinese Grand Prix. It is a pretty mighty statistic. The day of 8/9 cars finishing races seem to be a thing of the past.
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| SCRAP: Alonso chases old rival, Schumacher |
Felipe Massa is starting to rekindle some of the form that has been missing from his driving ever since that horrific qualifying crash in Hungary 2009. Sixth place at the finish was a poor reward for the Brazilian, who drove exceptionally well and was right in contention for the victory until the last 12 laps. For the third successive race, he beat Fernando Alonso off the startline and beat the Ferrari No.1 by 15 seconds, despite his tyres being completely finished for the final stint of the race. It was a drive that Felipe can be proud of and if Ferrari’s designers get their act together and sort out their aerodynamic flaws, Massa will win races at least this season. Alonso’s seventh place could be vital come the end of the season. It may not sound like it now, but if he wins the title by six points – he will think back to this day. Fernando drove as hard as he ever could and had a memorable dice with old adversary Michael Schumacher for most of the race. However, he was lacklustre by his high standards and the way the likes of Webber, Button and Nico Rosberg cruised past his defensiveness Ferrari, must have surely made the Spaniard’s heart sink. Ferrari needs to improve fast, if Fernando is going to stay in the title hunt.
After their Malaysian nightmare, Mercedes GP pushed themselves right back into contention in China. Nico Rosberg was a star all weekend; hauling his car upto fourth on the grid for the race and then leading a fair chunk of it. Ross Brawn’s decision to put both cars on a three stop strategy almost paid off, had it not been for a fuel consumption problem on Rosberg’s car. Fifth place at the end left Nico absolutely devastated. He told BBC’s Lee McKenzie afterwards that it was a ‘horrible’ fifth place and looked incredibly disappointed. No wonder, because this was Rosberg’s best chance to win a race for the first time and although his defence against Lewis Hamilton and Button was fairly feeble in the end, he drove impeccably throughout. Nevertheless, despite Rosberg’s disappointment, the team can leave Shanghai with heads held high, with their season not completely destroyed yet.
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| BACKWARDS: Williams have dropped down the order alarmingly |
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Williams. Their car did at least bring two finishes for its drivers and Pastor Maldonado got some critical race mileage underneath his belt. However, 13th and 18th place results are absolutely shocking, for a team that has fallen from grace spectacularly. It could be a slim picking season and with Team Lotus beating Maldonado fair and square, in the shape of Heikki Kovalainen, Williams are in big danger of becoming the first team to become victim to Mike Gascoyne and Tony Fernandes ambitious and ever-improving team. Even Gascoyne himself admitted that it was ‘unfortunately Williams’ that his team is targeting to overhaul. It is a sad and sorry decline for a world championship winning team and I can’t imagine how Sir Frank Williams and Patrick Head must be feeling; seeing their great team tumble into also-rans at the back of the field. Also, a special mention for Jerome D’Ambrosio – who beat Timo Glock at Virgin Racing convincingly in both qualifying and race trim. Whether it was Glock’s twin brother that showed up in Shanghai, it was a notable achievement for the rookie Belgian, considering the lack of equipment available to the Virgin Racing cars.
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| BOUNCING: Lewis Hamilton recovered in China, in stunning fashion |
The final part of this latest edition of the ‘Finishing Straight’ will focus on two drivers, who were the stars of the weekend. Lewis Hamilton bounced back from his Malaysian disappointment in breathtaking fashion. His shrewd gamble to sacrifice a front row position in qualifying and save a fresh set of option tyres for Sunday was a masterstroke. As was the way he stayed composed in the cockpit, as the McLaren mechanics ran amok in the moments leading up to the start, desperately making emergency repairs to a flooded engine, thanks to an overfill of fuel in his car. Hamilton channelled any frustration he may have had into driving fast and pulling off some bold manoeuvres on track. His pass on Button in turn one won him the race and Jenson does deserve credit for spotting Hamilton at the last minute, otherwise an aeroplane crash would have occurred between the two McLaren drivers. In the end, his race-winning move on Vettel was fairly straightforward, thanks to Sebastian’s lack of grip from his Pirelli tyres. However, the tactics that Lewis used, to use KERS in a place where Vettel would be surprised of a possible attack, was genius. This is the Lewis Hamilton we love and I hope we see more of it, not the moody figure we saw after the race in Kuala Lumpur. Finally, there has to be a special mention for Mark Webber – who is my ‘driver of the day,’ only just edging out Hamilton. 15 laps in and his race was going absolutely nowhere, having been passed easily by Perez and Rubens Barrichello. Webber was struggling in 17th but after Ciaran Pilbeam’s blunder on Saturday by not switching the Aussie on the softer, faster tyre in qualifying, he turned it around himself on Sunday. True, Webber had three sets of the option tyres available to him after his Q1 shock exit, but he used them to perfection and the team’s decision to start Mark on the prime, less faster tyre at the start reaped rewards. Webber’s charge through the field was akin to Michael Schumacher’s at Imola in 2005. That day, Schumacher was only beaten by a stoutly defensive drive from Alonso. Here, I’m convinced Webber would have won if the race went on four laps longer. His pace was amazing and it surely will give him the lift in confidence he badly needed after a troubled start to the season.
What a race and what a start to the season. For once, I’m glad we have a three week break before Istanbul, because Sunday’s events in Shanghai have taken a long time to digest. It was a special Grand Prix and one that will never be forgotten by the avid F1 fanatics.
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