18 AUTOSPORT.COM 18 APRIL 2019RACE CENTRE CHINESE GP
Lewis Hamilton’s victory ahead of Valtteri Bottas in the Chinese Grand
Prix means Mercedes has started what should be its most challenging
season in years with a hat-trick of 1-2s. But the 1000th world
championship race wasn’t just about the Silver Arrows dominating – it
also cruelly exposed three key weaknesses for a chastened Ferrari team.
Firstly, Ferrari was not fast enough in China, even with its straightline-
speed advantage carrying over from Bahrain. Secondly, Ferrari was
indecisive in how it managed its drivers and should have either ordered
Sebastian Vettel past Charles Leclerc earlier or let the battle between
the pair play out rather than doing a bit of both. Thirdly, its strategy
with Leclerc was questionable, ultimately costing him any chance
of beating Max Verstappen’s Red Bull to fourth place.
Ferrari’s pace in Bahrain had raised hopes for the team but, with
Mercedes convinced it had run a little too much wing and therefore drag
there, things were back to what we now must consider normal in China.
The best of the Ferraris was 0.3 seconds down in qualifying as Bottas
and Hamilton locked out the front row.
Just as in Australia, the start was decisive in the intra-Mercedes
battle and went in favour of the driver in second place. Bottas’s launch
was reasonable enough, but he picked up wheelspin as he crossed the
white line at the front of the grid. That was enough to cause a slight
hesitation in the build-up of speed and allowed Hamilton, who had
laid down plenty of rubber at the start of the formation lap, to take
the lead well before they got to Turn 1.“Lewis had a better start and, for me, the problem was already on the
formation-lap start,” said Bottas. “There was a thick white line just in
front of my grid box so, when you’re still accelerating, and when I went
over the white line I got some wheelspin on the formation-lap start. For
the race start, I thought maybe it’s going to be better with warmer tyres
but it wasn’t, so once I hit the white line, got the wheelspin, took too
long to recover it, lost a few metres of distance, so Lewis got me.”
Hamilton was two seconds ahead by the end of the first lap. With both
drivers on the medium Pirellis, having used them to set their times in Q- like all of the top five – Bottas halved the gap on the second lap to 1.047s.
From lap three to lap 20, Hamilton eked out an average of 0.248s over
Bottas to build a lead of 5.516s. But the real story during this phase of
the race was behind them. Vettel had the edge over Leclerc throughout
the weekend, even though the pair were only separated by 0.017s in
qualifying. And, given Leclerc’s lengthy self-beration over the radio after
completing his lap, it was clear he believed he had it in him to be ahead.
Bottas’s start gave him that opportunity, as it led to Vettel placing his
Ferrari on the outside line into Turn 1 in the hope of attacking Bottas. He
couldn’t, and Leclerc on the inside was able to get ahead, comfortably
securing third place by the time they entered Turn 2.
Vettel was adamant he was quicker than Leclerc, and after 10 laps the
gap to Bottas had grown to 3.715s – with Hamilton nearly seven seconds
up the road. Vettel couldn’t launch an attack but, with both drivers being
urged to push over the radio, it was clear that a swap was on the cards, as