2011 Chinese Grand Prix – A Flashback

The 2012 Chinese Grand Prix is just around the corner. So let’s take a look at what happened last year…….

Sebastian Vettel had got off to the best possible start with two pole positions and more importantly two wins from the first two races in Australia and Malaysia. Behind him in the drivers’ championship standings were Jenson Button in 2^nd and Lewis Hamilton in 3^rd. In the constructors’ championship, Red Bull had opened up a 24-point lead over McLaren and Ferrari were in 3^rd.

Free Practice

Sebastian Vettel topped all the three free practice sessions but the most important story coming out of Saturday morning free practice was that Mark Webber had suffered serious electrical and KERS problems in his car.

Qualifying

The biggest story of Q1 was the elimination of Mark Webber as a result of the problems he suffered in free practice that morning. He would start the race way down in 18^th position. Along with him, the three ‘new’ teams were eliminated while Rosberg topped the session.

In Q2, it was McLaren’s and Hamilton’s time to bag the top position on the timesheet. Along with both the Williams cars and the two Saubers, Michael Schumacher, Nick Heidfeld and Adrian Sutil were not able to make the cut into the top 10.

The battle for pole was a straight fight between Vettel and the two McLarens but, as was the case for most of the season, Sebastian put in a very good lap and beat Jenson Button to pole by a huge 0.7 seconds. Behind Button, it was Hamilton, Rosberg and Alonso completing the top 5.

Race

There was drama before the start of the race when eventual race winner Lewis Hamilton exited the pits to go to the grid, just 35 seconds before the pit lane close time. Had he been late by those 35 seconds, he would have had to start from the pit lane.

The start of the race was a very exciting one too with both the McLarens getting ahead of Vettel by mid-Turn 1. Apart from that, Massa jumped Alonso to 5^th and Michael Schumacher made a big jump from 14^th to 9^th.

The first row of pitstops saw one of the funniest incidents of the season. Jenson Button made a mistake recognizing his team and drove into the Red Bull pits! That cost him time and he exited the pits behind Vettel. Meanwhile, Hamilton made a mistake during his in-lap which put him behind Massa and that allowed Vettel to undercut Hamilton. So, after the first round of pitstops, Rosberg, Vettel, Button, Massa and Hamilton were the top 5.

Hamilton was able to get ahead of Button on Lap 36 by making a move on Jenson’s inside into Turn 1. It almost led to a collision as Jenson turned into the corner very early as he had not spotted Hamilton behind him, but both continued without any damage.

A controversial incident took place when Fernando Alonso was behind Michael Schumacher during the race. After taking the corner at the end of the long back straight, Fernando’s rear wing opened on the short straight between the final two corners. This was illegal because, during the race the DRS was allowed to be deployed only 750m before the hairpin at the end of the long straight. This mystery was later explained as Alonso’s DRS being “offset” during that lap. He was not able to deploy it until 300m before the end of the straight and therefore it opened again after taking the corner. Alonso was not penalised as it was deemed he was at a disadvantage due to the incident.

Overall, a three-stop strategy turned out to be the better than the two-stop one. The guys who benefited most from a three-stop strategy were Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber and those who lost out were Sebastian Vettel and Felipe Massa. Felipe was running in the top 2 till about 10 laps from the end of the race but was overtaken by Hamilton, Button, Webber and Rosberg on fresher tyres. Hamilton was able to overtake Vettel also on lap 52 and didn’t relinquish the lead after that. Webber’s stellar drive from way down in 18^th turned even more sensational when he overtook Button for the final podium position on the penultimate lap.

After an enthralling race with very heavy tyre degradation, Lewis Hamilton stood on the top step on the podium with the two Red Bull drivers alongside him. Button finished a disappointing 4^th after leading the race at one stage, before he made the pit stop blunder. Rosberg finished an encouraging 5^th. Both the Ferrari drivers suffered because of Ferrari’s strategy to put both their cars on two stops each- Felipe Massa finished 6^th and Fernando Alonso 7^th. Michael Schumacher, Vitaly Petrov and Kamui Kobayashi rounded off the top 10.

Vettel left China with his championship lead cut down to 21 points and McLaren gained 4 points on Red Bull. Ferrari were a distant 3^rd going into the next round at Turkey.