2014 Chinese Grand Prix

Report

Background

Heading into the fourth round of the season, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg was leading the Drivers' Championship with 61 points; Rosberg's teammate Lewis Hamilton was second on 50 points, 11 points behind Rosberg. Behind Rosberg and Hamilton in the Drivers' Championship, Nico Hülkenberg was third on 28 points, with Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button on 26 and 23 points respectively. In the Constructors Championship, Mercedes were leading with 111 points and Force India were second on 44 points, with McLaren third on 43 points.

Prior to the race weekend, Stefano Domenicali resigned from position as Ferrari team principal citing the team's poor start to the season and their longest winless streak for 18 years. Domenicali was replaced by the President and CEO of Ferrari North America Marco Mattiacci.

Like the 2013 Chinese Grand Prix, tyre supplier Pirelli brought its white-banded medium compound tyre as the harder "prime" tyre and the yellow-banded soft compound tyre as the softer "option" tyre.

Practice and qualifying

Three practice sessions were held before the race; the first on Friday morning and the second on Friday afternoon. Both sessions lasted one and a half hours. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour.

The qualifying session held on Saturday afternoon was split into three parts. The first part ran for 18 minutes and eliminated the cars from qualifying that finished the session 16th or lower. The second part of qualifying lasted 15 minutes and eliminated cars that finished in positions 11 to 16. The final part of qualifying determined the positions from first to tenth, and decided pole position.

Qualifying took place under wet conditions, with all drivers using either intermediate or full wet tyres. Hamilton clinched his third pole position for the season, with a time of 1:53.860. As a result, Hamilton became the British driver with the highest number of pole positions, surpassing Jim Clark's record of 33. He was joined on the front row of the grid by Riccardo with Vettel qualifying third. Rosberg qualified fourth, 1.2 seconds behind Hamilton and Alonso qualified fifth. Massa, Bottas, Hulkenberg, Jean-Éric Vergne and Romain Grosjean rounded out the top ten. Räikkönen only managed 11th — missing out on the top ten for the second time in having struggled with the balance and handling of his car during the session. Jenson Button was the best placed McLaren in 12th, ahead of Daniil Kvyat, Adrian Sutil, Button's teammate Kevin Magnussen, with Sergio Pérez qualifying 16th. Esteban Gutiérrez was 17th, with the rest of the field consisting of the Caterham and Marussia cars. Lotus driver Pastor Maldonado did not take part in the qualifying sessions, but was allowed to start the race.

Race

The race, unlike qualifying, took place on a dry track. When the lights went out, Lewis Hamilton maintained the lead, followed by Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso (who also had contact with Felipe Massa), Daniel Ricciardo and Massa himself. Further behind, the cars of Nico Rosberg and Valtteri Bottas touched, but both were able to continue the race.

On lap four, Rosberg began his comeback, passing Massa first, then, on lap 16, Ricciardo. Three laps later, Massa made his first tyre change: a problem with the rear wheels stopped him in the pits for a long time. On lap 12, Alonso also pitted, while Vettel completed another lap. The German, after his tyre change, found himself behind the Spaniard. Rosberg made his tyre change on lap 14; two laps later, it was Ricciardo's turn.

On lap 22, Rosberg gained another position, passing Vettel, for third place. The world champion suffered from problems with his Red Bull, so much so that he also gave way to Daniel Ricciardo, his teammate, on lap 25. The race still saw Lewis Hamilton in the lead, followed by Alonso, Rosberg, Ricciardo, Vettel, Nico Hülkenberg and Bottas.

Now closely followed by Rosberg, on lap thirty-four, Alonso went for his second tyre change: this allowed him, with fresh tyres, to widen the gap on the German Mercedes driver. Rosberg and Ricciardo went to change tyres again on lap 38. One lap later, the leader Hamilton also changed tyres. On lap 43, Rosberg overtook Alonso and moved into second place. In the final laps, Ricciardo got closer to Alonso, but was unable to worry him.

The race was raced over 56 laps, however the chequered flag was shown to Lewis Hamilton at end of lap 55 by mistake. According to Article 43.2 of the FIA Sporting Regulations this meant that the race officially finished at the end of lap 54.

Lewis Hamilton, for the first time in his F1 career, won three races in a row, ahead of Rosberg and Alonso. Hamilton, Rosberg and Alonso had not been on the podium together since the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. For Mercedes, it was the hundredth consecutive Grand Prix in which they scored points as an engine designer.

Post-race

As a consequence of the race, Hamilton reduced Rosberg's lead over him in the Drivers' Championship to four points. Alonso moved up to third position passing Hülkenberg with Vettel maintaining fifth place and Ricciardo moved from 10th to 6th. In the Constructors' Championship, Mercedes increased their lead, with Red Bull jumping ahead of Force India for second position and Ferrari moving to fourth, ahead of McLaren who fell from third to fifth position.

Classification

Qualifying

;Notes:

• — Pastor Maldonado failed to set a lap time within 107% of the fastest lap time set by Lewis Hamilton in Q1. He was later given permission to start by race stewards. Maldonado was also penalised five places on the starting grid for the accident he caused in the previous Grand Prix.

Race

Championship standings after the race

;Drivers' Championship standings

;Constructors' Championship standings

• Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.

References

References

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