2015 Chinese Grand Prix - Shanghai, April 10-12

[ismail1991]

Lewis had track position and gets to dictate the pace, it's a simple as that.

We need to remember how frustrated and helpless Lewis was two weeks ago when he could feel the race slipping away from him. He wasn't going to take any chances today, he had a stint length to hit and managed to saved enough life from each set so he could have a dig at the end and buy a small cushion.

Nico ran out of ideas, if the tables had been turned I don't think Lewis would have blindly followed his race pace, it's just not in his nature.

In the end non of this mattered which is why I'm surprised by Nico's outburst, he's done this before though hasn't he (after Spa), in a press conf Lewis had a small dig at him about the coming together, when under pressure Nico sometimes lashes out.

I agree with you. Lewis definitely would try to overtake Nico before doing a pitstop or after changing tire as we saw last year.

[ringo]

I don't get Rosberg, you want your teammate to speed up, so how will you beat him then?
He is lucky Hamilton is slowing down. If it were the other way around Hamilton would take 1rst place off him in a heart beat.

If he wanted Lewis to speed up then that shows he had no intention of getting ahead of Lewis, that alone shows that he was beaten.

or it could show that he was complying with team orders!

Do you have a source on these team orders?
Or is it what you feel?

Rosberg just couldnt handle seeing the red car in his mirros thats all. There were no team orders or race plans concerning Hamilton speeding up if he is 4 seconds ahead of Nico and Vettel is 3 seconds behind Nico. No such thing as Rosberg tries to inject. He was just annoyed that he was powerless.
As for Lewis, he did nothing underhanded or cheeky during the race. His engineer did not tell him he was going to slow, he was going acording to the predetermined deltas. It was rosberg who moaned and influenced the strategy to change.
And even when Hamilton conceded and went faster, what did Rosberg do?
Nothing!
In fact the gap increased from 2.5s to maybe 4 or 5. Nico simply had no right to ask for Lewis to speed up. and it still doesn't make any sense to me that you want your rival to speed up if you want to beat him. Slowing down should be what Rosberg wants to happen. In fact one could go as far to believe that Rosberg wanted Lewis to burn out his tyres by speeding up. It could be some kind of mind game he is playing.

[MercedesAMGSpy]

The whole weekend Rosberg was frustrated, yesterday he blamed the team in qualy, today it was Lewis' fault, he should focus on his own driving.

[djos]

Nico is really making himself look a bit silly. It makes you laugh, it was only a few weeks ago he wanted vettel to catch up but now they have and he poops it

I don't think much of Nico at all but he does make a good point, he tried to chase down Lewis but his tires went away.

This is just insane, F1 needs real bloody tires again so we can see flat out proper racing again - keep the drs but give the drivers some real tires FFS!

Just had to look at the WEC yesterday, flat out racing and no comparing about Mickey mouse tires that can't be raced hard on!

[hurril]

Nico is really making himself look a bit silly. It makes you laugh, it was only a few weeks ago he wanted vettel to catch up but now they have and he poops it

I don't think much of Nico at all but he does make a good point, he tried to chase down Lewis but his tires went away.

This is just insane, F1 needs real bloody tires again so we can see flat out proper racing again - keep the drs but give the drivers some real tires FFS!

Just had to look at the WEC yesterday, flat out racing and no comparing about Mickey mouse tires that can't be raced hard on!

I agree with this sentiment. It's something I've thought about myself. It brings about the need to pit more often which adds a strategic aspect (which is fine I guess,) but it also produces these long Status Quo-stints where the only guys going at it are the backmarkers. But they tend to be DnF:s anyway; perhaps because of this even.

(Plus I think people are rude to Nico for no good reason. What's it to you, really? He's an awesome racing driver and we're simple keyboard racers ffs )

[Manoah2u]

The whole weekend Rosberg was frustrated, yesterday he blamed the team in qualy, today it was Lewis' fault, he should focus on his own driving.

This x1000.

Rosberg did awesome driving last year, he's got the potential. Below-the-belt moves done last year however seriously hampered his likeability, which might have been one of the most devastating impacts to this persona imho. Rosberg was popular before his dirty behaviour and obvious dissatisfaction, but has thrown that into the trashcan.
- remind the Boo-ing of the crowd -. He's on his way to lower his popularity even more both to F1 crowds and his own team.

Not wise, as he has strong potential if his mindset is in good shape and his environment is good. Then, he is very strong and can hold his ground and even beat Lewis in certain areas. However, he has now put himself from solid ground to thin ice and absolutely must turn his results around.

Vettel is now between him and lewis, and he didn't really like Vettel's comments either so he's now got 2 people in his mind. Lewis can still get a DNF, but so can Rosberg.

Anyway, Max Verstappen, what a race. So sad to see him DNF on that short timespan before the finishline. Major driving there, too bad about the Renault powerplant. Imagine if there was a Ferrari engine in there. Boy would be driving 4th or 5th. but, that's not reality.

Sad to see Sainz struggle throughout the race, he's a very good driver imho and here to stay.

Improved driving from Ericsson though he's sensitive to getting pushed as i saw too many lock-ups. He's far from Felipe Nasr's driving though, that's a stellar driver.

Pastor Maldonado doing a great race, so sad to see him having that lock-up which totally ruined his great driving, and then the added frustration of his error causing the spin. Triple bad for him having JB run into him, that was real sad because it was a great fight and i would have liked to see it go to the end with Alonso in the middle.

Too bad there's another 'haspastormaldonadocrashedtoday' update.

Nr1 driver of the race: Max Verstappen.
Nr2 driver of the race: Maldonado.

can't wait for Bahrain!

[zeph]

This is just insane, F1 needs real bloody tires again so we can see flat out proper racing again - keep the drs but give the drivers some real tires FFS!

I agree in principle, but most likely we'd see Mercedes finish every race 30s-1m ahead of everybody else. They seem to have their reliability sorted, and when they're not managing tires, I bet they have acres of pace to spare. Durable tires would make that painfully obvious, I suspect.

[ringo]

Nico is really making himself look a bit silly. It makes you laugh, it was only a few weeks ago he wanted vettel to catch up but now they have and he poops it

I don't think much of Nico at all but he does make a good point, he tried to chase down Lewis but his tires went away.

This is just insane, F1 needs real bloody tires again so we can see flat out proper racing again - keep the drs but give the drivers some real tires FFS!

Just had to look at the WEC yesterday, flat out racing and no comparing about Mickey mouse tires that can't be raced hard on!

It's not the tyres fault. Other drivers were out there overtaking cars. Even equal cars were overtaking. I don't really see a problem with the tyres.


As for the rest of the drivers. Why does riciardo look so ordinary now that he doesn't have vettel as a reference?
In fact he is looking worse than when he was paired with Vergne.

[djos]

It's not the tyres fault. Other drivers were out there overtaking cars. Even equal cars were overtaking. I don't really see a problem with the tyres.


As for the rest of the drivers. Why does riciardo look so ordinary now that he doesn't have vettel as a reference?
In fact he is looking worse than when he was paired with Vergne.

Even Lewis complained his team were telling him to drive faster but he didn't want to use up his tires too quickly - it's farcical imo!

[dans79]

Even Lewis complained his team were telling him to drive faster but he didn't want to use up his tires too quickly - it's farcical imo!

That's what you get when you have a senile old man always pushing for more of a show, so he can squeeze the promoters and tv stations for more money.

[giantfan10]

what a lame race! what we witnessed was a class on the dirty side of aerodynamics.....nobody in the top four attempted any passes while running in a procession with gaps of about 2.5 seconds to stay out of dirty air...get into dirty air and your tires are gone....hopefully we dont see a repeat of this next weekend.

[max_speed]

I don't think much of Nico at all but he does make a good point, he tried to chase down Lewis but his tires went away.

This is just insane, F1 needs real bloody tires again so we can see flat out proper racing again - keep the drs but give the drivers some real tires FFS!

Just had to look at the WEC yesterday, flat out racing and no comparing about Mickey mouse tires that can't be raced hard on!

i agree to it , when people say last race was good , i fail to find where , person who is in dirty air suffers quite a lot. they can make tires last forever but to spice up things can force mandatory two stops at least it will take away scenario where racers goes into tyre management battle as early as lap 4-5 . we want to see closely fought races like in moto GP not boring tyre management exercises, mercedes are lot faster and because of tyre wear fears they under perform and people see ferrari is close to them , wht the heck. r we here to see which team handles pirelli tyres well .

[evered7]

I don't think the issue is with the tires. It is more with the Aero. The track also contributing to the show or in this case no-show with its effect on the front tires with the never ending corners.

Maybe Bahrain will be better. Good thing that the next race is in a week. We can forget this one quickly.

[WaikeCU]

The whole weekend Rosberg was frustrated, yesterday he blamed the team in qualy, today it was Lewis' fault, he should focus on his own driving.

This x1000.

Rosberg did awesome driving last year, he's got the potential. Below-the-belt moves done last year however seriously hampered his likeability, which might have been one of the most devastating impacts to this persona imho. Rosberg was popular before his dirty behaviour and obvious dissatisfaction, but has thrown that into the trashcan.
- remind the Boo-ing of the crowd -. He's on his way to lower his popularity even more both to F1 crowds and his own team.

Not wise, as he has strong potential if his mindset is in good shape and his environment is good. Then, he is very strong and can hold his ground and even beat Lewis in certain areas. However, he has now put himself from solid ground to thin ice and absolutely must turn his results around.

Vettel is now between him and lewis, and he didn't really like Vettel's comments either so he's now got 2 people in his mind. Lewis can still get a DNF, but so can Rosberg.

Anyway, Max Verstappen, what a race. So sad to see him DNF on that short timespan before the finishline. Major driving there, too bad about the Renault powerplant. Imagine if there was a Ferrari engine in there. Boy would be driving 4th or 5th. but, that's not reality.

Sad to see Sainz struggle throughout the race, he's a very good driver imho and here to stay.

Improved driving from Ericsson though he's sensitive to getting pushed as i saw too many lock-ups. He's far from Felipe Nasr's driving though, that's a stellar driver.

Pastor Maldonado doing a great race, so sad to see him having that lock-up which totally ruined his great driving, and then the added frustration of his error causing the spin. Triple bad for him having JB run into him, that was real sad because it was a great fight and i would have liked to see it go to the end with Alonso in the middle.

Too bad there's another 'haspastormaldonadocrashedtoday' update.

Nr1 driver of the race: Max Verstappen.
Nr2 driver of the race: Maldonado.

can't wait for Bahrain!

Sainz made contact with a car (Kvyat?) at the start. Someone tapped him on his rear right going into turn 1. Dunno if it caused any damage, which caused him to spin in turn 1 in the beginning of the race. It looked like he was down on race pace throughout the race compared to Verstappen. Verstappen on the otherhand had courage and was gutsy to dive into the space coming from far behind overtaking cars. It was the only solution in making his race work, since that Renault PU didn't give him additional speed over the Mercedes or Ferrari powered cars. Thank god the drivers he overtook had some spatial awareness, because a few times it could have been contact with Verstappen coming from way back.

But Wow! This kid is a superstar in the making. At this moment I put him alongside Hamilton. Gutsy late braking overtaking and the sheer raw pace he's got to outperform that Toro Rosso. I think some similarities to Raikkonen's career could be possible. Raikkonen drove for Sauber before heading to Mclaren after his debut season. I could see the same happening for Verstappen. Now driving for Toro Rosso, but if one of the drivers of the top teams makes a move at the end of this season, we could well see Verstappen move up, because he's the kid now that is making the headlines along with Hamilton.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

'It's not my job to look after Nico's race' Fine, direct comparison: that's what Rosberg should have said after Austria when they gave Hamilton free position with a pitstop out of sequence.

In Austria, it was not that both were leading the field and Lewis was right behind Nico. Strategy call based on race situation as Lewis was far behind. Even in Sochi, Nico screwed up in first corner and went to pits BEFORE THE LEADER, LEWIS. Merc should have stuck to their guns and should have said, "NO NICO, UNTIL LEWIS PITS, YOU ARE NOT COMING IN".
Yesterday though, Nico was given the pit stop ahead of Lewis on second pit stop, despite both eying for a win and leading. The gap was very close and Nico could have easily undercut Lewis, if Lewis would have screwed up while Nico was in pits.

If it was up to drivers but it's not. It's Mercedes' job to control strategy, or send them too late in qualifying,

In changing weather conditions of Malaysia qualifying in Q2, Lewis was almost out of Q2 as it started raining. Lewis also complained that he was sent too late. So, nothing like Merc can't screw up things. Look at Kimi, who was ahead of Lewis at that point, but still couldn't get a decent lap and was out of Q2.

Every man for himself? Fine, that's what happened in Spa and then there were cries and punishment for one driver.

That doesn't mean you go and screw up someone's car, especially your team mate's. I am sure a lot of discussion has happened on this topic. You have held your opinion and others have held theirs.