At the start of the Chinese GP my hopes were very high. As the lights went out Hamilton was able to maintain his lead but Sebastian from P3 stormed to second. Alonso took another stunning start and made his way right up to third. Rosberg starting from P4 had a lousy start due to a telemetry issue in the car. All telemetry was lacking so it was impossible for the team to get Rosberg´s clutch set up correctly so the German lost many positions at the start. Both Williams drivers had a collision in the first corner: Massa had contact with Alonso in his Ferrari and Bottas collided with Rosberg. Luckily there was no damage in any of the cars involved but the collision cost Bottas many positions on the opening lap. However, I was so glad to see that Sebastian took a superb start and I was sure the German was finally going to keep his team-mate behind him!
My joy was so premature! Later on in the race things certainly didn´t go to my plan! But before my day turned upside down, that happened to Felipe Massa at the wheel of his FW36 at his first pits top on lap 11. There was a costly mistake at the Brasilian´s pit stop in terms of tyres and it took over a minute which meant that Massa´s race was ruined as he joined track behind everyone else.
Right from the very first laps Kimi seemed to be struggling with his car. There was a massive difference in the lap times between the Ferrari team-mates. I couldn´t help thinking that there must have been something utterly wrong with Kimi´s car once again as I wasn´t used to see such poor performance from the Iceman! It seemed that Kimi had simply no chance to match Alonso´s lap times :(
The lack of telemetry didn´t stop Rosberg from making his way up position by position. After the first pit stops the German Mercedes driver was already right at Vettel´s tail and Sebastian had no chance to hold Nico back. The Mercedes is frighteningly fast on the straights, which Red Bull certainly isn´t. Sebastian seemed to be struggling with the white-marked medium tyres as his team-mate Ricciardo was suddenly also able to close the gap to him. On lap 25 the team told Sebastian on the team radio to let Ricciardo through. Sebastian replied in memorable words: "Tough luck" and didn´t intend to let his team-mate overtake him. A bit later Sebastian was told that he was on a different strategy compared to his team-mate and after that Ricciardo passed Sebastian. I just couldn´t help wondering, where Sebastian´s pace had suddenly vanished! The start had been so promising but suddenly Ricciardo was a second faster than Sebastian! That seemed so unbelievable.
Right after the second pit stops Rosberg had caught up Alonso and the overtaking move looked so easy! The Mercedes GP are so overwhelmingly dominant at the moment that it´s even ridiculously easy to overtake others with that car! Alonso had no chance to hold Nico back. But Hamilton´s driving was absolutely crushing today: the Briton cruised to victory with almost a 20-second gap over his team-mate Rosberg. So once again a dominant 1-2 for Mercedes GP, which seem to be utterly unstoppable at the moment. Alonso´s podium place was warmly welcomed at Ferrari and it gave the Italian-based team hope that there´s still a distant chance to catch their rivals during this season. Ricciardo finished 4th ahead of his team-mate Sebastian. Hulkenberg in his Force India drove an impressive race and finished 6th only a few tenths of a second ahead of Bottas at the wheel of his FW36. Kimi finished 8th after a troubled race, Perez in his Force India in P9 and Kvyat in Toro Rosso scored the last point.
To be honest, I was sooo disappointed after the race. I had to go to gym to calm down before writing my blog, hahahaha! The result would have been easier to except if there had been some technical issue in both Sebastian´s and Kimi´s car. But Sebastian admitted after the race that he simply couldn´t get as much out of the prime tyres as his team-mate did. So Sebastian is facing whole new difficulties in his career. His former team-mate Webber never managed to beat him like this. The question is: how is Sebastian going to handle this? He has such a killer-instict for winning so I´m confident that he´ll turn this around at some point of the season. I just hope Sebastian´s current performance coach Antti Kontsas has similar skills to Tommi Pärmäkoski, who successfully helped Sebastian through all the difficulties back in 2010 when there were sparks flying between the team-mates.
In terms of Kimi´s performance the situation was quite much the same. There wasn´t a technical problem in Kimi´s car today but it just seems that it´s extremely challenging for Ferrari to improve the car the way Kimi wants. Kimi´s driving style doesn´t suit to the current car and Kimi has problems with the tyres when it´s cold or wet. It must be so frustrating for Kimi as the reporters have already started asking the old questions about the Finn´s motivation. At Barcelona I really really hope to see an F14T, which suits Kimi in a much better way!
Rosberg and Hamilton have a double-lead in the championship standings, only 4 points separating the team-mates in favor of the German. Alonso is 3rd 34 points off Hamilton. Even Hulkenberg with 36 points is ahead of Vettel, who has only 33 points so far. And now we´ll have to wait long three weeks until the F1 circus moves to Europe and Barcelona!
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