And the flag has dropped!
In 2013 Fernando Alonso won from Kimi Räikkönen and Lewis Hamilton. Last year Lewis and two Red Bull drivers were on the podium.
How do you rate the 2015 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix? Please use the comments section to tell us why you voted the way you did.
Max kept us entertained again – 8.
Not a great race by the way. I feel mercs are deciding the races based on quali after the problems of previous year
On a side note great final stint from fernando alonso.
It was funny how Nico felt he couldn’t close up and attack Lewis, it would explain why Nico was so annoyed as he knew he wasn’t allowed to attack his team mate and knew the gap he had to maintain. When Lewis slowed up a bit it meant for Rosberg to hold the ‘agreed’ gap, he would be dropping into the clutches of Seb.
Well he did say the closer he got, it destroyed his tyres.
I think that Rosberg peaked with regards his driving last season, but then getting beat after driving your best, to a driver who often out drove and beat him in lower categories more than once, so Nico already new he had a mountain to climb with Lewis as his team mate at Mercedes.
The start of this season has seen Lewis gain even more confidence in his abilities and Nico almost seems to have accepted he will never have a long term answer to Lewis on track in the identical machinery (with comments like “Lewis drove like a champion today”) but is doing all he can to deflect attention away from his driving skills by claiming that Lewis (and possibly his whole side of the garage) is conspiring to disadvantage him and is getting preferential treatment (he has ade a lot of noise about being second in the double stack at Sepang and the fact he was held in the garage a touch too long in Q3 on Saturday, forcing him to push the tyres too much on his out lap and possibly had a negative effect from following Vettel closer than he’d of liked on his flying lap, although I’m not sure he was THAT close to Seb that the turbulent air from the Ferrari reduced Nico’s own downforce levels in any significant way.)
This year Nico wasn’t handed a 25 point advantage, if Lewis hadn’t retired in Oz last year, there wouldn’t have been a very close battle for the championship lead all season. I really hope and prey that Mercedes have zero DNF’s this year so there can be no if’s, but’s or maybe’s about whether the outcome could have been different had one or the other driver not been reigned in by reliability. It was only really the reliability issues that gave us the intra-team championship battle we saw last year.
Lewis is just on fire so far in 2015.
I took a lot of flack last year when I said Nico is overrated and I think he’s rubbish. Sure he out qualified Lewis last season, but Lewis outsmart him when he realised that no other team would get involved with them, so switched his focus to race setup, knowing he’s guaranteed to start on the front row.
Since the ban on driver coaching, the true quality of Nico has come to light. I’m wondering if they’re sharing data this season as well, because he has not had an answer for anything Lewos has done all season.
Considering only 4 drivers in F1 history have had 5 poles at the same track and Lewis is now one of them for his pole in Shanghai, this is a Hamilton track in every way, yet Rosberg was a mere 0.042 from the pole… He is definitely rubbish
I may not have been as vocal as you were @Fortis96 last season, but in my GP predictor last season I put Lewis for the win in every race. I just felt that Rosberg, although obviously a driver worthy of F1, has never really set the world on fire Lewis has in past seasons. Plus I think Nico truly believed that last year was his ‘now or never’ season and has defeated himself mentally.
W/R/T Hamilton and car set up, I save an interview with him quite some time ago, where he told how his dad would make him write down every single little adjustment he ever made to a set up and how it effected the handling and which direction got him the results he wanted (such as stiffer torsion bars, softer dampers, camber and toe adjustments then what effect they had such as being able to ride curbs better, turn-in over steer, under-steer etc). His dad would then make him study this great big folder he had compiled, over and over, so he knew all the in’s and out’s and how to achieve circuit and conditions specific set-ups, especially when he moved up from karts and went into racing single make series’ (FR3.5 & GP2 for example). We witnessed on more than one occasion at McLaren where Jenson would “borrow” Lewis’ set up data, clarifying that Lewis just understands what he wants from his ride and how to get it.
I personally have never thought Lewis is lacking in intelligence, but I’ve also never thought Nico has ever stood out and overly intelligent. I think it was all just spin by the media.
Just because a genius engineer can build a fast car and know how and why it goes fast and know how and why it must be driven in a certain way, doesn’t mean he CAN drive it in the manor required to extract the maximum performance. So I don’t think a massively inflated I.Q. is a prerequisite to become a racing driver, you can teach a fast driver to be more consistent (Grossjean, Perez), but you will struggle to teach a constant driver to be fast (Max Chilton anyone?)
Jenson clearly stole Lewis’ set up data in Spa 2012
@thejudge, I remember reading an article on a site with ‘inside knowledge’ and regular scoops that posted the unbiased truth. This article claimed that it was Ron that ordered the performance data on the Spa 2012 wing that was given to Button to be kept away from Lewis to teach him a lesson.
But you seem to be hinting this article was a fabrication and that Lewis simply made the wrong decision?
hmmn Button didnt need to copy Lewis’ setup that day, maybe you could look up the article and check?
Lol. It’s the wrong decision to for the first time in F1 history – to publish your team mates’ telemetry data to the world.
@thejudge…..
Fact still remains, he didn’t get pole. So it really doesn’t matter how close he came, he was always in control. Had it not been for the safety car, he would’ve finished 10+ seconds behind.
Fact is, facts won’t change fanbois points of view – and apparently Rosberg is ‘rubbish’
@thejudge13 I have never said that Nico is rubbish, in fact in one of my posts today I clearly state that Nico is very deserving of his F1 drive, I pointed out that he’s not quite a the level as Lewis is at the moment and that he seems to have beaten himself mentally without the help of anyone else.
I think it was Fortis above you in the thread who made this claim
@thejudge…..
Was it not on here a story was published that Ron instructed the team to withhold setup data and the new rear wing from Lewis during that very same race, so as to teach him a lesson? So it wasn’t really a fair fight was it?
You would have been better served using an example whereby neither driver was purposely handicapped by the team
Link please. Can people start providing evidence for their claims as to what has been said please – it does help us form a proper opinion of who said what when.
What, you’ve got selective amnesia now judge?
It was only last season there was a thread were you intervened and mentioned the very same thing I said.
Gave it a 10….
Kimi… “Get that McLaren out the way”… I wonder if he knew who it was?
Seb….”You’ll be lapping the McLaren in front”…..hmmm I wonder if he knew who it was as well?
Nico…. Yet again crying like a spoilt little brat!
Well considering who won, I’m not the least bit surprised. If that was a ten what would you rate Barcelona 96 then? oh… wait…
I gave it a 10 for all the reasons I listed, but if you feel it’s because of other reasons, well I can’t help that you do.
Fortis, that race was dull as ditch water. How can it deserve a 10?
Again hippo, because of those comedic moment as well as the look on Horner’s face when the Redbull engine caught on fire. I know the race was dull.
I don’t think it was dull at all. Given Friday long runs, the result was in doubt up until Mercedes fitted the prime and extended their lead. Long runs had shown Ferrari with an advantage on the primes.
I gave it an 8. There were good overtakes through the field, then the Maldonado-Button tangle, Pastor missing pit in, Kimi closing on Seb, and some fun team radio. Lead positions didn’t change much in Malaysia either, but there can still be tension.
Agreed with the hippo. Giving this a 10? Cmon man… just because Lewis wins you give a boring race the maximum score? What are you going to do if the next race gets really exciting?
I guess the context of the comment went over your head as well. I made no reference to Hamilton nor was I trying to.
Those were the highlight of the race for me, which I found quite comedic, hence my score.
Oh I forgot to add one other moment to my comment, and that was…the look on Horner’s face when Kvyatt’s engine caught fire.
Yeah, man. You can totally rate a race based on its entertainment value, and if there’s scant action on-track, and you can still find fun in the race, then you’re probably the kind of person who can have a laugh whilst waiting for a bus : )
Anyway, every single vote oh here is, ultimately, subjective. My voting usually comes with a red-tinged bias.
And Horner’s face was a picture… Someone should print that up as a T-shirt.
If you see some of the things I see at the bus stop, you’d LYA as well. 😂😂😂
Love you always? Or is that LYAO (laugh your arse off)
4
A few nice overtakes doesn’t make for an exciting race, so I gave it a 4.
Yes, Max was lovely to watch, I liked the Sauber/Ricciardo fights as well, but all of that were only single moments in a race that lasted almost 1 hour and 40 minutes.
The rest of the time we saw Mercedes sandbagging, Lewis driving his race and Nico complaining. In the end, it was – or could have been, without Maldonado doing stupid things – 2 Mercedes, 2 Ferrari, 2 Williams, 2 Lotus and 2 Sauber, with one Red Bull somewhere at the lower end of the top 10.
3/10. The first 7 runners (iirc) were identical from turn 4 on lap 1 to lap 56. This was a dire ‘race’ because in reality the aero/tyre situation meant you couldn’t really race.
I think a 3 for the front group. a 9 for the rest. toss in some laughable comments and facial expressions and I gave it a 6 overall 🙂
Personally I feel for the fans because I remember the period of time when Michael Schumacher was winning. I remember waking up in the morning to watch the start of the race and then going to sleep, and then waking up when it ended because I already knew what would happen. I am pretty sure a lot of people were doing that today.
Rated it a 5
Bland race that played out exactly as could be expected.hard to rate it any more than meh.
7. I enjoyed some of the midfield antics and the comedy of errors by Renault. definitely some tension at the front throughout. not classic but I enjoyed. the cars looked great today.