Chinese F1 GP Result.......SPOILER!!!!!

Classy Fernando Alonso takes China victory for Ferrari

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso produced a dominant performance to win the Chinese Grand Prix. The Spaniard was in control as Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen and Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton fought off a late challenge from Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel. McLaren's Jenson Button, making one less stop than his leading rivals, was fifth. Vettel's title lead over Raikkonen was cut to three points, with Alonso now up to third, a further six behind. Hamilton is a further three points adrift of Alonso and 10 ahead of Ferrari's Felipe Massa.


The race was dominated by tyre strategy but it was clear from relatively early on that Alonso would be tough to beat. Having qualified third, Alonso started on the fragile 'soft' tyre, like the other cars in the top seven on the grid. He passed Raikkonen at the start to trail pole position winner Hamilton in the first few laps, before taking the lead from the Mercedes at the start of lap five.


Alonso made his first stop for tyres two laps later, dropping back behind the drivers who had started the race on the more durable 'medium' tyres, while Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg led the race from Vettel and Button.


But Alonso made rapid progress back up through the field and took the lead from Button after Vettel had made his first stop for tyres by passing him into Turn One on lap 21.


That dropped Alonso to third behind Vettel and Hulkenberg, but the Ferrari driver passed both within six laps and when Vettel made his second stop the Spaniard led Hamilton by more than 10 seconds.


With everyone needing to make one more stop and Vettel still to fit the 'soft' tyres, it was clear Alonso was in total control of the race at this stage and indeed he extended his lead to nearly 13 seconds before his final stop on lap 41. He rejoined right behind Vettel and passed him into Turn One with 13 laps to go, with the world champion still needing to make a final stop.


Behind him, Vettel tried to build a big enough lead over Raikkonen and Hamilton to ensure he had a chance of racing them for a podium position in the closing laps.

Raikkonen had trailed Hamilton until he leap-frogged the Mercedes by making his final stop three laps earlier and the Finn controlled his pace to stay ahead to the end.

Raikkonen was delayed slightly by a damaged nose that was caused by a clash with McLaren's Sergio Perez.


Vettel made his final pit stop with five laps to go and went flat out to try to close the 11-second gap to Raikkonen and Hamilton ahead. He closed right in on Hamilton at the start of the last lap but the Englishman just managed to hold on, helped by Vettel starting to slide in the corners before the long back straight as his tyres began to lose grip.


Button's was an impressively controlled drive to make one fewer pit stop than his rivals in an uncompetitive car, passing Massa for fifth soon after emerging from the pits from his final stop.


Toro Rosso's Daniel Ricciardo converted his excellent seventh place on the grid into the same position at the finish, while Force India's Paul di Resta used the same strategy as Button to take eighth ahead of Lotus's Romain Grosjean and Hulkenberg.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/22141499

A very good race, saw some great overtakes and strategy by the teams, but I think the last few races were great to watch, I mean Vettel closing 13 seconds in 3 laps was great could not believe how much quicker he was on those soft tyres he was just taking chunks out of lewis, and considering button was on the same strategy and couldnt get that sort of pace out of the tyres or even make them last as his tyres seem to fall off after 2 laps, credit to Vettel who made them last 4 laps. bring on the name race!

Decent race, exciting ending but disappointed with Button not doing better given his race plan and where Vettel finished with one more pit stop. Still the main thing is the points are distributed fairly well so far.

yeah i thought jenson would finish further up but when his tyres fell off after a lap and a half he was losing time and was lucky that massa was going quite slow too cuz he could have fell back further.

i see that webber is going through a baron spell at the moment, it looks as though he has been hit with a 3 grid place penalty in the next race. I was looking forward to seeing webber and vettel racing for position in this race.

also with ferrari i dont know what happens to massa, he has blistering starts, and for the first 5 laps is pushing then all of a sudden from then to basically the last few laps you dont realise he is on the track

Kids woke up early today so ended up watching my first F1 race for some time now and really enjoyed it. Fook me that Vettel is shockingly quick. But for slight over run on a corner near the end he could have taken third.

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Originally Posted by honestDave

Kids woke up early today so ended up watching my first F1 race for some time now and really enjoyed it. Fook me that Vettel is shockingly quick. But for slight over run on a corner near the end he could have taken third.

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totally agree, but it was just showing 2 things i think, firstly how well the redbull looks after tyres.........HUGE credit to newey on that one, and secondly how quick vettel really is when in the field, its amazing, i mean i dont like the blokes attitude but credit where its due whenever he has been stuck down in the pack he doesnt hold back at half a chance, but i think he can be wreckless whereas when you see alonso, button and kimi, they go for it but they are very very smart in avoiding contact or minimising what contact they have, this season has already started off well......3 races.........3 winners sounding like last season already!

I really enjoyed the race, though I do think on the whole that DRS spoiled the action a little.

I was really surprised and disappointed (for the first time) with how Hamilton struggled to dispatch the backmarkers, and more so the drivers on a different strategy. As an example, Lewis had Alonso in his sights after the first round of Pit-Stops and he was within the 1 second DRS window. However, Alonso dispatched with Di Resta and Button (I think) in the same sector, but Lewis struggled to get past them and by the time he did so, Alonso was some 5 seconds down the road and it was "Game Over". Vettel (as above post) is another good example, he simply blistered past them when he had the tyre advantage.