SHANGHAI, April 15 (Reuters) – Team by team analysis of
Sunday’s Chinese Formula One Grand Prix (listed in championship
order):
–
MCLAREN (Jenson Button 2, Lewis Hamilton 3)
Hamilton, starting with a five place grid penalty due to a
gearbox change, has still not won this season but is leading the
championship after three third places in three races, showing
impressive consistency and a new maturity. Button might have won
had he not lost vital seconds in an agonisingly long final
pitstop. McLaren increased their lead to 24 points.
–
RED BULL (Mark Webber 4, Sebastian Vettel 5)
Webber’s third fourth place in a row, but he was lucky to
staty in the race after his car hit a kerb and reared up. Vettel
started 11th, his lowest grid placing since 2009, and was 15th
after the first lap. He was second in the closing laps but
failed to cling on as the tyres faded. Still no win for the
champions who dominated last year.
–
FERRARI (Fernando Alonso 9, Felipe Massa 13)
Alonso salvaged something with a three stop strategy but
Ferrari need to resolve their aerodynamic problems. Massa, on
two stops, led briefly during the pitstops but has yet to open
his 2012 acount.
–
SAUBER (Kamui Kobayashi 10, Sergio Perez 11)
Kobayashi started in third place but was slow off the mark
and lost places before getting stuck in traffic. He did three
stops, with his tyres wearing out faster than expected. Perez,
on a two stopper, led briefly at the pitstops. Kobayashi set the
fastest lap of the race, on lap 40.
–
MERCEDES (Nico Rosberg 1, Michael Schumacher retired)
Rosberg took his first grand prix win at the 111th attempt,
becoming only the third son of a winning driver to win a race
himself, after securing his first pole. The points were his
first of the season. The win was the first for Mercedes as a
works team since Juan Manuel Fangio in Italy in 1955. It also
came 111 years after the car company’s first race win.
Schumacher retired on lap 13 after a pitstop bungle left the
right front wheel poorly fastened. The team were fined 5,000
euros ($6,500) for the unsafe release of the driver.
–
LOTUS (Romain Grosjean 6, Kimi Raikkonen 14)
Grosjean scored his first points in Formula One. Raikkonen
started fourth, was in second place with nine laps to go and
then fell off a performance cliff as the tyres faded.
–
WILLIAMS (Bruno Senna 7, Pastor Maldonado 8)
The drivers gave team principal Frank Williams a welcome
70th birthday present for Monday with their first double points
haul of the campaign and first since October 2010. Maldonado
reached the finish after two previous retirements with his first
points since Belgium last year. It was only the second points
finish of the Venezuelan’s F1 career. Senna started 14th.
–
FORCE INDIA (Paul Di Resta 12, Nico Hulkenberg 15)
Hulkenberg made a poor start and said he damaged his front
wing on debris on the opening lap. He had to change the nose at
the first stop. Not much to report from Di Resta ahead of his
26th birthday on Monday.
–
TORO ROSSO (Jean-Eric Vergne 16, Daniel Ricciardo 17)
Vergne started from the pit lane after a raft of changes
overnight. Ricciardo got squeezed into turn one and lost places.
–
MARUSSIA (Timo Glock 19, Charles Pic 20)
The team’s third two car finish in three races.
–
CATERHAM (Vitaly Petrov 18, Heikki Kovalainen 23)
Kovalainen had a good start but had a problem with the right
rear tyre after his second stop and had to come in again.
–
HRT (Pedro de la Rosa 21, Narain Karthikeyan 22)
Getting to the finish and putting miles on the car was an
achievement in itself, even if Karthikeyan was two laps down.
($1 = 0.7644 euros)
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by John Mehaffey)
