2017 Chinese Grand Prix - Shanghai 07-09 April

[Vasconia]

Unfortunately, Kimi isn't going to perform very well within these regulations. I'm not trying to make an excuse for him, there isn't one, but let me explain my perspective.

1) Passing is clearly far more difficult this year.
2) Kimi isn't an assertive driver.
3) He usually qualifies 'out-of position', i.e. lower than the innate speed he is capable of extracting in race conditions.

#3 means Kimi frequently gets into positions we saw this weekend - stuck behind cars he should already be in front of. This immediately compromises his race performance.

#2 means he rarely, if ever, tries speculative or on the edge passing moves. As this is not a component of his style, he lacks familiarity when doing so. When he does try, his success rate isn't high - think Russia and his move on Bottas, Hungary last year as well.

I can think of many occasions where Kimi has resorted to going round the outside rather than the inside, sometimes successfully I might add. He does so with what appears to be higher regularity than other drivers, which to me is an indication of his relative timidity. He's overly 'fair', doesn't drive with his 'arms out' enough imo.

Combining all of the above with #1 means China could become a frequently repeated exercise this year. Ferrari are going to have to consider their options carefully. Given the relative structural integrity of the tyres, the only thing I can suggest is trying to achieve a significant tyre delta for Kimi during late race conditions. That, or simply giving him an overt mandate to be more aggressive. He would still be required to pass cars though.

In Australia he lacked pace and there was no excuse for that. He looked faster in China but as you have said he wasn´t able to overtake. Anyway Seb seems to be much faster than him this season.

[WaikeCU]

Pretty funny how massive the fanboyism is on Dutch F1 sites. Max fanboys are saying he did following on purpose just to get more heat into the tires and showing Valtteri how it's done :

(somehow I cannot get youtube vids embed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk_rCQr8EnY

I mean come on? really?! On purpose?!

[f1316]

A quote from Vettel basically echoing what I was expecting :

"It was difficult to get close to the car, like last race you felt the effect but here I think it’s a better track to overtake and yeah, it’s the way it should be in my opinion: you need to make it stick so it shouldn’t come for free. You shouldn’t just open the flap and sail past. It was good fun."

Overtakes were tricky this year and generally required a bit of skill - far fewer Drs 'fly bys'. That to me is close to the right balance.

It will mean there will be other races where it's too hard, since China's one of the easiest, but today I think it was as it should be.

If that's the case, then mercedes has the edge, because they have an advantage in qualifying!

I think you're right; to win the championship, I'd expect Ferrari to need to start races ahead of Mercedes, and right now that's a tall order since Merc seem to have that quali edge.

In saying that though, I think the front limited/cool nature of Shanghai played to their strengths and think it was the faster race car as well. In Bahrain it'll be rear limited and warmer and I think Ferrari will be expecting to get Pole.

Let's see, should be exciting

[iotar__]

Unfortunately, Kimi isn't going to perform very well within these regulations. I'm not trying to make an excuse for him, there isn't one, but let me explain my perspective.

- You are making excuses, he was a total failure when Marchionne extended his contract last season and season before, the same Marchionne that wants to discuss his form now as a marketing stunt, this is not even funny.
- He has the quickest car and competition limited to one team.
- It has nothing to do with rules, he's the same driver but 1 year worse, decline is not linear. BTW didn't they try to sell how new rules would suit Raikkonen, you know 100%, old school nonsense? Same with Massa.

Horner wants clarification about starting position which is completely unnecessary I want clarification about blue flags. Apparently they are turned on by puppet on the strings race director for no reason (not even close to overtaking situation) just because special treatment team and driver are shouting about it. Clarify that.

[santos]

Pretty funny how massive the fanboyism is on Dutch F1 sites. Max fanboys are saying he did following on purpose just to get more heat into the tires and showing Valtteri how it's done :

(somehow I cannot get youtube vids embed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk_rCQr8EnY

I mean come on? really?! On purpose?!

The reaction of his hands doesn't seem like someone who is doing that on purpose.

[Godius]

This was in the middle of a banked corner, Bottas spun his car on the straight. Which kind of reminded me of Montoya who spun his car on the formation lap in Australia IIRC.

[Sieper]

Pretty funny how massive the fanboyism is on Dutch F1 sites. Max fanboys are saying he did following on purpose just to get more heat into the tires and showing Valtteri how it's done :

(somehow I cannot get youtube vids embed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk_rCQr8EnY

I mean come on? really?! On purpose?!

90% of Dutch sites (reaction on topics posted there) although indeed most of us (but certainly not all) dutchies are big fans of Max (and for good reason I would say) are utterly realistic (my opinion from reading a whole lot of them as I certainly am a fan of Max). I question your own motives for making such a derogatory comment.

[WaikeCU]

Pretty funny how massive the fanboyism is on Dutch F1 sites. Max fanboys are saying he did following on purpose just to get more heat into the tires and showing Valtteri how it's done :

(somehow I cannot get youtube vids embed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk_rCQr8EnY

I mean come on? really?! On purpose?!

90% of Dutch sites (reaction on topics posted there) although indeed most of us (but certainly not all) dutchies are big fans of Max (and for good reason I would say) are utterly realistic (my opinion from reading a whole lot of them as I certainly am a fan of Max). I question your own motives for making such a derogatory comment.

First of all, get a grip first by knowing what the meaning of the word is. Then start questioning my motives.

[Sieper]

First of all, I have a grip as I do feel you were indeed posting that comment to hurt dutch / max fans, and second of all, since I have questioned your motive please do me the honor of replying to it. Here on this forum the tone is also full of snide but for example go and look at motorsport.com F1 news and in every topic you can find fan boys of every driver (well at least Hamilton, Alonso, Vettel, Ricciardo, Verstappen). Do you see me posting links here to that and saying all aussies/English/Spanish/Ferrari afficionados are massive fanboys? No. I just let every individual post his opinion and I do question your motive for wanting insult a whole group. Why can't you just say this one guy is a massive fanboy and I differ with his opinion, why the "Pretty funny how massive the fanboyism is on Dutch F1 sites", because I feel it to be untrue. Most reactions on dutch sites are realistic.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Unfortunately, Kimi isn't going to perform very well within these regulations. I'm not trying to make an excuse for him, there isn't one, but let me explain my perspective.

1) Passing is clearly far more difficult this year.
2) Kimi isn't an assertive driver.
3) He usually qualifies 'out-of position', i.e. lower than the innate speed he is capable of extracting in race conditions.

#3 means Kimi frequently gets into positions we saw this weekend - stuck behind cars he should already be in front of. This immediately compromises his race performance.

#2 means he rarely, if ever, tries speculative or on the edge passing moves. As this is not a component of his style, he lacks familiarity when doing so. When he does try, his success rate isn't high - think Russia and his move on Bottas, Hungary last year as well.

I can think of many occasions where Kimi has resorted to going round the outside rather than the inside, sometimes successfully I might add. He does so with what appears to be higher regularity than other drivers, which to me is an indication of his relative timidity. He's overly 'fair', doesn't drive with his 'arms out' enough imo.

Combining all of the above with #1 means China could become a frequently repeated exercise this year. Ferrari are going to have to consider their options carefully. Given the relative structural integrity of the tyres, the only thing I can suggest is trying to achieve a significant tyre delta for Kimi during late race conditions. That, or simply giving him an overt mandate to be more aggressive. He would still be required to pass cars though.

In Australia he lacked pace and there was no excuse for that. He looked faster in China but as you have said he wasn´t able to overtake. Anyway Seb seems to be much faster than him this season.

Vettel was never a good driver of bad cars. He is top of the line driver when car is great and that is the difference between 2014 to 2015 to 2016 to 2017. When you look at Kimi's performance from last year from this lens, you will see the reality and that reality is, Kimi can never manage to beat Vettel if the car remains as good as it is.

[WaikeCU]

First of all, I have a grip as I do feel you were indeed posting that comment to hurt dutch / max fans, and second of all, since I have questioned your motive please do me the honor of replying to it. Here on this forum the tone is also full of snide but for example go and look at motorsport.com F1 news and in every topic you can find fan boys of every driver (well at least Hamilton, Alonso, Vettel, Ricciardo, Verstappen). Do you see me posting links here to that and saying all aussies/English/Spanish/Ferrari afficionados are massive fanboys? No. I just let every individual post his opinion and I do question your motive for wanting insult a whole group. Why can't you just say this one guy is a massive fanboy and I differ with his opinion, why the "Pretty funny how massive the fanboyism is on Dutch F1 sites", because I feel it to be untrue. Most reactions on dutch sites are realistic.

Well, I'm Dutch first of all.

I don't feel the same comments here on this forum than on any other Dutch F1 site. I mean it really is kinda biased to say the least when I'm on a dutch F1 site. Speaking of derogatory comments. It's actually derogatory towards other drivers. For instance when Kvyat and Max swapped seats or when drivers were dealing with Max' swerving under braking last season. I couldn't believe my eyes what comments I saw on those sites. I like his driving, but you can't always talk good about Max when clearly it's a mistake.

That's something I don't see: Being rational more often about his actions.

I'm gonna stop talking about it, because this isn't the place to talk about it. Mods will agree. I only wanted to point out this video, because probably a lot haven't seen it or it wasn't shown during the race.

[Wynters]

Did I see Perez diving off the track then, gaining a better angle, burning past Massa (as part of his double overtake in the mid-race)? I thought you weren't allowed to gain an advantage going off the circuit (or has that been addressed in the regs)?

Whilst it was frustrating to see Bottas spinning under the Safety car, it's just about excusable. What wasn't was his second spin. He was on wet grass, he knew it would be slippery but lit the rears up anyway. Very much at odds with his cool persona when being hassled by a faster car behind. Tough one to live down too.

Does anyone have any footage of Hulk's overtakes under either of the Safety cars? Seems like a surprising mistake to make once, let alone twice.

[SiLo]

To be honest the people running the dry tyres were still losing quite a lot of time in the last sector, the SC happened too soon for us to know if it was a great move by Ferrari or not.

The picture is muddied by the relative positions on the lap when the VSC was called but, from the gaps to the leader in the race chart on http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/04/09/2 ... ap-charts/ showing that between the second and third laps the two drivers on slicks, Sainz and Hulkenberg, were so much faster than the rest of the field, I think Vettel definitely made what was the right call at that time. (With hindsight, etc.)

What I'd like to know is why Raikkonen didn't close up to the guys in front when the actual safety car was on track, which would have moved him (and probably a few others) ahead of Ricciardo after the latter's late stop. I assume they are given a target speed but would have expected it to be fast enough to allow the field to close up.

What a fantastic graph that is. Although do notice that at that point they were both at a net loss. Which mostly would have been down to the start I assume?

[Phil]

You are right, S2 was much faster, while the last corner was wet, so S3 was not faster. But the track was drying quickly. We were right at the crossover, the whole field changed to slicks one lap later when the SC was deployed (ok, easy call...).
My argument is: Without the SC this would have been hell of a good strategy move by Ferrari. Vet would have ended easily 5 or more seconds ahead of Ham. There is no way to deny that, all 5 cars ahead would have needed to pit soon without any chance for Ham to open the gap.

This is where we fundamentally disagree (and so does Mercedes and most post-race analysis that I've seen). The problem is, you are comparing the track at lap 7 to the conditions present at lap 4.

Lets recap with some numbers:

- VSC triggered mid of lap 2 by Stroll
- Vettel went in at the end of lap 2 going on lap 3 to pit for slicks
- VET at that point was 6th, behind BOT, RIC, RAI, VER all on inters
- VSC stayed out until just about end of lap 3.
- at the end of lap 3, the gap from VET to HAM was 17.896 seconds
- GIO crashed just on lap 3 going onto lap 4 (at that point the leader HAM was 40 seconds ahead), the Safety-Car was immediately deployed

This basically means, we only have a time frame of about half a lap to compare sector times - for HAM everything from lap 4 S1 & S2, for Vet, lap 3 S3 & lap 4 S1, but not the crucial sectors (S3). IMO, this is inconclusive.

If we assume that the crash by GIO had not happened and triggered a safety car, then Vettel would have faced a few problems:

Once he would have made it to the back of VER (assuming he'd be quicker by the margin you claim), he would have to move off the dry line forming to attempt an overtake on slick tires (= no threads). We saw how treacherous the conditions were when GIO while facing completely straight on the start/finish line floored it and completely lost his rear and slammed into the wall. Likely? I think not. And every car he would have failed to overtake immediately would mean the gap to Hamilton increasing.

Mercedes stated that they felt they had things under control and that they had a margin to Vettel. Of course, once GIO crashed and the safety car came out, it changed the game as they got a free pit with the safety of knowing that the safety car would be at least out for a few laps giving additional time for the track to dry out.

So even though Vettel may have been faster on slicks at that point over the course of an entire lap, the biggest problem he faced was being effectively down in 6th place and the necessity to keep the gap below 24 seconds to HAM would have meant he would have been required to pass at least a few cars to have a chance (assuming Hamilton would have run a slightly higher pace than the 4 cars behind him which isn't that illogical given the car he had and what he showed during the race on just about every stint). It certainly would have been close, but IMO not close enough to make it stick. And one mistake from VET would have meant game-over.

[Vasconia]

In Australia he lacked pace and there was no excuse for that. He looked faster in China but as you have said he wasn´t able to overtake. Anyway Seb seems to be much faster than him this season.

Vettel was never a good driver of bad cars. He is top of the line driver when car is great and that is the difference between 2014 to 2015 to 2016 to 2017. When you look at Kimi's performance from last year from this lens, you will see the reality and that reality is, Kimi can never manage to beat Vettel if the car remains as good as it is.

I would count 2016´s car as bad, I think it was a pretty good car but Ferrari and Seb made some silly mistakes during the season. Kimi had an "ok" season which was enough to challenge Vettel. His season was a combination of little mistakes, some problems and bad luck. Now he seems to be back to his best(like it was in 2015).