Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas finished number 1 and number 2 for Mercedes-AMG Petronas at the FORMULA 1 HEINEKEN CHINESE GRAND PRIX 2019.  Sebastian Vettel came in third for Ferrari.  It was Hamilton’s 5th win at the Shanghai International Circuit.  Hamilton hit another Formula 1 milestone of leading for 4,000+ laps throughout his career.

Ferrari Team Orders?

At one point of the race Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was in the 3rd place in front of his teammate Sebastian Vettel, who seemed to have more pace, when he was given team orders to let Vettel overtake him, so Vettel could better take the fight to the Mercedes AMG Petronas team.  Needless to say Leclerc was very frustrated.

In my opinion, there seems to be 2 equally good options, instead of giving team orders to let one team member pass the other, you can just let the team members race and battle it out.

The FORMULA 1 HEINEKEN CHINESE GRAND PRIX 2019 will be the 1000th Formula 1 race with the Mercedes Petronas AMG team’s Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton on the front row with Bottas taking the pole position with a time of 1:31.547; Hamilton’s time was 1:31.570.  Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc secured the 2nd row for Ferrari with times of 1:31.848 and 1:31.865 respectively.  Red Bull’s Max Verstappen had a time 1:32.089 and his teammate Pierre Gastly‘s time of 1:32.930 will start in 6th position on row 3.  (Starting Grid)

Starting in 1950 at Silverstone with the British Grand Prix, this weekend, Formula 1 will have its 1000th race in Shanghai at the SHANGHAI INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT, a track that is very technically challenging that most drivers like to drive.

Track history/stats:

• First race 2004
• First race won by: Rubens Barrichello
• Cost to build: $450M
• Most successful driver: Lewis Hamilton with 5 wins
• The shape of the track is based on the Chinese ‘Shang’ character which means to Ascend and is part of the word Shanghai
• Location for the first race win for Nico Roseberg
• Fastest lap: Michael Schumacher, 1.32.238

The 2019 season got off to an excellent start down under in Melbourne for the Mercedes AMG Petronas team for the Australian Grand Prix with both of their drivers starting on the front row and finishing the race 1st and 2nd, but it was Valtteri Bottas that won the race with his teammate Lewis Hamilton, who started on the pole position, that finished 2nd.  Bottas easily accelerated past Hamilton at the start of the race, before turn 1, to edge past Hamilton and kept the lead for the race.  It was a very sweet, well deserved and very timely victory for Bottas who won the last race of 2017 and last year went without a win.  Hamilton really never got close enough (within 1 second) to use DRS (Drag Reduction System) to try to pass.  For the most part, the new aerodynamic changes implemented for the 2019 season never came into play with the top 6 cars.

The more things change the more they stay the same Mercedes AMG Petronas scored a front row lockout, something that they did quit often during the 2018 season.  The first 3 rows had the other familiar teams, except Romain Grosjean was able to get his car in the mix for the Haas team.  Since most of the changes in the cars, for the 2019 session, were aerodynamics to create a more competitive race we’ll see how the changes affect the actual race tomorrow.

Mercedes AMG scored their second lockout on the pole two years in a row at the Hungaroring this morning at the close of Q3 in Budapest that determines the starting field for the Hungarian Grand Prix 2016.  The start of the Qualifying session Saturday was delayed by a torrential downpour of rain with the pace with the Mercedes pace/safety car at times looking like it’s going to waterslide off the track as the start of Q1 was delayed by 20 minutes.  The issue was a newly paved track and in certain areas of the track there were no runoff gutters (channels) so you have a situation where the water is actually pooling.  Even with Pirellis, that dissipate 17 gallons of water per second, the deep tread on the Super Wets would have been no match for Mother Nature and the cars would have hydroplaned.

The driving line (the path the cars take) is important in motor racing, as in other forms of racing, going into the curve taking the proper line to the curve, ‘the apex’ is extremely important in most racing and borderline critical in Formula 1.  In Sunday’s race in Austria a very unusual thing happened near the end of the race where Lewis HAMILTON and Nico ROSBERG, both drivers for the same team, Mercedes AMG, were in a very intense (for Mercedes AMG) and very exciting (for the fans) battle for 1st place in the last 3 to 4 laps of the 2016 Grand Prix of Austria.  In the fight for first place ROSBERG appears to that it’s obvious that he missed the apex, the question at the end of the race was whether or not that was a deliberate attempt to block HAMILTON from taking the lead.  In looking at the replays and the different camera angles ROSBERG’s defensive move does appear to be excessive and deliberate as opposed to a situation with the brakes.  The situation was very reminiscent of when the teammates collided in Spain a few races ago and at the immediate team meeting that followed that incident team leader Niki Lauda made it clear that the cars are not to take each other out snice they are one of the few teams that if the car finishes that chances are that they are om the Podium is extremely high.  So the real awkward situation after the race in an interview ROSBERG said that the reason that he missed the apex on the turn was that his brakes were giving out and he ran long into the turn missing the line to hit the apex properly.  In an interview HAMILTON was pretty much as over it.