Lewis Hamilton now is at the top of the Formula 1 rankings together with Vettel after winning the China Grand Prix. After starting from pole position and in the wet, Hamilton held on to the lead to take home his 54th Formula 1 victory. Vettel finished second and Max Verstappen came in third.
The race was an eventful one and the hero of the race would be Max Verstappen. He started near the back of the grid after an issue during qualifying where only 4 of his 6 cylinders in his engine were firing. Through the race, he fought his way up the pack to finish third.
Although at one point in the race, it was Max Verstappen who was challenging Hamilton to take the lead but after swapping out for super soft tyres, the two Red Bull cars, Verstappen and Ricciardo started to fall back and Vettel managed to overtake the both of them.
“My pole lap put me in a great position and then the start was just fantastic. I’m really happy with my starts right now so I want to keep that up! During the race, I needed to keep my composure in some really tricky conditions out there. After the pit stop under the Safety Car, the speed was low and the tyres were very cold, so it would have been very easy to make a mistake, so I’m just grateful that I didn’t. In those final 20 laps Seb and I were just pounding around as fast as we could, exchanging fastest lap times, that’s what racing is all about. In the future, there will be times when we don’t have a Safety Car and we won’t have that gap. I’m excited for that. It’s very close and there were times when it was hard to match Sebastian. It has been a fantastic weekend and I’m so grateful for the effort the team has put in for us to be where we are today. It’s very overwhelming when you have a weekend like this, because I’m just a single link in the chain and there are hundreds of people who are involved to put me up here on the top step. Big congratulations to everyone, especially those back home, I hope they’re celebrating and feeling the spirit and the fight.” – Lewis Hamilton
“That was a very special race. When I woke up this morning I never expected to be on the podium. It was a very good first lap, I passed nine cars I think which is very positive. The conditions really helped me get past the cars as quick as I could, that was important as I knew it would only dry up and get tougher to pass. I always enjoy driving in the wet so I made the most of the fun conditions early on. I think in the first eleven laps I got up to seventh place which set me up for a strong finish.
We were a bit unsure of how the balance of the car would be towards the end of the race as I didn’t run much yesterday in Qualifying and the temperature is a lot lower today. We had quite a bit of understeer but just about managed to hold on to third place. These balance issues combined with being within two seconds of another car in the closing stages of the race made it really hard to drive, there were blue flags out but I still couldn’t get past, this needs looking into. The battle with Daniel at the end was hard as my car was not fun to defend in. I’m glad we hung on and obviously it was a great race to watch and for the team. I think on pure pace in the dry we are still a bit slow for a podium but all things considered today we definitely MAXED it out.” – Max Verstappen
“We can be happy with today’s results. The race was a lot of fun, very entertaining. Conditions were tricky at the start, you never know what can happen in those moments, so I was perhaps a bit too conservative. Then we chose to change tires since the track was quickly drying out, so that we could take advantage from the slicks; but luck was not on our side as the safety car came in right after. I can’t say how much this affected the final result, it was still a long way from there to the finish, but I think it had an effect. From then I had to work my way through the field, and I had a tense wheel-to-wheel fight with Ricciardo. I like this way of overtaking, when gaining position comes at a price and not simply by opening up the DRS. At that moment though, the gap to Lewis had widened, and I kept pushing to keep some pressure on him, while asking my engineer what pace was needed for me to catch him. I think that pace-wise we were a match today, sometimes he was faster, sometimes I was: if we can fight with Mercedes also in Bahrain that will be again good news. We can still improve.” – Sebastian Vettel
Here are the final standings of today’s race.
| POS | DRIVER | TIME/RETIRED | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1:37:36.158 | 25 | |
| 2 | +6.250s | 18 | |
| 3 | +45.192s | 15 | |
| 4 | +46.035s | 12 | |
| 5 | +48.076s | 10 | |
| 6 | +48.808s | 8 | |
| 7 | +72.893s | 6 | |
| 8 | +1 lap | 4 | |
| 9 | +1 lap | 2 | |
| 10 | +1 lap | 1 | |
| 11 | +1 lap | 0 | |
| 12 | +1 lap | 0 | |
| 13 | +1 lap | 0 | |
| 14 | +1 lap | 0 | |
| 15 | +1 lap | 0 | |
| NC | DNF | 0 | |
| NC | DNF | 0 | |
| NC | DNF | 0 | |
| NC | DNF | 0 | |
| NC | DNF | 0 |
