Perfect Hair from Winner Nico Rosberg - from "The Essence of Racing" on tumblrHoly silver arrows, Batman! The Chinese Grand Prix was A-MAZ-ING! The takeovers, the tyres performance that kept everyone guessing, the pit stops, the takeovers!! And may I also mention, in addition to taking home the top medal, Rosberg wins "Best Post-Grand Prix Champion Hair" in my books.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. The race started out with Mercedes in P1 and P2, no doubt the Mercedes team and Ross Braun were cautiously optimistic. I was also looking forward to see how fast Vettel can climb back from an abysmal grid position. Usually I root for a driver or two based on qualifying results, but it’s been increasingly difficult to just root for one or two drivers, everyone is getting more competitive and tyres strategy can make the world of difference between qualifying pole position and race day results.
My first big “oooooohhhhhh!!!” moment of the race came in Lap 11. Raikkonen duked it out and lost a spot to Webber and then lost another spot to Hamilton. I imagine Ice Man saying obscene things in Finnish in his car with the coolest of emotions. Those passes unfortunately would foreshadow the fall to 14th place in the last ten laps for Kimi. Better luck next time, Kimi! The Lotus-Renault team should really sort out Kimi’s tyres strategy for next race.
The last 10 laps of the race had me glued to the screen! So many takeovers, so many wheel to wheel actions, not to mention almost everyone could take advantage of DRS zone because the drivers were very close to each other.
All in all, a superb race! I can’t wait until Bahrain this weekend!