2019 challenge round 3 Discussion thread: China, 14 April

It is the 1000th F1 race too. Hopefully it'll be spectacular.

Bet you’re regretting that comment now 

Quite. Oh well.

Ferrari ended up ruining Leclerc's race and frankly Seb was a damp squib in comparison to his time at Red Bull. Is he really interested? It seems that Ferrari will have a new number one by next season. Risible reliability for Renault reduces their opportunity to compete while Honda continue to improve. I wonder what McLaren are thinking right about now. Low points haul for me this weekend.

Pretty dull race. Kimi had a bit of fun but it was largely shite.

Regarding Ferrari’s driver swap in Shanghai, it was the right idea with the wrong execution. Immediately after Leclerc let Vettel by, he tried to follow him to have the DRS enabled. That put Vettel under pressure, he started to lock up a few times, which just slowed them both down with Leclerc following inn turbulent air. One can understand why Leclerc wanted to make a point, he’s there to race – and long may that continue. But they wanted to release Vettel to see if he could try and catch Bottas, that didn’t happen. Being a marginal track on degradation, leaving a driver out for too long is a recipe for disaster. That is exactly what they did with Leclerc, resulting in Verstappen leapfrogging the Ferrari and almost passing Vettel. They ruined Leclerc’s race, fearing something that wasn’t a threat in the first place.

There seems to be a split between both cars. The Ferrari has excellent traction coming off tight turns, it evidently has fantastic acceleration as well, a straight line advantage it retains over the Mercedes until v max. Unfortunately, Shanghai has a lot more roll-time than Bahrain – where the driver is off-throttle – most commonly around long-radius corners. I think the heavy fuel in the race exacerbated Mercedes’ advantage; the front-end of the Mercedes was notably keener in turn 13, for example. You’ve then got the long back straight where the Ferrari starts to catch up, but if you’re exiting the corners faster whilst protecting the tyres to a greater degree, that is a more effective strength to have.

Albon was very impressive. He crashed heavily in FP3; the team had to re-build the car overnight and started in the pitlane. Despite missing valuable track time, he drove a very intelligent race with a one-stop strategy, and withstood immense pressure from Grosjean who had much newer tyres at the end. That is the sort of drive that gets noticed.

This is not only a Formula 1 problem, but more series need to take inspiration from IndyCar. I really think it’s the best championship out there at present. You have a degree of technical variance without it being an arms race. Balance of performance isn’t needed, so you don’t need endlessly-changing rules every weekend. No driver aids, including power steering or tyre warmers. Every lap looks difficult, not just a qualifying lap at tenth tenths. You even see a few sportscar teams entering IndyCar because they know with a good driver, they can legitimately compete on the most equal footing there is in major four-wheeled motorsport in 2019. Despite how much sportscar racing is applauded, I think it’s getting frustrating with Bop that ultimately satisfies nobody.

I was watching the Formula E on Saturday and I was reminded by something that Richard Meaden said in Evo last month, it’s a future – but perhaps not the future that will prevail. It just doesn’t look racy, and despite them being nose-to-tail, it just lacks the x factor that combustion motorsport still has. FE is a very impressive set-up, I find it remarkable how well the races have gone. So many street circuits have been abandoned at the last moment; FE has created a niche for itself in a very crowded market. But despite the impressive organisation and growing manufacturer interest, it isn’t exciting me. Excitement is not necessarily how close the cars are, and how FE manages the manufacturer interest will be pivotal. I fear that once a few of the manufacturers find they can’t win, they will leave – it always happens in racing. On Sunday I was watching the Australian V8 Supercars and just reflected how fabulous it was. The sensational noise, the lack of aero, the visible driver involvement with the driver manually rev-matching on the downshifts makes it fantastic to watch.

Dull race, but there were some unheralded star turns in the midfield. Perez did a mighty job to qualify 12th and finish 8th in a Racing Point that was a marginal Q2 car. Kimi looks to be enjoying himself in the Alfa. And Danny Ric's starting to get on top of the Renault.

I imagine Toro Rosso will be pissed off. They should have had 2 cars in Q3 and a haul of points. Albon did very well to recover to 10th after a forgivable rookie mistake, but should have been dicing with the Renaults. Likewise Kvyat, whose Q2 mistake put him further back than he should have been, which led to the Mclaren pinball incident. I do think the penalty was harsh though. He made a small error which had unfortunate consequences. Looked like a racing incident to me.