Hamilton Wins Third Straight Race in China

Having achieved pole position on Saturday by over half a second, Lewis Hamilton cruised to victory for the third race in a row today in Shanghai at the Chinese Grand Prix, leading every single lap and finishing 18 seconds ahead of his team mate, Nico Rosberg, who finished in second. Fernando Alonso of Ferrari also had a good showing, finishing third after starting fifth. Red Bull, despite qualifying second and third, finished fourth and fifth because they simply did not have the pace to keep with up the Mercedes and Ferrari in the dry weather.

The rain during qualifying shook up all the teams and helped Red Bull earn second and third in qualifying because they have a better wet weather package than any other team on the grid. The Mercedes engine customers, who consist of Mercedes, McLaren, Williams, and Force India, do not have the pace to compete in wet weather, which is why all those teams did not have the same fast results in China as they did in the other qualifying sessions. Having out-qualified and out-raced his quadruple world champion team mate, Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo must be very pleased with his results at his new team and it is clear the Vettel is feeling the pressure for success in this new season.

Lewis Hamilton had his usual quick start and left the rest of the top 7 to battle it out for the podium positions, with Sebastian Vettel winning the charge for second due to one of his usual quick starts. Nico Rosberg dropped down from second to seventh on the first lap and eventually regained second position by the end of the race even though he was 18 seconds behind his team mate, Lewis Hamilton, who was in P1.

Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari had an unspectacular race, going from P11 to P8, a result he must not be pleased with, seeing as though his team mate, Fernando Alonso, finished in second with the same exact car and pit strategy.

A highlight of the weekend was seeing Pastor Maldonado have his first clean race in what seems like ages, since he has been part of some sort of collision, which were usually his fault, in every race of recent memory.

There were only two retirements this race, the fewest of any race this season as teams are getting used to the new engines. Romain Grosjean of Lotus retired after 28 laps due to gearbox issues, and Adrian Sutil of Sauber retired after just 5 laps due to power unit problems.

Other than that, the race was relatively uneventful and seemed eerily similar to the previous season's races, except instead of Sebastian Vettel leading every race by an absurd margin, now it is Lewis Hamilton's turn to run away with every grand prix, something I, along with many others, am not looking forward to seeing this season.

Despite Lewis Hamilton's recent domination of Formula 1, his team mate, Nico Rosberg, continues to top the table by just four points, a gap Lewis Hamilton most likely plans on closing by the end of the season. As a result of all the points accrued by these two drivers, Mercedes leads the constructors championship with 154 points, 97 ahead of the second place team, Red Bull, who have just 57 points, and are only ahead of third and fourth place Force India and Ferrari by 3 and 5 points, respectively.

Check out the race and qualifying results below, as well as the drivers and constructors championship points tables:


Race Results:

Pos	Driver	Team	Laps	Gap
1	Hamilton	Mercedes	54	1h 36:52.810
2	Rosberg	Mercedes	54	+ 0:18.686
3	Alonso	Ferrari	54	+ 0:25.675
4	Ricciardo	Red Bull	54	+ 0:26.978
5	Vettel	Red Bull	54	+ 0:51.012
6	Hulkenberg	Force India	54	+ 0:57.581
7	Bottas	Williams	54	+ 0:58.145
8	Raikkonen	Ferrari	54	+ 1:23.990
9	Perez	Force India	54	+ 1:26.489
10	Kvyat	Toro Rosso	53	+ 1 Lap
11	Button	McLaren	53	+ 1 Lap
12	Vergne	Toro Rosso	53	+ 1 Lap
13	Magnussen	McLaren	53	+ 1 Lap
14	Maldonado	Lotus	53	+ 1 Lap
15	Massa	Williams	53	+ 1 Lap
16	Gutierrez	Sauber	53	+ 1 Lap
18	Bianchi	Marussia	53	+ 1 Lap
17	Kobayashi	Caterham	53	+ 1 Lap
19	Chilton	Marussia	52	+ 2 Laps
20	Ericsson	Caterham	52	+ 2 Laps
	Grosjean	Lotus	28	Gearbox
	Sutil	Sauber	5	Power Unit

Qualifying Results:

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Hamilton	Mercedes	1:53.860	107.095 mph
2	Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:54.455	0.595
3	Vettel	Red Bull	1:54.960	1.100
4	Rosberg	Mercedes	1:55.143	1.283
5	Alonso	Ferrari	1:55.637	1.777
6	Massa	Williams	1:56.147	2.287
7	Bottas	Williams	1:56.282	2.422
8	Hulkenberg	Force India	1:56.366	2.506
9	Vergne	Toro Rosso	1:56.773	2.913
10	Grosjean	Lotus	1:57.079	3.219
11	Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:56.860
12	Button	McLaren	1:56.963
13	Kvyat	Toro Rosso	1:57.289
14	Sutil	Sauber	1:57.393
15	Magnussen	McLaren	1:57.675
16	Perez	Force India	1:58.264
17	Gutierrez	Sauber	1:58.988
18	Kobayashi	Caterham	1:59.260
19	Bianchi	Marussia	1:59.326
20	Ericsson	Caterham	2:00.646
21	Chilton	Marussia	2:00.865
22	Maldonado	Lotus	No Time

Drivers Championship Table:


Pos	Driver	Nationality	Team	Points
1	Nico Rosberg	German	Mercedes	79
2	Lewis Hamilton	British	Mercedes	75
3	Fernando Alonso	Spanish	Ferrari	41
4	Nico Hulkenberg	German	Force India-Mercedes	36
5	Sebastian Vettel	German	Red Bull Racing-Renault	33
6	Daniel Ricciardo	Australian	Red Bull Racing-Renault	24
7	Valtteri Bottas	Finnish	Williams-Mercedes	24
8	Jenson Button	British	McLaren-Mercedes	23
9	Kevin Magnussen	Danish	McLaren-Mercedes	20
10	Sergio Perez	Mexican	Force India-Mercedes	18
11	Felipe Massa	Brazilian	Williams-Mercedes	12
12	Kimi Räikkönen	Finnish	Ferrari	11
13	Jean-Eric Vergne	French	STR-Renault	4
14	Daniil Kvyat	Russian	STR-Renault	4
15	Romain Grosjean	French	Lotus-Renault	0
16	Adrian Sutil	German	Sauber-Ferrari	0
17	Esteban Gutierrez	Mexican	Sauber-Ferrari	0
18	Max Chilton	British	Marussia-Ferrari	0
19	Kamui Kobayashi	Japanese	Caterham-Renault	0
20	Pastor Maldonado	Venezuelan	Lotus-Renault	0
21	Marcus Ericsson	Swedish	Caterham-Renault	0
22	Jules Bianchi	French	Marussia-Ferrari	0

Constructors Championship Table:

Pos	Team	Points
1	Mercedes	154
2	Red Bull Racing-Renault	57
3	Force India-Mercedes	54
4	Ferrari	52
5	McLaren-Mercedes	43
6	Williams-Mercedes	36
7	STR-Renault	8
8	Lotus-Renault	0
9	Sauber-Ferrari	0
10	Marussia-Ferrari	0
11	Caterham-Renault	0

Race and Qualifying results courtesy of PitPass.com

Championship Tables courtesy of F1.com