Chinese GP - Blonde bomshell in 1st win shock!

I still have no idea how the Mercedes tricksy DRS thing does what it does. Feed air from the rear wing... through the car... so it makes the front wing work better. At 200mph...

Nope. No idea. Nor, apparently, did Lotus, who made an attempt to get it banned prior to the race, but with no effect. I suspect the stewards had no idea how it does it either, and it’s hard to say something is breaking the rules when you’ve got no idea what it’s actually doing.

 

The complicated Bahrain GP saga continued, with the FIA and Bernie proclaiming it fine and safe to go to, seemingly conveniently avoiding the whole issue of people get killed whilst protesting, which is what folks are actually upset about. Can sport be entirely free from politics? Should F1 avoid all countries with a dodgy human rights record? (That’s dodgy human rights record, as opposed to dodgy Human League record. With the first, people have to contend with scary stuff from people with strange haircuts and a dangerous look in their eyes, and the latter... oh. Hmm.)

Hamilton was off to a bad start straight away, with a gearbox change meaning that, whatever he did in quail, he’d be bumped down the grid 5 races on Sunday morning. A good effort saw him 2^nd fastest, but there were shocks a-plenty, with Massa out in Q2 yet again, but more startlingly, the Sebulator found himself sitting out Q3 as well. Both Saubers made it into the top 10, as did Grosjean, and once Lewis’ penalty had been applied, Kobayashi was 3^rd on the grid behind a speedy Schumacher, and a stunning Rosberg. Britney’s first Q3 lap was startlingly fast – so much so that he knew he wasn’t going to better it, and sat out the rest of the session whilst his rivals made futile attempts to get close. Silver front row lock-out... but not from McLaren.

At the start, Nico got away well, whilst Button nipped into 3^rd as Kobayashi got a clanger of a start and fell to 6^th.

By the 6^th lap, Vettel’s bad weekend was sinking it’s teeth in, as he toured round in 14^th, whilst Rosberg was already over 2.6 up on his team-mate. The following lap saw Webber pit early for tyres, to try and get out of the traffic chaos that was to dominate the race.

With 10 circuits gone, Nico has a 5 second advantage, with Jenson attempting to catch Schumacher.

After Raikkonen stopped, he and Webber had a good scrap for position, but Schumi’s stop on lap 13 was his demise, as a wheel nut failed to wind up where it was meant to be, but the car was released anyway. A few turns later, Michael knew the game was up and parked it.

As the leaders all stopped, Perez found himself leading another race, before relinquishing the position to Massa.

By lap 34 Button was closing in on Rosberg, whist Perez was doing a good job of stopping Hamilton from moving up to 3^rd.

Differing tyre-stop strategies allowed Jenson to lead for while, but a disastrous stop on lap 40 saw him stationary for 10 seconds. Sounds short, but in modern F1 it was like stopping off to watch an episode of Star Trek, and finding out it’s a marathon of all the movies... including that one with the whales. To make matters worse, his return to the track in 6^th saw him land in the middle of a gaggle of cars.

Massa was still clinging on in second, by his clapped out tyres meant he was holding up a formidable queue, which included Raikkonen, Vettel, Button, Grosjean, Webber, Senna, Maldonado, Hamilton and Alonso. Nico didn’t mind though – by this stage he was 22 seconds ahead of the pack.

With 10 laps left, Maldonado and Grosjean resumed the hostilities which hadn’t really helped either of them out previously, in an exciting, wheel-banging, bodywork-removing battle for 8^th, whilst Nico’s pit crew were trying to point out that he needed to take it easy on his tyres. Please.

With 8 laps to go, Kimi embarked on a free-fall through the field that suggested that his tyres hadn’t just fallen off a cliff, but had in fact taken a jet to another country, and fallen off all the cliffs there too. Over the next 3 laps, he was to fall from 2^nd to 12^th, and lost a further 2 places by the end of the race.

Differing levels of remaining tyre grip saw Hamilton passing Webber too, whilst Vettel, who had somehow pulled himself up into 2^nd, fell victim to Button, Hamilton and finally the ultimate indignity of Webber fighting past as well.

Rosberg duly bagged his first win at the 111^th attempt, and with the McLaren duo sharing the podium, Mercedes had the kind of day that makes Norbert temporarily forget pies. So dominant was Nico’s performance, that Hamilton asked him, before they headed out to the podium celebrations “Did you actually do any overtaking?”

“No.” Said Rosberg. Crikey.

3 races gone, 3 different winners, and no idea of who might actually win this championship yet. 2012 F1 is shaping up nicely.

(Classic rock time, with Free's "The Free Story". N-ice!)