Chinese Grand Prix 2011 - Preview: Formula One News
Bettor.com welcomes you to Shanghai for the 2011 Chinese Grand Prix, round 3 of the championship. As an exciting qualifying session came to a close during qualifying, Sebastian Vettel won his 18th career pole and the third in a row this season.
The German’s time was a whopping 1 minute 33.706 seconds – The only driver to register a time in the 1 minute 33’s. The McLarens of Button and Hamilton qualified behind him in P2 and P3 respectively.
Vettel is certainly the favourite to win but Hamilton and Button have a shot if they can beat Vettel to the first corner and control the race for a while. However, so far, the Red Bull has been extremely efficient with its starts off the line and seems to be
managing the Pirellis somewhat reasonably compared to the rest of the pack.
However, staying with the Red Bulls, in a surprising turn of events, Mark Webber failed to make it past the first hurdle of qualifying, Q1, by effectively qualifying 18th. This is surely going to affect his race on Sunday. With a lot of traffic
ahead of him at the start finish line, the Australian would certainly be at a disadvantage for the race.
While the Red Bull is clearly a fast car and merits a much higher position, the slower cars ahead of Webber would try their level best to keep the veteran in their rear view mirrors. It should be entertaining to watch him claw his way up the field.
Similar to the Red Bull tale, the Mercedes camp would also play host to two diversified race strategies for the race. On one end, they’d have Nico Rosberg fighting for a podium finish. The youngster did extremely well during qualifying to land his Mercedes
on the 2nd row alongside Lewis Hamilton.
The other concern for Ross Brawn would be to get his second driver amongst the points as Michael Schumacher will be hoping to recover a decent finish after his disappointing P13 qualifying run during qualifying. The seven time world champion would have to
bring in each and every ounce of experience he has to fare against Sauber’s, Renault’s and Toro Rosso’s in front of him.
The Weather forecast for the race is a cool 15* C. The sky is primarily going to be overcast while the track will be dry.
As we've seen so far this season, there should be a good amount of variation in the teams' pit strategy based on how they manage the tyres. With no rain expected during the race, the teams will be focusing on balancing between the soft and hard compounds optimally.
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