How Ferrari's other drivers cost Vettel victory shot

Lewis Hamilton won the Chinese Grand Prix quite convincingly in the end, making up for the defeat Mercedes suffered at Ferrari's hands in Australia, and tying Sebastian Vettel for the lead of the Formula 1 world championship.

But Hamilton was fortunate he didn't need to work much harder for F1's Shanghai prize.

It's likely he would have faced a much more serious threat from Vettel - for the second race in a row - had the Ferrari driver not spent most of this one making up for time lost as a result of the struggles of Ferrari's two other drivers.

It was not abundantly clear Vettel would be a genuine victory contender again coming into China. Ferrari won first time out in Australia of course, but Albert Park is not a typical Formula 1 track, so the question remained: could Ferrari maintain the form it showed in Melbourne and underline the suggestion it can really fight Mercedes for the world championship this year, or would Mercedes finally fully capitalise on the slender pure pace advantage it displayed during its surprise defeat in the season-opener?

Ultimately both propositions turned out to be true - Hamilton was again narrowly the out-and-out fastest driver over the course of the weekend, and this time delivered a result worthy of that status; but Ferrari again displayed the sort of speed in race conditions that suggests it might seriously threaten Mercedes throughout this season.

As he did two weeks previously in Melbourne, Vettel set the pace in final practice - the only dry practice session of the Shanghai weekend owing to Friday's bad weather grounding the FIA's medical helicopter. But come qualifying, Hamilton again displayed a small but crucial edge to bag pole position.

But Vettel lapped within two tenths of Hamilton, which represented an improvement of 0.123% compared to Melbourne - even allowing for the fact Vettel felt he "chickened" out on the brakes into the final corner of his best lap.

On a completely different circuit layout to Albert Park, Ferrari was again right in the mix, and under normal circumstances would have hoped to use what appears to be the superior consistency of the SF70H compared to the W08 in race trim to exert pressure from behind, and again force Mercedes and Hamilton into submission.

But this race did not begin under normal circumstances, owing to more bad weather that rendered the track partly wet as the start approached. The start/finish straight and early part of the lap was treacherous; the back part of the circuit dry.

As the cars set off for the formation lap, nearly all were fitted with Pirelli's new intermediate tyre. Only "mad" Carlos Sainz Jr's Toro Rosso and Jolyon Palmer's Renault (which dived into the pits right before the start) opted to begin the race on slicks.

Vettel lined his Ferrari up to the left of his inside grid slot (for which he was investigated, with no further action taken) but again it was the Mercedes drivers who made the best of the start, and Vettel had to repel a tentative challenge from the second W08 of Valtteri Bottas through the opening sequence of corners, instead of attacking Hamilton.

Vettel completed the first lap almost 1.4 seconds down on Hamilton, but had closed back to within six tenths during the next lap before driving into the pits for a switch to slicks, electing to take advantage of the virtual safety car period called to retrieve Lance Stroll's stranded Williams following its first-lap collision with Sergio Perez's Force India at Turn 10.

This looked a smart strategic move for Ferrari, knowing it was only a short matter of time before slicks would be the right tyres to have for the conditions.

"I realised the intermediates had quite a lot of degradation," said Vettel. "It was very dry in some parts of the track, so I knew they would not last.

"I was happy to take the risk. Obviously [under] virtual safety car you save time in the pitstop, [but] then the safety car came just when I was about to start to feel the dry tyre was a lot quicker. I couldn't use the momentum, and I lost a lot of positions."

Vettel dropped back to sixth, but instead of moving back through the top order when his rivals made their own stops for dry tyres, running at reduced speed around the whole circuit meant Vettel found himself stuck at the back of that elite train.

For this he can thank Ferrari's reserve driver Antonio Giovinazzi, who crashed heavily on the pit straight at the end of lap three, having moved slightly off line after his Sauber team-mate Marcus Ericsson returned to the circuit following his own moment at the final corner.

"I just called dry tyres too early," explained Giovinazzi, who had also crashed his Sauber out of qualifying a matter of metres further back along the straight, on the opposite side of the circuit.

"When I went on the main straight, I just had some aquaplaning and lost the car straight away, nothing to do. I want to say sorry to the guys, to the team, because they did a fantastic job all night to rebuild the car. So, sorry I make this mistake."

It's unlikely the irony of this situation was lost on Ferrari, which felt it made a strong call getting Vettel into the pits so early. Ultimately, the safety car situation means we'll never know whether Vettel would have had pace enough on slicks on a damp track to jump Hamilton.

The only indicator was Sainz, who plummeted to the back off the startline but felt he could immediately make up significant ground through the drier parts of the track, before being forced to run at safety car pace cooled his tyres.

Vettel would have needed Hamilton's intermediates to drop off rapidly under normal circumstances - highly likely given the suggestion by some that this tyre couldn't last more than three laps in any case.

But Vettel also required conditions to be dry enough to maintain sufficient tyre temperature. Again, much more likely at racing speeds rather than safety car speeds - though the risk of a major accident such as Giovinazzi's is also exponentially higher in such tricky conditions.

For what it's worth, Hamilton felt he had at least enough life left in his intermediates to do one more quick lap had the race not been neutralised. But whether that would have been enough to offset the time Vettel gained in the pits under VSC, or whether Vettel would have struggled to lap quickly enough on slicks on a partly-wet track to overhaul the Mercedes when Hamilton stopped, is impossible to know.

Vettel gained one place back before the lap eight restart, thanks to Bottas spinning off while weaving to keep heat in his tyres, but spent the next 20 tours fighting his way back through into second, which effectively gave Hamilton a free pass at the front.

Most of that time in traffic for Vettel was spent bottled up behind Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, who in turn was struggling to overtake Daniel Ricciardo's understeering Red Bull - the big winner of the early safety car pitstop shuffle.

Vettel admitted to feeling quite angry about the situation, feeling he could lap a lot quicker in clean air, but he channelled that anger productively and eventually relieved Raikkonen of fourth by diving inside the sister Ferrari on the brakes into Turn 6 on lap 20 of 56.

Two laps later he did what Raikkonen could not manage - driving past Ricciardo by first lunging down the Red Bull's outside on the brakes into Turn 6, then braving it around the outside to claim the inside line for the first of the high-speed esses at Turn 7.

The two former Red Bull team-mates even banged wheels when Vettel "got my elbows out a bit" as they powered out of Turn 6 side-by-side, but the Ferrari eventually won out.

It took him another five laps to close within striking distance of the other Red Bull of 'driver of the day' Max Verstappen (up to second from 16th on the grid!), but Vettel didn't have to work too hard to get past, thanks to Verstappen locking up under braking for the Turn 14 hairpin at the end of the back straight, having rooted his front super-soft Pirellis.

"I managed to get past Daniel in Turn 6 and I was building a gap," said Verstappen, who overtook nine cars on the first lap and drove around the outside of Raikkonen (who complained of temporarily having "zero torque" thanks to wet-weather engine settings) through the esses after the restart, before lunging Ricciardo on the brakes on lap 11.

"But then straight away I felt the balance of the car was a bit limited to the front, so I was destroying the left front and couldn't get the car to turn. And that's what basically happened when Sebastian was behind me - just under braking, very difficult, locked up and went wide."

With the traffic now cleared and half of the race still to run, F1 finally faced the prospect of a proper battle between Hamilton and Vettel at the front. But by this point Hamilton enjoyed a handy 10.664s buffer over the Ferrari, having been "quite chilled" controlling the pace at the front and trying to nurse his soft Pirellis to the flag - knowing he faced no real threat from the slower Red Bulls.

"But when Sebastian got behind, then we had a real race on our hands..."

That race took another eight laps to really spark into life, as Vettel was forced to pit for a fresh set of soft tyres to cover the super-soft shod Red Bulls - Verstappen having dived for the pits a lap after his major lock-up.

This triggered Hamilton to pit too, once Mercedes was certain he wouldn't emerge behind the slower Ferrari of Raikkonen. But for the last 20 laps it was then gloves off between the championship's leading protagonists - quadruple champion Vettel attempting to hunt down triple champion Hamilton.

HAMILTON VS VETTEL IN THE FINAL STINT

Vettel closed Hamilton down at a rate of 0.170s per lap over the last 19 laps of the race, but that was well short of the half-a-second per lap needed to make up the deficit, let alone overtake on track.

"I kept pushing because you never know," Vettel said. "Maybe Lewis is doing a mistake, or has an issue with the car, so I wanted to keep the pressure on."

Ultimately, Vettel was just too far behind when the chase began, which brings us neatly back to Ferrari's other drivers, and specifically to the fact Vettel lost a decent chunk of time bottled up behind Raikkonen.

TIME VETTEL LOST BEHIND RAIKKONEN

The graph shows that Vettel lost 5.5s stuck behind the sister Ferrari after the restart. Given Raikkonen's ongoing struggles with understeer, and how easily Vettel dispatched the two Red Bulls after Raikkonen's failure to do so, it would surely have been better for Ferrari to ask Raikkonen to step aside for his team-mate.

Company president Sergio Marchionne certainly thought Raikkonen should have been more aggressive in trying to force his way past Ricciardo. Raikkonen argued he would have had a much better shot without that pesky understeer preventing him getting a decent run onto the straight that precedes Turn 6, which turned out to be the chief overtaking spot in this race.

Crediting the time Vettel lost stuck behind the other Ferrari brings him to within three quarters of a second of Hamilton's eventual margin of victory - though of course we cannot know how much faster Hamilton might have gone in the middle of the race had he faced real pressure.

But Hamilton admitted he was pushing on at the end of the race, when Vettel was closing him down, which suggests the Ferrari was potentially the quicker car again here in race trim - notwithstanding the impression the Mercedes performed much better in the cooler conditions of Shanghai than it did in the heat of Melbourne.

Ultimately it seems Vettel could have seriously challenged Hamilton's superiority had the Ferrari not spent half the race mired in traffic.

Hamilton and Vettel look to be the class of the field at present, certainly a step ahead of their respective team-mates - although we are yet to see the Red Bull drivers properly in the mix owing to the present deficiencies of the RB13 and its Renault engine.

For now, this championship is looking like a two-horse race, and Hamilton admits he needs to be absolutely at the top of his game to get the better of Vettel. Which is why Ferrari's star man could really do without his team-mates tripping him up.