Chinese GP analysis: How team-mate wars were won

Small differences add up to a lot in Formula 1. During the Chinese Grand Prix weekend, three pairs of high-profile team-mates drove identical machinery, but endured very different races. All scored points, and two of the duos finished next to each other in the results, but that could not shroud just how big the differences between each pair really were.

The most obvious of the pairings in question was at Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton utterly bossed this race weekend, so much so that the relatively modest 18.062-second gap to team-mate Rosberg did little justice to his supremacy.

The so-called 'grand slam' - victory, pole, fastest lap and leading from start to finish - is rarely achieved in F1 but Hamilton only missed out on the second such achievement of his grand prix career simply because he was so dominant.

Rosberg had to bang in the fastest lap of the race, 0.794s faster than Hamilton's, during his successful pursuit of second-placed Fernando Alonso during the final stint, but Hamilton could simply cruise to the chequered flag (which appeared prematurely). His hard work earlier in the weekend had earned him the right to take it easy on Sunday afternoon.

After a Bahrain GP characterised by scraps between team-mates throughout the leading positions, things were very different in China.

DUEL 1: HAMILTON VERSUS ROSBERG

Hamilton wasn't happy on Friday © LAT

The Mercedes didn't look quite as dominant in China as it had done in Bahrain, but it was still in a class of its own.

During practice, it seemed both Hamilton and Rosberg were playing a game of cat and mouse, eager not to show their true hand to their team-mate.

Hamilton was not especially happy with life despite being fastest on Friday, and with Rosberg's best lap in FP2 compromised by yellow flags for the Lotus Pastor Maldonado had rather embarrassingly parked in the barrier in the pit entry, there was no clear read on which driver was in better shape.

Saturday dawned wet, and stayed that way, so it was no great surprise to see Hamilton have the edge in qualifying. The 2008 world champion is regarded as one of the best in the rain (if you are not convinced, check out the quality of his triumph at Silverstone in 2008, which stands as one of the great wet-weather victories) and Rosberg knows he doesn't have the beating of his team-mate in those conditions.

"He has just been doing a good job in the wet, that's clear, again today he was very quick," said Rosberg after qualifying.

"But also, one must say that the set-up is completely wrong for the wet today because we are set up for front-left graining tomorrow which is the opposite of what you need in the wet, so the rear was all over the place today."

Rosberg certainly reckoned he had something up his sleeve in terms of set-up, even though he wasn't completely happy with the car's feel under braking. Perhaps he did, but in order for that to have had a significant say in the race he firstly needed a dry qualifying and secondly needed to be on Hamilton's tail in a dry race.

The loss of telemetry before the formation lap effectively ensured that would not happen as it made it impossible to optimise the clutch set-up, playing a big part in Rosberg bogging down and going backwards.

He finished the lap 4.563s behind Hamilton and with Sebastian Vettel, Alonso, Daniel Ricciardo and Felipe Massa between him and his team-mate. From then on, there was no intra-team battle. It was all about using the inherent pace of the car to ensure that, while beaten, he hung onto his world championship lead with a second place finish.

Rosberg's weekend got harder at the start © LAT

The path to second was relatively straightforward and Rosberg showed admirable patience, very capably dealing with the lack of telemetry along the way.

He passed Massa on lap four, undercut his way ahead of Ricciardo through the first round of pitstops, then overtook Vettel in the second stint before catching and passing Alonso after his last stop.

Once the final pitstops had been completed, the gap between Rosberg and Hamilton held firm to the flag, so had they finished the first lap line astern, it might have been a fascinating battle. As it was, Rosberg was in a race for second from the moment the red lights went out.

From that perspective, he had more reason to be happy with a distant second in China than his fighting runner-up position in Bahrain. The latter race, he should definitely have won. In China, while he might have felt he had an advantage in terms of tyre management, that wasn't the hand he was dealt.

"Set-up wise, it was a good team effort this weekend because it's a very unique track here with understeer being the main problem and the front-left tyre," said Rosberg.

"You really have to change everything, adapt to the needs of the track and we did well as a team. It wasn't perfect in the race, but it was definitely pretty good.

"We have the best car and that makes it more enjoyable to do catch-up, even though of course we don't want to do any catch-up. But I was back there, so catching up was nice with this fast car. It's a good weapon."

A superb pole lap in the wet set Hamilton up nicely © LAT

But it's important not to overlook how well Hamilton did to earn his advantage. Inevitably, he dealt much better with the loose rear-end in wet qualifying and once Rosberg was out of the way he controlled the race beautifully.

He didn't have to push too hard, which prevented any major problems with front-left graining on the soft tyres (this was more of an issue on the mediums).

So not only could he afford to sacrifice time by taking it easy early on, but he could also throw away more seconds by extending that first stint to make absolutely sure of being able to pull-off a comfortable two-stop strategy. Those are the kinds of trade-offs dominance earns you the right to make.

As well as dealing well with the curveball thrown in by the Saturday rain, Hamilton also made progress in terms of set-up.

On Friday afternoon, he was not happy, not only because of a rear suspension problem that cost him track time but also because of the feel of the car.

"It was not the easiest of days," he said, prior to retreating into debriefs to come up with a series of set-up changes that, thanks to the conditions on Saturday, he had to carry blind into the race.

"The car was really good," he said on Sunday evening. "We made lots of changes overnight on Friday night and obviously it was wet for qualifying, so I didn't know what it was going to be like today. We didn't guess, we really made those steps in anticipation of today and it worked perfectly. I couldn't really have asked for more."

Whether things might have been different with Rosberg on his tail, leading Hamilton to put more stress on his front Pirellis, can't be answered. The fact is, Hamilton reaped the rewards of being at the front.

DUEL 2: RICCIARDO VERSUS VETTEL

The bare facts are that Ricciardo outqualified his four times world champion team-mate for the third time in four races, half a second faster than the German, and then beat him to fourth place in the race by 20.642s. Impressive.

On top of that, Ricciardo had the additional satisfaction of Vettel's "tough luck" message over the radio after he was told to let the Australian by on the basis he was on a different strategy.

Of course, Ricciardo wasn't on a different strategy the way the race panned out as Red Bull couldn't make Vettel's three-stopper work. So it was just that he was working his way through the tyres much more slowly and had three-lap younger mediums on his RB10.

Vettel, struggling more on the mediums, did apparently relent and allow Ricciardo past, but he would have been powerless to prevent him getting ahead at Turn 1 on lap 22 anyway.

Vettel openly admitted he had work to do to get on terms with Ricciardo © LAT

That, combined with his vigorous defence just a couple of corners earlier, renders it a moot point as to just how co-operative he really was.

"He just seems to get more out of the car than I do," said Vettel. "There are a lot of things that I don't really like at this stage, but in the end we have the same car and the gap is too big than just to be something small in terms of set-up. I know there is not too much difference.

"Initially, I didn't understand and once I was told that we are on a different strategy, there was no point to hold him up any further.

"And if you look at the raw result at the end, it was quite obvious that he was quicker than me."

Vettel's main problem is stability of the rear, particularly under braking, which makes it impossible for him to commit to the turn in and rotate the rear in the way he made his trademark in recent years. By contrast, Ricciardo has no such hesitation or discomfort.

"I wasn't aware of that [the 'tough luck' message]," said Ricciardo. "But in battle, you want to hold on to what you've got and you just blurt out what you feel at the time. At least we eventually did get by.

"I think, at the time, we weren't really sure whether it was a two or three stop and I figured if he was on a three maybe he was going to shoot into the pits in a lap or so and maybe that's why he was holding on. But I don't want to start any conflicts."

DUEL 3: ALONSO VERSUS RAIKKONEN

Of the three intra-team battles in question, this was the most one-sided. While Alonso qualified fifth and finished an outstanding third, Kimi Raikkonen failed to make Q3 and finished eighth, over 50s behind his Ferrari team-mate.

Alonso undoubtedly got the best out of the machinery. That, combined with a decent first lap during which he was fortunate to survive hitting Felipe Massa's Williams, laid the foundations for his first podium finish of 2014.

Raikkonen, by contrast, wasn't even able to give Force India's Nico Hulkenberg and the Williams of Valtteri Bottas a hard time for their sixth and seventh places.

While Raikkonen hasn't had a great start to his second Ferrari career, things were moving in the right direction in the build-up to China. After a poor run in Australia, things looked better in Malaysia but were masked by damage on the opening lap, while in Bahrain he was right behind Alonso at the finish. But China, a front-limited circuit, was always likely to exacerbate Raikkonen's struggles.

His liking for precise front-end feel has been talked about extensively, but it's also important to note that he's not a big fan of an understeery car, which makes it difficult for him to set the car up on turn-in as he would like.

He complained of an all-round lack of grip, although the front grip problem will have been primarily responsible for the balance not being to his liking. Raikkonen's relative strength on fresh rubber, before the graining set in, supports that, suggesting that China is a dip rather than a more worrying trend.

"It's probably more to do with my driving style, plus the cool conditions and not getting the tyres working," said Raikkonen. "If it was some problem with the car, we would not be fast on new tyres, or happy with the tyres. It's a combination of cool conditions, circuit layout and my driving style, probably."

As all three of these intra-team battles prove, it's always a combination of factors that make the difference. China is an unusual circuit given the fact it is front-tyre limited, something compounded by track temperatures as low as Pirelli has been confronted with on a race weekend since it returned to the sport in 2011.

In Spain in three weeks' time, the weather and track layout will offer very different challenges and the battles will start afresh. That's what makes the unique combination of human and machine ceaselessly compelling race after race.