After a tight battle between the top teams of McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes and even some contention from Ferrari, Oscar Piastri was our pole sitter in China for the F1 2025 Chinese GP.
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With the two Red Bulls of Lawson and Verstappen hoping to reclaim the top position for the team, they started on the medium tyre; as did most of the grid. VCARB also displayed a notable quality performance, lining up their cars in P7 and P9. Piastri extended his pole to a win with some challenges from Mercedes and Ferrari.
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Lights Out And Early Retirement:
Piastri lined his car up in an aggressive position, pointing his car inwards in defence from George Russel in P2. The McLaren got a much weaker start than Russell but managed to defend his top position. His teammate Norris fought a tight battle with Russel for P2 which Norris eventually won. There was a brief moment of contact in the first corner between the two Ferraris, leaving Leclerc with front wing damage. A premature double yellow flag came out on lap three due to the debris from the earlier Ferrari incident. Verstappen lost two track positions to this collision. Pierre Gasly reported urgently over the radio that Fernando Alonso’s right rear brake was on fire. This was quickly acted upon by the team and lead to his unfortunate retirement from the race.
By lap six, the VCARBs managed to hold onto their top 10 positions, defending from Haas and William’s. Race leader Piastri took advantage of the clean air and built a healthy gap of 1.432s to his teammate Norris in P2. Data showed that while on the same tyre, Oscar’s were looking much healthier. A tense battle was emerging between the Ferrari’s with Leclerc using his DRS to edge ever closer to Hamilton. All while Leclerc was still missing part pf his front wing. However, Charles was quickly losing time because of this but the team held back on pitting him too soon.
Tyre Strategy:
In fact, Gasly, was the first car to enter the pits, bolting on a set of hard tyres. Clearly some drivers were suffering with degradation more than others. The hard tyres appeared to work very well over the whole weekend but especially in the race. Sainz was the only driver to pit ended up lapping two seconds faster. During the race, Ocon pitted for the hards and immediately set the fastest middle sector of the race. Timing pit stops was absolutely detrimental to this race. Interestingly, the series of pit stops from Piastri, Russel, Norris and Leclerc really shook up the order. Our top three runners by lap 16 were Albon, Piastri and Stroll. Albon quickly tried to take advantage of this rare opportunity by slowly building a gap despite his medium tyres. This gap was shortly closed by Piastri who retook the lead.
What’s Happening At Ferrari?:
Ferrari decided not to replace Leclerc’s front wing which was missing an end plate and decided to run the rest of the race without. Hamilton called to swap position with Leclerc on lap 20 as he expressed through the radio that he was holding him up. By this time, the regular order has restored with Piastri, Norris and Russel as our top three. Leclerc displayed some outstanding race pace running two seconds faster than his teammate. He was also quickly closing on Russell for P3. It is a complete mystery as to the substantial gap in pace between the Ferrari’s despite Charles’ car’s shortcomings.
McLaren’s Pit Stop Predicament:
Verstappen’s consistent lack of pace throughout the weekend was evident in the race as he sat P6 for the majority. He failed to contend with the Ferraris and McLarens ahead. McLaren found themselves in a tough situation regarding pitstops. While Piastri naturally took priority being the race leader, Norris was under immense pressure from Russell, who was not going to stop for the remaining 21 laps of the race. However, if they were to pit Norris first, this would allow him to undercut Piastri, similar to Hungary 20204 which they did not want a repeat of.
A risk of rain was warned to be approaching in the last three laps of the race which was detrimental to McLaren’s pit stop problem. This problem is worsened as Norris complained over the radio about his tyre deg increasing. The team decided based on radio feedback that it was best for Oscar to make his tyres last til the chequered flag for the F1 2025 Chinese GP. Hamilton’s lack of pace prevailed as he sat 16 seconds behind Verstappen in P5. The risk of rain at the end of the race proved to be highly unlikely come lap 46.
The Home Stretch:
An incident with Tsunoda led to substantial front wing damage, causing the black and orange flags to come out. This damage seemingly came out of nowhere and was race ruining for Yuki due to this late pit stop to change the front wing. Norris continued to express his struggles with wear on the car as he reported notable brake pedal issues. Lando’s engineer warmed him that this issue will persist and worsen.
The ongoing battle between Isaack Hadjar and Jack Doohan ended with a 10 second time penalty for Doohan for forcing him off the track. However, he remained in front of Hadjar in P14. Vertsappen’s pace ramped up as he began to closely hunt down Leclerc’s P4, the gap closing ever so fast. With some hard racing, Verstappen overtook Leclerc.
As the chequered flag came down, Oscar Piastri secured his third career win with Norris and Russell completing the podium. Some notable rookie performances include Ollie Bearman picking up some points in P7 and Isaack Hadjar racing hard for all 56 laps. The F1 2025 Chinese GP wrapped with some dramatic battles to the line.
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