Adam Cooper F1

While Fernando Alonso had a perfect afternoon in Shanghai Kimi Raikkonen had a bad start and later damaged his nose in an incident with Sergio Perez, having got caught behind the cars that started on medium tyres.

Nevertheless his second place keeps him firmly in the title battle after a frustrating race in Malaysia.

“I think we just had wrong settings,” said Raikkonen of his poor start. “The practice start was very good but then it was really bad the real start and we lost some positions and after that the car was okay, but I had a little accident, some problems with Perez and we damaged the nose and the front wing.

“I was surprised there was no more damage, because I hit him quite hard. Also bit surprised that we didn’t have any more problems after that. A bit too much understeer, and we were destroying the front tyre because of that, but we still could fight for second place and get quite a good result in the end. Obviously we wanted to try to win, but today with all the issues, it was not possible.”

Kimi said it was impossible to quantify the loss of performance: “There’s no way to tell or not how much the front wing damage affected the whole race, but obviously the car is not designed like that, so it’s not going to help. But I cannot tell you if it’s a tenth or half a second per lap.

“I was surprised how good the car was, even with quite a lot of damage. It was unfortunate, but I think we also have to be a bit lucky not to lose more. Hopefully next race we can have a normal race and be up there again fighting for a win.”

Fernando Alonso put the disappointment of his early collision and retirement in Malaysia behind him by securing a superb victory in Shanghai.

Alonso didn’t put a foot wrong all day, keeping his tyres alive better than most of his rivals, timing his pit stops perfectly, and finding consistent pace.

“Definitely it was nearly a perfect Sunday for us, with not any problem in the race,” said Alonso. “The start was clean, it was good. We managed to overtake Kimi. And then in the first stint we managed to pass Lewis as well. The car felt a little bit better on the degradation side, let’s say. And then in the rest of the race, obviously you need to take care of the tyres a little bit, you need to manage the gap with the guys behind.”

Alonso admitted that even he struggled to comprehend what was a complicated race.

“It was not so easy to understand the race sometimes. We were overtaking the McLarens, Hulkenberg, Sebastian, so it was a little bit of a mix. So it was not an easy race, and there were some moments of action let’s say and the risk is there when you have to do an overtaking manoeuvre and you have to manage that as well. The team did a perfect job with the set-up of the car for qualy and the race, perfect pit stop times and pit stops executed let’s say.

“At the end of the race the victory is a good reward for the team, well deserved after the disappointment in Malaysia and you know, the car felt good. The two races we finished, one was second and the victory today, so definitely it’s a positive start to this championship. We need to keep going like that, in this direction, with good weekends, with not any extra risk and hopefully in Bahrain we can score some good points again.”

Alonso said it was too early to talk about championship rivals: “We need to wait until maybe after the summer break or something like that to clearly see the real contenders. Hopefully we are in that group after the summer. Hopefully Felipe can be in that group as well, that will mean that the car is going well, and I think at the moment Lotus, Red Bull and Mercedes are in the same position as us, let’s say. I don’t see anyone has a clear advantage.”

Kimi Raikkonen will start the Chinese GP from second place after Lotus found some of the qualifying performance that it has been missing over the past two seasons.

Raikkonen suffered badly last year from lack of one-lap pace, which regularly compromised his races.

However there was a significant margin to pole man Lewis Hamilton, and Raikkonen was cautious on his prospects for Sunday.

“I think the gap is quite big still and we don’t have that speed right now,” said the Finn. “So, second is not bad, I think it’s the best that I’ve been with the team ever. Not too bad, but of course you’d rather be in first place but I guess we don’t have the speed. I think we are missing downforce in the middle sector a bit, but we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”

Although there’s a consensus that the Lotus is better on its tyres than rivals, Raikkonen said that the issue was not clear cut, in part because the car has changed a lot as updates have been added and taken away over the weekend.

“It’s a big question mark because we were pretty happy yesterday but the car is not exactly the same as it was then. For sure, we had some issues with the front tyres yesterday, but that should be pretty easy to change.

“Every day seems to be a bit different, so I don’t know if it’s going to be OK or not. Usually we’ve been pretty OK, apart from the last race when we had some issues. Hopefully it turns out to be good tomorrow but I think it will be very close and whoever gets things exactly right might make enough of a difference to win.”

Mark Webber has been excluded from qualifying in China, and will thus start the race at the back of the grid.

The Red Bull driver stopped on track during Q2 when he ran out of fuel after the team had a problem in the pits.

After the FIA checked the car he was found to have only 0.150 of a litre still in the tank. The rules specify that cars should have a litre left, plus what the FIA deems necessary to drive back to the pits, if the car has stopped on track.

Before the penalty was confirmed Webber said: “Q1 went to plan and then we started Q2 and had a fuel pressure problem and couldn’t get the car back to the pits. And that was it.

“Friday went very well for me, this morning went well for me, this is out of my hands. I can’t be disappointed from my performances.”

Sebastian Vettel will start the Chinese GP from ninth place after being one of only two drivers to tackle Q3 on medium tyres – thus guaranteeing that he will be able to run a long first stint in the race.

Vettel aborted his lap after locking up but in any case was unlikely to have finished the session much higher than eighth, ahead of Jenson Button, who took the same decision.

“It’s a long race tomorrow, it’s a tough circuit on tyres, we know that,” said Vettel. “We learned a little bit yesterday. We decided to go opposite to the majority, whether that’s the right decision we’ll know tomorrow.

“We know the tyres are not great, and obviously that makes you think, and sometimes come up with a different approach.

The majority of cars were out on the soft tyre, which is the qualifying tyre, so even if we finished the lap we don’t have a fair chance to match them.”

Vettel said he didn’t think he had damaged the tyres when he locked up.

“There seemed to be very little load on the car. We need to find out why –I had quite a long pedal, so something broke. I think the lap was not really competitive anyways, so it didn’t matter too much.

“Probably the only other car on mediums was Jenson, and judging by his 2m lap time he wasn’t pushing very hard, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow. I checked the tyre, there was no damage, so it should be fine.”

Pirelli F1 boss Paul Hembery remains confident that China will be a two or three stop race, despite teams experiencing worse degradation than expected with the soft tyre today.

Most teams found that the tyre lasted only a handful of laps before its performance dropped off badly, but Hembery believes that the track will improve.

“Degradation has not been excessive on the medium compound, which at 0.2 seconds per lap is in line with our expectations,” said Hembery. “Rosberg’s fastest time in FP1, for example, was set on an old set of medium tyres that had already covered 10 laps and Massa also completed quite a long run on the soft tyres in FP2.

“In total, we’d expect the soft tyre to last between 11 to 12 laps in the race and the medium tyre for about 18 laps. This would suggest a maximum of three pit stops but it’s also possible that we’ll see two stops if the track keeps on evolving at this rate.

“We experienced some graining on the front left, particularly with the soft tyre, which has resulted in higher levels of degradation than we would like, although we are confident that this will come down as the weekend goes on. The performance gap between the two compounds is around 1.5s, which is a little higher than we initially expected but it’s still early days here.”

Jenson Button remains convinced that McLaren could be the pacesetter before the end of this season.

Button maintains that the decision to go radical relative to the 2012 car will pay off in the long term as the MP4-28 has more development potential than rivals. McLaren opted for a higher nose and revised suspension over the winter.

“It’s so easy for people after Melbourne to say let’s go to last year’s car,” said Jenson when asked by this writer. “I think even from my point of view it’s really difficult to not think like that, because the last race of the year we were quickest – the last few races we were quickest. But what we have done with the car I think is the right thing. It’s hurt us a lot, especially at the first race, and it might still here and in Bahrain.

“But the idea was to have a car that we could develop through the season. We felt that at the end of last year we were at the end of everything with last year’s car. I think the one thing that surprised is that we’re the only one that’s gone our route – we’re the only team to do that. We expected all of the top teams to do the same thing, so we didn’t think we would have lost anything at the first race.

“We thought the smaller teams would keep the same tub, go the same direction, and slightly improve through the winter – and they would be competitive at the first race. We didn’t expect most teams, or all teams apart from us, to go in the same direction. That’s what’s hurt us, and it’s hurt us in terms of a lot of points. But the championship is still completely open, there are still 17 races to go, and if we can turn it around in a few races and be fighting at the front that’s every encouraging for the rest of the season.”

Asked if he was worried if others could still develop faster he said: “I don’t think they will.”

Sebastian Vettel said today that he has never had the support of team mate Mark Webber as the Malaysian GP saga continued to rumble on.

Grilled by the world’s media for over 20 minutes Vettel insisted once more that he hadn’t intended to disobey the now infamous Multi 21 command to hold station behind his team mate – and admitted that he’d made a mistake by ignoring it.

However one of his more intriguing confessions concerned Webber,

“I think being completely honest I never had support from his side,” Vettel said of Webber. “I’ve got a lot of support from the team, and I think the team is supporting both of us the same way. But in terms of my relationship to Mark, I respect him a lot as a racing driver, but I think there was more than one occasion in the past where he could have helped the team, and he didn’t.”

Asked if that had contributed to his behaviour in Malaysia, he said: “Probably you could say indirectly. But as I tried to explain to you after the race, it’s probably always best to be truthful. Maybe sometimes the truth is not what the people want to hear, because as you can see, controversy is more popular than the truth.

“I told you after the race what happened. I was racing, and as a racing driver I was solely focussed on winning the race. I got a call on the radio, which I heard, but I didn’t understand at the time. I should have understood it. That’s why I apologised to the team, because with my action I put myself above the team, but that wasn’t the intention. Whether you believe me or not is up to you.

“I didn’t obey the team’s order, which as I said was not my intention. My intention for sure if you look at it as a racing driver was to win the race, so I don’t apologise for winning the race.”

Asked whether he had faced any sanctions from the team, he joked: “There are a lot of marks on my back! No, as I said I like to deal with these things face-to-face. I’ve always been open, I think I’ve always been truthful, so if I have something to admit or talk about, something that I did wrong, I have no problem admitting it. It’s probably not always the easiest to tell the truth, but that’s what I did straight away after the race to you, and straight to the team to explain myself.

“As I said my intention was not to put my interest above the team’s interest, because as I see my position, I’m a team member, so I’m one of them. The team is putting a lot of effort to give me a good chance to win races, to have a strong car, and ultimately trust me. I want to give that trust back as much as I can.”

Nico Rosberg admits that the problems over the Mercedes team orders in Malaysia arose because the scenario had not been discussed properly beforehand.

Rosberg, who was told to hold station behind a fuel troubled Lewis Hamilton, insists that the situation has now been addressed.

“We’ve definitely discussed it and it’s all sorted for the future, which is important, so yes,” he said.

“The difficulty was that we hadn’t really discussed them beforehand, you know? And so that was the mistake that we did. So, important going forward is that everything is discussed and then whichever way it goes, if I’m in front and Lewis is behind then he will respect it and vice versa.

“Then it’s OK. As long as one is prepared for it and it’s discussed well and understood, that’s the important thing and that’s the main mistake we did as a team.”

Meanwhile Rosberg, who has always shone in China for Mercedes and won last year, is excited about this race.

“I’m really looking forward to this weekend. Massively motivated because I led the race here the last years, and finally winning it last year. So this track works really well for me, for the car and I’m convinced I can do a really good result here.”

Questioned about the Malaysian GP team orders saga today Fernando Alonso insisted that drivers have an obligation to do their job, and indicated that he would obey instructions in similar circumstances.

“As a driver, one always wants to win and to do whatever it takes to win,” said Alonso. “However, what counts are the priorities of your team, so it’s difficult to comment or have an opinion on what Red Bull and Mercedes did in the last race, without knowing what discussions they had beforehand.

“But like I say, when we come to F1, we enter an agreement with our team and we have a professional obligation towards that team and sometimes people confuse team orders with the obligation to do one’s job.”

Alonso, who retired after his wing fell in Malaysia, said he was not worried about failing to finish there.

“I am not concerned about the fact I did not score points in Malaysia, because everyone has at least two or three DNFs per season in F1. Although I hope not, I guess it will happen to me again this year, because of the law of averages.

“We need to be prepared for that and also be prepared to take any opportunity and try and score maximum points when it happens to our rivals. It was a shame that there was that contact at the second corner, but as regards stopping or not stopping, I think the damage was already done. Now, we will try and be a little bit more careful, leave a bit more of a margin and hopefully, it won’t happen again.”

Asked whether Felipe Massa’s recent qualifying form was influenced by Alonso working more towards a race set-up the Spaniard didn’t want to use that as an excuse.

“It’s not that, but I think he is doing a fantastic job and driving at a hundred percent. However, to talk about the last four races is a strange calculation, as it involves races from last year as well as this one and the conditions in the qualifying sessions in Melbourne and Malaysia were not so normal.

“Like I say, he is doing a good job and I hope I can qualify in front of him for a few races this year and if I manage to do that, it will need to be with a fantastic lap.”