Fernando Alonso

Lewis Hamilton

On Saturday, Lewis Hamilton put on a perfect lap to take his 27th pole position of the career. The next day, he got a clear start and made a small gap to rest of the field before his tyres started degrading. By lap 5, he was helpless and fell prey to the two Ferraris as he slipped down to 3rd place. During the first round of pitstops, Hamilton gained a place over Massa but was still behind Alonso. He was unable to take advantage of traffic to overtake Alonso, as he could do last year in USA to overtake Vettel for race lead. He then lost to Kimi Raikkonen during the 3rd stop but chased him for the rest of the race before a late charge from Vettel forced him to defend his position rather than attack for 2nd place. Thus, though Hamilton lost two places in the race from where he qualified on, he did justice to his car, which, though is probably the fastest in qualifying, but still struggles in terms of race pace and tyre degradation.

Sebastian Vettel

Sebastian Vettel tried a different strategy during the Chinese Grand Prix. He didn’t set any lap time in the final round of qualifying and was free to choose between two sets of tyre compounds. He went for medium tyres, which took him to second place during the first part of the race as those on soft tyres pitted within the first 10 laps. He then overtook Nico Hulkenberg in the pits and briefly led the race after Alonso’s second stop, though Alonso charged back to take first place from the triple world champion. In this situation, the German had to stop again for soft tyres and he left the decision until the last 5 laps. He came out in 5th place and chased Hamilton by three seconds a lap and ended the race on the rear wing of the British driver. After the race, he said that he could have overtaken Hamilton for final spot on the podium had he not run out of laps.

Jenson Button

Daniel Ricciardo

You don’t need to win races or finish on the podium to prove that you are a good racing driver. Daniel Ricciardo proved that throughout this race weekend in what is an important year for future of the Toro Rosso driver in F1. Ricciardo qualified for the race in 7th place, his best qualifying result since Bahrain 2012. Despite losing to rivals in the first part of the race and on a new front wing, he fought his way back to points and chased Massa before finishing the race in a career best 7th place.

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— Justice For The 96 (@rishabh_lfc7) April 15, 2013

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