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Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel have won the first two races of the 2018 F1 season. The Chinese GP in the recent years has been dominated by the Mercedes.
This weekend is all about pride for Mercedes. They have been on pole ever since 201, their best qualifying record at any circuit on the F1 calendar. For their rival Ferrari, it’s about keeping that winning streak going and not allowing Mercedes to get into their winning rhythm.
This season Ferrari have made the most out of their car and have avoided mistakes, both human and technical, which cost them the 2017 world championship
So far Ferrari has ticked all the boxes on Vettel’s car at least. Australia was about executing a brilliant pit strategy for Vettel under the virtual safety car and jumping two cars in front of him to handover Vettel the race lead. The German did not put a foot wrong in spite of coming under pressure from his title rival Hamilton. Bahrain was all about Vettel and his outrageously long stint on the yellow soft tyres and holding off Bottas on the penultimate lap of the race to claim a victory.
Mercedes on the other hand at Australia lost their lead to the Ferrari due to a calculation error in the delta times during a Virtual Safety car. In the Bahrain GP, Mercedes was almost half a second down to their rivals during qualifying and in the race, Bottas almost came close to winning the race but settled for the runners-up and Hamilton finished third.
Both sides of the equation will need to be perfect this weekend.
Ferrari in Bahrain had things go terribly wrong in the pit box with Raikkonen’s car; the unsafe release of Raikkonen in the free practice and again during the race, which also led to a double leg fracture for one of their mechanics.
Shanghai is a track where Mercedes and Hamilton are traditionally strong. The world champion has won it a record five times and the Silver Arrows started winning there with Nico Rosberg from pole back in 2012.
The track brings in the first high-speed corners of the season and that's where Mercedes had their advantage on Ferrari last season. Ferrari has lengthened their current car, in an effort to compensate, albeit not as long a wheelbase as Mercedes.
So this race should be an interesting test of whether the change has had the desired effect on Ferrari. Mercedes looked after its rear supersoft tyres in the race better in Bahrain than the previous years, but they have to work on their qualifying pace as the Ferrari’s looked mighty in the last qualifying session.
Vettel leads the driver’s championship by 17 points ahead of Hamilton and Bottas further 11 points down to his team-mate. Ferrari also lead the constructor’s championship 10 points ahead of Mercedes going into the weekend.
