The 2010 Chinese Grand Prix (officially the 2010 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race held before approximately 85,000 spectators at the Shanghai International Circuit in the Jiading District of Shanghai on 18 April 2010. It was the fourth race of the 2010 Formula One World Championship and the seventh Chinese Grand Prix. McLaren driver Jenson Button won the 56-lap race starting from fifth position. His teammate Lewis Hamilton finished in second and Nico Rosberg of the Mercedes team was third.
Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel qualified on pole position for the eighth time of his career by posting the fastest lap in qualifying. Ferrari's Fernando Alonso started from third and passed both Red Bull cars into the first corner. However, the stewards deemed that he had jumped the start and incurred a drive-through penalty. The safety car was deployed on the first lap, after a three-car collision at turn six, and remained out for four laps. Rosberg led from laps three to 19 until Button overtook him. Intermittent rain made track conditions slippery though Button maintained the lead for the rest of the race to secure his second victory of the season and the ninth of his career.
Button's win promoted him to the lead of the World Drivers' Championship for the first time in the season from Massa. Rosberg moved to second while Alonso dropped to third and tied on championship points with Hamilton. Vettel fell from joint third to fifth in the standings. The lead of the World Constructors' Championship changed from Ferrari to McLaren as Red Bull maintained a hold on third place with 15 races remaining in the season.
Background
The 2010 Chinese Grand Prix was the fourth of 19 scheduled races of the 2010 Formula One World Championship and the seventh running of the event. It was held at the 16-turn Shanghai International Circuit in the Jiading District of Shanghai on 18 April. Tyre supplier Bridgestone brought four tyre types to the race: the soft "options" and hard "primes" dry compounds and the intermediate and full wet-weather compounds. The soft compounds were denoted by a green stripe on their side-walls; the wet compound tyres were identified by a green line at the bottom of their central groove. A total of 12 teams (each representing a different constructor) each entered two drivers for the Grand Prix with one driver entered only for the first free practice session in Paul di Resta.
Going into the race, Ferrari driver Felipe Massa led the World Drivers' Championship with 39 championship points, two ahead of his teammate Fernando Alonso in second and jointly held the position with the leading Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel, who had won the two weeks earlier. Jenson Button of McLaren and Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg were tied for fourth with 35 championship points. Ferrari led the World Constructors' Championship with 76 championship points and McLaren were a further ten championship points behind in second. Red Bull were third with 61 championship points, Mercedes were fourth with 44 championship points and Renault was fifth with 30 championship points.
Button had won the and his teammate Lewis Hamilton finished sixth in the previous two races of the season. Despite this, the McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh said that the team did not meet its targets but sought to establish themselves at the front of the field, "One of the greatest qualities of this team is its considerable strength in depth. After establishing a strong and solid start to the season, we're confident we'll become an even more formidable contender as we head into China and then the start of the European season." Other teams in the field predicted the team would have an advantage with the MP4-25s F-duct (a device which increases the top speed of a car by stalling the rear wing), though Hamilton said he expected Red Bull and Ferrari to challenge them, while Button stated he was uncertain whether his car would be quick enough in qualifying trim but felt it was fast for the race, "I feel that when I get to Barcelona, I'll have everything that I want to be 100 per cent. Where I am at the moment is already very good, I'm very comfortable with the car and everyone in the team."
Two weeks before the race, the governing body of motor racing, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), wrote to all of the teams that any system discovered to make adjustments to the suspension and ride height of a car to achieve an aerodynamic advantage while in parc fermé conditions after the end of qualifying and before the start of a race would be outlawed under Article 34.5 of the F1 Sporting Regulations and Article 3.15 of the Technical Regulations. It came after McLaren suggested that Red Bull had used a ride height device on the RB6 at the preceding Malaysian Grand Prix, which the latter outfit denied. The team's engineering director Paddy Lowe stated that they had stopped development on its own suspension system after clarification was confirmed, "We were aware over the last few months of a different approach to it [the suspension system]; an approach which historically we hadn't thought to be the typical interpretation [of the regulations], and we were reacting to that."
Several teams made modifications to their cars in preparation for the event. Red Bull installed a small vertical exhaust duct to the rear of the RB6 to stop hot air from hitting the exhaust onto its rear wheels and better direct airflow towards the diffuser's side channel. Mercedes introduced a modified rear wing controlled by pressure sensors to feed airflow through two small openings and the back of its flap. Ferrari brought a revised aerodynamic package for the F10, which included a new frontal and curved splitter, an altered diffuser, and an extra vane to straighten the flow of air beside the splitter. During the Friday practice sessions, Alonso tested a modified rear wing, which directed air onto its flap and onto the diffuser's leading edge via a curved pipe. The Williams and Renault teams changed the end plates on both of their car's front wings as the latter constructor opted to mount small vortex generators behind the rearview mirrors to the side of the cockpit.
Practice
There were three practice sessions held in accordance with the 2010 regulations: two 90-minute sessions on Friday morning and afternoon and one 60-minute session on Saturday morning. In the first practice session, held in hazy and cold weather conditions, Button was fastest with a lap of 1:36.677, with his teammate Hamilton third. They were separated by Rosberg in second and Michael Schumacher in the other Mercedes was fourth. Vettel was fifth-fastest, ahead of the Renaults of Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov. Red Bull's Mark Webber, Adrian Sutil for Force India and Massa followed in eighth to tenth. Alonso stopped at the exit of turn six after 54 minutes with a right-hand exhaust bank bay fire that prevented him from recording a lap.
With ten minutes remaining, the front wheels on Sébastien Buemi's Toro Rosso sheared under braking the turn 14 hairpin due to the right-front upright failing, causing the front-right wheel to break free. The front-left wheel followed suit when its upright section was suddenly forced to bear the entire load of the front. He was pitched into a gravel trap and a barrier at high speed. Although Buemi was unhurt, the FIA race director Charlie Whiting stopped the session for debris clearing and his teammate Jaime Alguersuari was kept in the garage while the team investigated the cause of the incident. Virgin driver Timo Glock's front wing shattered and the Lotus of Jarno Trulli shed its diffuser, both through bottoming out on a bump approaching turn one.
McLaren continued to run strong with Hamilton setting the day's fastest lap of 1:35.217 on the soft compound tyres in the second practice session and his teammate Button was third. The Mercedes of Rosberg and Schumacher duplicated their first practice session results in second and fourth. Vettel, Webber, Sutil, Alguersuari, Kubica and Alonso followed in the top ten. During the session, where several drivers pirouetted and ran off the circuit, Buemi was unable to set a lap time because his car was rebuilt by Toro Rosso and Heikki Kovalainen stopped his Lotus at the side of the track towards the conclusion of practice with fading oil pressure.
The final practice session was held in dry weather conditions. Hamilton set the initial pace before Webber recorded the overall fastest lap on the soft compound tyres at 1:35.323. Hamilton was second and Vettel third. Button, Alonso, Rosberg, Schumacher, Kubica, Massa and Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi completed the top ten ahead of qualifying. Though the session passed relatively peacefully, Petrov ran wide onto the artificial grass leaving the final corner and he lost control of his Renault. He skidded across a gravel trap and crashed heavily into a tyre barrier with the front of his car. Although Petrov was unhurt, Whiting stopped the session for seven minutes to allow track marshals to clear debris.
Qualifying
Saturday afternoon's qualifying session was split into three parts. The first part ran for 20 minutes, eliminating cars that finished the session 18th or lower. The second part lasted 15 minutes, eliminated cars that finished 11th to 17th. The final ten-minute session determined pole position to tenth. Cars in the final session were not allowed to change tyres, using the tyres with which they set their quickest lap times. Conditions were warm and dry. Vettel altered the setup of his car to be more aligned with his teammate Webber but he struggled with its handling. Nonetheless, he went fastest in the third session to take his third pole position of the season and the eighth of his career with a time of 1:34.558 set on his final lap of qualifying. He was joined on the grid's front row by Webber, who was 0.248 seconds slower and had the pole position until Vettel's lap. Alonso felt more comfortable driving on the hard compound tyres and took third while Rosberg in fourth worked with his race engineer Jock Clear to find a setup he liked. Button, on the soft compound tyre, used an unbalanced car that required a change of differential and front wing settings put him fifth. Hamilton was fastest in the first and second sessions although car troubles in the final session left him sixth. An untidy lap and a driver error in the final corner qualified Massa seventh and Kubica was the faster of the two Renaults in eighth. Limited rear grip that slowed Schumacher in ninth and restricted his cornering ability at certain areas of the circuit. Sutil, tenth, reported oversteer in the middle sector.