The 2014 Chinese Grand Prix (formally the 2014 Formula 1 UBS Chinese Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race that was held on 20 April 2014 at the Shanghai International Circuit, Shanghai, China. The race was the fourth round of the 2014 Formula One season, and marked the eleventh time that the Chinese Grand Prix was held as a round for the Formula One World Championship.

Lewis Hamilton won the race comfortably after starting from pole position, leading from start to finish driving for the Mercedes team. Nico Rosberg finished second in the other Mercedes with Fernando Alonso third in a Ferrari. Although contested over 56 laps, the race result was declared after 54 laps, as the chequered flag was shown one lap early through a marshalling error. The leading positions were not affected by this error.

As a consequence of the race, Rosberg's lead in the Drivers' Championship was reduced to four points, with Alonso a further thirty-four behind. In the World Constructors Championship, Red Bull Racing passed Force India for second position, ninety-six points behind Mercedes.

Report

Background Heading into the fourth round of the season, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg was leading the Drivers' Championship with 61 points; Rosberg's teammate Lewis Hamilton was second on 50 points, 11 points behind Rosberg. Behind Rosberg and Hamilton in the Drivers' Championship, Nico Hülkenberg was third on 28 points, with Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button on 26 and 23 points respectively. In the Constructors Championship, Mercedes were leading with 111 points and Force India were second on 44 points, with McLaren third on 43 points.

Prior to the race weekend, Stefano Domenicali resigned from position as Ferrari team principal citing the team's poor start to the season and their longest winless streak for 18 years. Domenicali was replaced by the President and CEO of Ferrari North America Marco Mattiacci.

Like the 2013 Chinese Grand Prix, tyre supplier Pirelli brought its white-banded medium compound tyre as the harder "prime" tyre and the yellow-banded soft compound tyre as the softer "option" tyre.

Practice and qualifying Three practice sessions were held before the race; the first on Friday morning and the second on Friday afternoon. Both sessions lasted one and a half hours. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour.

The qualifying session held on Saturday afternoon was split into three parts. The first part ran for 18 minutes and eliminated the cars from qualifying that finished the session 16th or lower. The second part of qualifying lasted 15 minutes and eliminated cars that finished in positions 11 to 16. The final part of qualifying determined the positions from first to tenth, and decided pole position.

Qualifying took place under wet conditions, with all drivers using either intermediate or full wet tyres. Hamilton clinched his third pole position for the season, with a time of 1:53.860. As a result, Hamilton became the British driver with the highest number of pole positions, surpassing Jim Clark's record of 33. He was joined on the front row of the grid by Riccardo with Vettel qualifying third. Rosberg qualified fourth, 1.2 seconds behind Hamilton and Alonso qualified fifth. Massa, Bottas, Hulkenberg, Jean-Éric Vergne and Romain Grosjean rounded out the top ten. Räikkönen only managed 11th — missing out on the top ten for the second time in having struggled with the balance and handling of his car during the session. Jenson Button was the best placed McLaren in 12th, ahead of Daniil Kvyat, Adrian Sutil, Button's teammate Kevin Magnussen, with Sergio Pérez qualifying 16th. Esteban Gutiérrez was 17th, with the rest of the field consisting of the Caterham and Marussia cars. Lotus driver Pastor Maldonado did not take part in the qualifying sessions, but was allowed to start the race.

Race The race, unlike qualifying, took place on a dry track. When the lights went out, Lewis Hamilton maintained the lead, followed by Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso (who also had contact with Felipe Massa), Daniel Ricciardo and Massa himself. Further behind, the cars of Nico Rosberg and Valtteri Bottas touched, but both were able to continue the race.

On lap four, Rosberg began his comeback, passing Massa first, then, on lap 16, Ricciardo. Three laps later, Massa made his first tyre change: a problem with the rear wheels stopped him in the pits for a long time. On lap 12, Alonso also pitted, while Vettel completed another lap. The German, after his tyre change, found himself behind the Spaniard. Rosberg made his tyre change on lap 14; two laps later, it was Ricciardo's turn.

On lap 22, Rosberg gained another position, passing Vettel, for third place. The world champion suffered from problems with his Red Bull, so much so that he also gave way to Daniel Ricciardo, his teammate, on lap 25. The race still saw Lewis Hamilton in the lead, followed by Alonso, Rosberg, Ricciardo, Vettel, Nico Hülkenberg and Bottas.

Now closely followed by Rosberg, on lap thirty-four, Alonso went for his second tyre change: this allowed him, with fresh tyres, to widen the gap on the German Mercedes driver. Rosberg and Ricciardo went to change tyres again on lap 38. One lap later, the leader Hamilton also changed tyres. On lap 43, Rosberg overtook Alonso and moved into second place. In the final laps, Ricciardo got closer to Alonso, but was unable to worry him.

The race was raced over 56 laps, however the chequered flag was shown to Lewis Hamilton at end of lap 55 by mistake. According to Article 43.2 of the FIA Sporting Regulations this meant that the race officially finished at the end of lap 54. This meant that Kamui Kobayashi's overtake of Jules Bianchi on the final lap did not stand.

Lewis Hamilton, for the first time in his F1 career, won three races in a row, ahead of Rosberg and Alonso. Hamilton, Rosberg and Alonso had not been on the podium together since the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. For Mercedes, it was the hundredth consecutive Grand Prix in which they scored points as an engine designer.

Post-race

As a consequence of the race, Hamilton reduced Rosberg's lead over him in the Drivers' Championship to four points. Alonso moved up to third position passing Hülkenberg with Vettel maintaining fifth place and Ricciardo moved from 10th to 6th. In the Constructors' Championship, Mercedes increased their lead, with Red Bull jumping ahead of Force India for second position and Ferrari moving to fourth, ahead of McLaren who fell from third to fifth position.

Classification

Qualifying Driver Constructor Q1 Q2 Q3 1 44 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:55.516 1:54.029 1:53.860 1 2 3 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing-Renault 1:56.641 1:55.302 1:54.455 2 3 1 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull Racing-Renault 1:55.926 1:54.499 1:54.960 3 4 6 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:56.058 1:55.294 1:55.143 4 5 14 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:56.961 1:55.765 1:55.637 5 6 19 Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes 1:56.850 1:56.757 1:56.147 6 7 77 Valtteri Bottas Williams-Mercedes 1:56.501 1:56.253 1:56.282 7 8 27 Nico Hülkenberg Force India-Mercedes 1:55.913 1:56.847 1:56.366 8 9 25 Jean-Éric Vergne Toro Rosso-Renault 1:57.477 1:56.584 1:56.773 9 10 8 Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault 1:58.411 1:56.407 1:57.079 10 11 7 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 1:58.279 1:56.860 11 12 22 Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1:57.783 1:56.963 12 13 26 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso-Renault 1:57.261 1:57.289 13 14 99 Adrian Sutil Sauber-Ferrari 1:58.138 1:57.393 14 15 20 Kevin Magnussen McLaren-Mercedes 1:57.369 1:57.675 15 16 11 Sergio Pérez Force India-Mercedes 1:58.362 1:58.264 16 17 21 Esteban Gutiérrez Sauber-Ferrari 1:58.988 17 18 10 Kamui Kobayashi Caterham-Renault 1:59.260 18 19 17 Jules Bianchi Marussia-Ferrari 1:59.326 19 20 9 Marcus Ericsson Caterham-Renault 2:00.646 20 21 4 Max Chilton Marussia-Ferrari 2:00.865 21 107% time: 2:03.602 13 Pastor Maldonado Lotus-Renault No time 22 Source: Notes  — Pastor Maldonado failed to set a lap time within 107% of the fastest lap time set by Lewis Hamilton in Q1. He was later given permission to start by race stewards. Maldonado was also penalised five places on the starting grid for the accident he caused in the previous Grand Prix.

Race Driver Constructor Laps Time/Retired Grid Points 1 44 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 54 1:33:28.338 1 25 2 6 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 54 +18.062 4 18 3 14 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 54 +23.604 5 15 4 3 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing-Renault 54 +27.136 2 12 5 1 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull Racing-Renault 54 +47.778 3 10 6 27 Nico Hülkenberg Force India-Mercedes 54 +54.295 8 8 7 77 Valtteri Bottas Williams-Mercedes 54 +55.697 7 6 8 7 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 54 +1:16.335 11 4 9 11 Sergio Pérez Force India-Mercedes 54 +1:22.647 16 2 10 26 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso-Renault 53 +1 Lap 13 1 11 22 Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 53 +1 Lap 12 12 25 Jean-Éric Vergne Toro Rosso-Renault 53 +1 Lap 9 13 20 Kevin Magnussen McLaren-Mercedes 53 +1 Lap 15 14 13 Pastor Maldonado Lotus-Renault 53 +1 Lap 22 15 19 Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes 53 +1 Lap 6 16 21 Esteban Gutiérrez Sauber-Ferrari 53 +1 Lap 17 17 17 Jules Bianchi Marussia-Ferrari 53 +1 Lap 19 18 10 Kamui Kobayashi Caterham-Renault 53 +1 Lap 18 19 4 Max Chilton Marussia-Ferrari 52 +2 Laps 21 20 9 Marcus Ericsson Caterham-Renault 52 +2 Laps 20 8 Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault 28 Gearbox 10 99 Adrian Sutil Sauber-Ferrari 5 Engine 14 Source:

Championship standings after the race

Drivers' Championship standings Driver Points 1 Nico Rosberg 79 2 Lewis Hamilton 75 1 3 Fernando Alonso 41 1 4 Nico Hülkenberg 36 1 5 Sebastian Vettel 33Source:

Constructors' Championship standings Constructor Points 1 Mercedes 154 2 2 Red Bull Racing-Renault 57 1 3 Force India-Mercedes 54 1 4 Ferrari 52 2 5 McLaren-Mercedes 43Source:

Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.

References

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