Lewis Hamilton’s dominance of the 2014 Formula One season continued on Sunday when he won the Chinese Grand Prix, his first hat-trick of victories following his triumphs in Malaysia and Bahrain.
It was his third victory out of four this season and the 25th of his career, passing Juan Manuel Fangio and drawing level with Jim Clark and Niki Lauda.
He still trails his Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg in the world championship because of his failure to finish the opening race in Australia. The gap, however, is now down to four points.
Rosberg completed his own hat-trick of second places, while third place went to Fernando Alonso with an improved Ferrari performance.
But the most interesting aspect of the race was the battle for the spoils at Red Bull, with Daniel Ricciardo once again proving too fast for his team-mate Sebastian Vettel, the four-time world champion. If this continues for much longer we may have to reassess the German's greatness.
But for his disqualification from second place in the opening race in his native Australia last month, Ricciardo would now be leading Vettel in the championship. The Australian has beaten him three times out of four in qualifying and consistently outpaced him in racing mode.
Red Bull's team principal Christian Horner looked a worried man when his two drivers came together on the 25th lap. Vettel did not take kindly to being ordered to move over for the faster Ricciardo for the second time this season.
Vettel wanted to know what tyres Ricciardo was on. He was told: “Primes, but he stopped later than you”. Vettel replied “tough luck”. A little later he did appear to let Ricciardo through, but he certainly made him battle for it.
But the afternoon belonged to Hamilton, who streaked away from pole and beat the pursuing Rosberg by 18.6 seconds at the end. Rosberg's poor start from fourth on the grid was made worse when he clashed with the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and he dropped back to seventh.
Hamilton, however, could view any mayhem in his rearview mirror. “I can’t believe how amazing the team is,” he said. “I was racing myself. It feels great. I’m so happy. We’re going to keep pushing, keep moving forward.”
Hamilton said he was shown the checkered flag a lap early. “It was very, very strange. But I kept going and it was good to do another lap.”
Rosberg said: “The whole weekend went badly for me and I didn’t have telemetry for the race. But I’m leading the championship.”
With Hamilton racing himself, it was left to Rosberg to make the moves, which he did to go past Nico Hulkenberg and then Felipe Massa before overtaking the Red Bull pair, Ricciardo to go fourth and then Vettel to go third before accounting for Alonso. But Rosberg knows he has Hamilton right on his tail now.
(Guardian Service)
