Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton continued his clean sweep of pole positions throughout the 2015 season and claimed his fifth pole in China, thanks to a time of 1m35.782s on the P Zero Yellow soft tyre. His team mate Nico Rosberg lines up alongside him on the grid tomorrow, just 0.042 seconds behind.

Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director: “We’re expecting similar weather conditions for the race as we have seen today, so this should open up a number of strategic options with the increased performance of the soft tyre. However, we’ve also seen quite a few differences in tyre performances within the teams, so this provides an interesting variable. With the tyres of course being identical for everybody, it’s down to every team to make the most of the package they have and this will be the focus of the data analysis tonight. We would expect two pit stops for most drivers, but there is scope to do something different: China has often produced close and unpredictable racing in the past.”

The Pirelli strategy predictor:

Three stops is on paper the quickest option (by one second) for the 56-lap race, but this carries a risk of feeding back into traffic – although overtaking in China is easier than on many circuits, thanks to a wide track layout and several passing opportunities. The fastest three-stopper is: start on soft, change to soft on lap 10, soft again on lap 25 and medium on lap 43. In practice, a two-stopper is more likely. The best strategy in this case would be to start on soft, soft again on lap 12 and then medium on lap 27. If degradation can be controlled, an intriguing but unlikely possibility would be a one-stopper: start on soft and then change to medium on lap 19.

 

Hamilton had made his intentions clear by angling his car very aggressively towards Rosberg’s on the grid.

He duly held his lead off the line, with Rosberg and Vettel stringing out behind the champion through the first stint.

The situation became more tense in the middle stint of the two-stop race, as both Rosberg and Vettel closed on Hamilton.

A frustrated Rosberg radioed Mercedes asking if Hamilton could speed up, as his tyres were wearing too much whenever he got closer than two seconds away from his team-mate’s rear wing.

When Ferrari brought Vettel in for his second stop ahead of the two Mercedes, Rosberg was pitted a lap later in an effort to prevent his countryman getting an undercut on his new tyres.

But rather than his rivals’ earlier stops putting Hamilton at a disadvantage, he was able to raise his pace considerably on his final laps on soft tyres.

Hamilton ran two laps longer than Rosberg and rejoined with a 6s cushion rather than the 2s advantage he had held prior to the stops.

Rosberg reduced Hamilton’s lead slightly before settling for second.

A safety car appearance with two laps to go – caused by Max Verstappen’s Toro Rosso parking on the pit straight in a cloud of smoke – made things even more comfortable for Hamilton, as the race finished under yellow.

Vettel was not a match for the Mercedes once all were onto medium tyres and fell away in third.

The Malaysian GP winner then came under late pressure from team-mate Kimi Raikkonen.

The Finn quickly cleared both Williams on the opening lap to make up for his qualifying frustration, and though he could not keep pace with the top three at first, he ran long in his middle stint and made up ground.

Raikkonen was still 1.4s behind Vettel when the late safety car came out and had to be content with fourth. Williams ran a lonely and distant fifth and sixth with Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, a minute behind the leaders prior to the field being bunched up.

Lotus scored its first points of the year with Romain Grosjean in seventh, but it was a wild race for his team-mate Pastor Maldonado. The Venezuelan got ahead of Grosjean in the first pitstop sequence, before going down the pitlane entry escape road at his second stop. A spin while trying to recover left him even further behind, and he then became embroiled in a spectacular battle with the McLarens of Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso.

After several fraught laps, this came to a head when Button hit the back of the Lotus at Turn 1, ending Maldonado’s race and prompting a stewards’ investigation. Despite that, McLaren still got its first double finish of 2015 with Alonso and Button’s battered cars 12th and 13th.

Until his late engine failure, Verstappen was on course for eighth, having sliced through the field with some very accomplished overtaking.

But his problem completed a terrible day for Renault and the Red Bull-owned teams.

Daniel Ricciardo had tumbled to 17th with a terrible start and made heavy weather of coming back through the field to ninth between the Saubers of Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson, which scored again.

Pos	Driver	Car	Gap
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1h39m42.008s
2	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	0.714s
3	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	2.988s
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	3.835s
5	Felipe Massa	Williams/Mercedes	8.544s
6	Valtteri Bottas	Williams/Mercedes	9.885s
7	Romain Grosjean	Lotus/Mercedes	19.008s
8	Felipe Nasr	Sauber/Ferrari	22.625s
9	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull/Renault	32.117s
10	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber/Ferrari	1 Lap
11	Sergio Perez	Force India/Mercedes	1 Lap
12	Fernando Alonso	McLaren/Honda	1 Lap
13	Jenson Button	McLaren/Honda	1 Lap
14	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso/Renault	1 Lap
15	Will Stevens	Marussia/Ferrari	2 Laps
16	Roberto Merhi	Marussia/Ferrari	2 Laps
17	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso/Renault	4 Laps
–	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus/Mercedes	Retirement
–	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull/Renault	Retirement
–	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India/Mercedes	Retirement