A day of firsts in Shanghai: How one battle shaped two maiden results
The Chinese Grand Prix saw two firsts - a maiden win for Antonelli and a maiden podium in red for Hamilton, and there's one key moment in the race that links, and perhaps defines, them both.
At just 19 years of age, Kimi Antonelli became the second youngest Grand Prix winner F1 has seen, but also the first Italian to win in twenty years, as he took the chequered flag first in Shanghai. At the same time, Lewis Hamilton ended a 27 race long podium-less streak as he crossed the line in third for Ferrari, taking his first Grand Prix podium for the Scuderia and first podium in any format since the Sprint at this very weekend one year ago.
But what was maybe most striking about how those results came about was how the huge delta and rift Mercedes and Ferrari have to the rest of the grid at the moment created a magnified not only inter-team battle, but intra-team too.
That boiled over in the mid-phase of the race as we saw Hamilton and Leclerc going toe-to-toe, with the new overtake mode dynamics giving rise to passing and re-passing between the two for several laps. Keeping ahead by the conclusion of the battle shaped Hamilton’s podium result for obvious reasons, but it also had a role to play in Antonelli’s result, intertwining these two firsts together…
How we got there…
The Ferraris, once again, had the superior launch off the line and that allowed them to get in front of a Mercedes each until lap two, when Antonelli made it around Hamilton for the lead and Russell was around Leclerc for P3. It took Russell another two laps to take P2 from Hamilton, but that put them into Mercedes and Ferrari pairs, 1-2 and 3-4, respectively.
They ran like that, with the gaps building between the pairings until the safety car emerged for a stranded Lance Stroll. Unlike they had done in Melbourne, Ferrari responded to that by mirroring Mercedes’ strategy - all four cars came in to switch to the hard tyre via two double stacks - which would leave them evenly matched in terms of a tyre delta to the end of the race.
While Antonelli remained in the lead after boxing, Russell, Hamilton and Leclerc’s positions were split over the three cars who’d opted to stay out as they’d started on the hard tyre - Colapinto who sat P2, Ocon who was P3 and Lindblad in P6.
The track went green again as the safety car came in on lap 14, and later that same lap Hamilton worked up to P3 by overtaking the Haas and Leclerc moved up a place around Lindblad. Leclerc then made it around Russell too, to make the order ANT-HAM-LEC-RUS in P1 through P4 once the rest of the drivers who’d stayed out had been cleared.
Although there was still a gap of over two seconds between the Ferrari teammates, out front it was much smaller as Antonelli struggled to get his hard tyres to come to life at the restart while also under pressure from Hamilton.
There was also a similar sized delta from Leclerc back to Russell, but from lap 17 to 22, Leclerc worked to close down to Hamilton all while Russell hung within overtake mode range of him.
The battle begins…
With Hamilton then having dropped back from Antonelli, he became vulnerable to Leclerc’s attack when that gap crossed into the critical <1 second threshold for overtake mode to be available to the car behind. But what perhaps made the battle so thrilling, but also sustained, is that the key overtaking opportunity presented by the turn 14 hairpin would leave the driver overtaken behind at the the overtake mode detection and activation points in and out of turn 16, the final corner. That left them able to use it back on the driver ahead down the main straight, setting up a move into the first corner sequence.
That alternating availability of overtake mode and the passing and re-passing it gave rise to between the Ferraris had a sizeable effect on the Mercedes’ races. First, it made life very difficult for Russell who himself had stuck within a second of the battle. With all three cars on equally aged hard tyres, the Mercedes being quick on the straights but the Ferraris quick in the corners, and there being two of them versus one of him, Russell said getting past was “a little bit challenging”.
As such, he effectively had to wait for the gap between the Ferraris to exceed one second so there was no overtake mode for them to defend from him with.
But the impact of that delay, plus the Ferraris themselves losing time in switching position repeatedly, was that Antonelli could build a much needed gap out front. By the time Russell was around Hamilton on lap 28, but then also past Leclerc by lap 30, the gap between the two Mercedes sat at 7.5 seconds. The intra-Ferrari fight did continue beyond then, and in fact up to lap 42, but had Russell been around them sooner, maintaining a lead would have been much trickier for Antonelli as even Russell admitted that getting caught up in it for as long as he did “gave [him] no chance” at the win.
Controlled to the finish…
Just shy of eight seconds doesn’t sound like much of an advantage to have with 27 laps remaining, but once the battling had calmed down, all of their lap times had to too as the focus switched to managing the hard tyre to the end.
The final phase (lap 28 to 56) saw Russell lapping quickest with Antonelli just 0.066s slower, but Hamilton was over six tenths back for pace and Leclerc was over eight tenths off - a demonstration of just how much further ahead the Mercedes is at this stage of the year.
The relatively even pace between the Mercedes meant Antonelli’s margin out front remained fairly consistent, while the pace delta to Ferrari meant Russell was able to extend a huge 19.7s gap over them, who themselves then had over 28 seconds behind to Bearman who finished P5.
Having such a lead allowed Antonelli a margin for error, which proved critical as he locked up on one of the last tours of the circuit: a mistake that closed his winning margin over Russell down from over nine seconds to just over five by the flag, and one that was perhaps a brief reminder of his relative inexperience after a performance to that point that had not shown evidence of it at all.
Speaking of that incident post-race, Antonelli said, “there’s so much that I’ve learned, but first of all, it’s never to relax too much because today it went well, but it could have been worse.”
"Just always try to stay on point and keep the focus because today at the end I opened the room for mistakes, and the mistake happened.”
That shouldn’t take away from the stunning, controlled, calm drive he put in out front effectively from lights to flag, and there’s an almost poignant feeling about his maiden win being closely linked to Hamilton’s maiden podium at Ferrari, at a time where he seems rejuvenated by this regulation set and the opportunity it has presented to him.
They may be at two very different points in their careers, but for Antonelli this win has now brought him equal with his more experienced teammate for victories this year, and in doing so has made a battle between them seem very possible. If the advantage they’ve shown so far this season grows, that might well be the battle for the title.
And on Ferrari’s side, the stunning race craft shown by Hamilton and equally by Leclerc was striking. Neither driver was willing to yield when it came down to the nitty gritty, with pride and maybe team priority on the table, and Fred Vasseur made it clear post-race that denying them that fight would have been “unfair”.
“I trust both of them and I didn’t want to ask them to freeze the positions, because that would have been unfair,” he said. “They are professionals and today’s battle was good for the team and good for the sport.”
It may have been good for the team at this stage, but should their gap to Mercedes close, particularly if that closing coincides with an opening of the gap they have over the rest of the field, battling as they did could become more costly.