All of those who do not think that KERS and DRS and the new Pirelli tyres are not doing a good job to make for better racing in F1 should think again. Shanghai was a humdinger of a race with some terrific fights and a seesaw battle that was not resolved until the final few laps. It featured brilliant drives by several of the top F1 drivers, notably Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Mark Webber. Sebastian Vettel did everything he could but the strategy was wrong. There were good performances too from Felipe Massa and Nico Rosberg and the only real disappointment was Fernando Alonso, who seems to have trouble with his DRS system. For those who are interested, here is the lap chart. There is also the Pirelli list of who was using what and when.
The one thing that has not been mentioned much is the size of the crowd. We are used to seeing half-empty grandstands in Shanghai but a change in ticket pricing policy, which reduced the costs involved, resulted in a crowd on Sunday of 91,000 people. The full weekend figure was 163,000. This is a significant breakthrough for the Chinese GP.
Karthikeyan did it with 1 stop? Good stuff!
Some people just like to moan, if there was no action they’d moan, give them action aplenty and they’ll moan about that too.
Some people live in the ‘rose tinted’ past.
Some are only happy if their favourite driver or team wins.
Some think they know better than the FIA, FOTA, FOWC and all the working groups put together, so will moan if their ideas aren’t incorporated.
Some are really fans of other motor sports, and pretend to be F1 fans so they can say “I’m never watching F1 again, you should all watch A1 instead.”
Plus the internet is the place for the vocal minority, 5.14 million people in the UK got up to watch the Chinese GP, how many have complained about too much on track action?
I’m still catching my breath and will be watching it again before the Turkish GP.
Incidentally, there were 85 passes (not including the first lap), which is a record number for any Grand Prix.
Even more than the 82 at last year’s wet race.
problem with attendances in China (and to certain extent in Malaysia too) is Friday and Saturday when the grandstands are totally empty. Compare that with Melbourne or Silverstone or Monza where it more less full at least from Friday (if not Thursday) …
one reason may be still not really educated local F1 audience that may not really see the point going to track when there is no actual race. the main issue probably is the fact that it is not that easy for people to in these parts of the world to take day off and go watch races. and although China officially practices 5 days working week working on Saturday is still very common …
F1Wolf,
70,000-odd on Saturday is hardly empty
Huge respect for the lap chart Joe. What a difficult job that must have been.
What a superb race. More like that please!
There was a good crowd? The TV pictures didn’t do a good job of conveying that. There were a lot of shots along the long straight showing cars exiting turn 13, and it looked like there was huge, totally empty grandstand right at the start of the straight.
Nazdakka,
I guess that there is a good reason to go to the races and spot things like that. It is quite hard to hide 91,000 people…
I was in favour of all the new rules pre season, and KERs and particuarly the very diiferent Pirelli tyres have been fantastic and should be retained in future.
DRS? Not so sure about it really, there were a couple of points during the last couple of GPs when I felt good drivers in slower cars couldnt do anything to keep out of position front runners behind them, and its this situation that has previously brought entertaining racing and allowed drivers in less competitive cars to show off their talent. That said perhaps if this had prevented Hamilton and Webber fighting through the field then we wouldnt have had the exciting end to the race we got in China!
I also think though that once F1 introduces the 2013 rule changes then they need to freeze the rules for between 4 and 6 years to allow the teams to close up. I remember in 2008 (maybe?) a couple of years stability in the rules closed up the field as finding gains at the front became more and more difficult, and allowed teams with smaller budgets to evolve existing designs very effectively. At the end of the day a more competitive field of cars will always allow the best drivers to be very competitive.
well I was not there, I am only judging from what was visible on TV screens. Friday looked very empty, Saturday also empty during practice, better for quali
the venue is very large so there may be 70,000 people and the grandstands still may not look too full. they looked full on Sunday though, except the one covered with ad for Jiading area …
Before the season, I didn’t like the idea of DRS. Now I’ve seen how it works, though, I’m happy to admit I was wrong. It has spiced up the racing. Pirelli have also done a cracking job with the tyres. Now all we need is for McLaren and Ferrari to sort out some qualifying speed so Vettel doesn’t make Q3 so predictable each week…..that could take a fair bit of time to perfect, mind!
Impressive attendance numbers. You’re right Joe, 70,000 on Saturday, and 91,000 on Sunday is pretty impressive. Even more so when you consider they don’t have many support categories.
Karen, just wait 10-15 years when the current years will be included in the good old days. Yes, even when Schumacher dominated.
@F1Wolf
Compare that to Spa.
70,000 on a Saturday in China is 18,000 more than Spa on race day.
I thought the race was brilliant and I don’t care what circumstances made it so – more races like that please!
Joe – your lap chart with the columns looks a little like those old Chinese texts written in column form too
– Amazing how you were able to follow that as it was a little tricky at times, but excellent viewing nonetheless.
May I ask how you obtained that Pirelli chart? Is it something available to the public (like the FIA documents are)?
Rubbergoat,
It is a Pirelli press release.
Tyre strategies will be interesting going forward.
Even if a 3 stopper isn’t always the best strategy, you’d have to wonder if it would be worth running the hards in q3 to save a set of softs for later in the race when the fuel loads are lower.
Was a great race.
Racing or roulette? Count me as feeling the new version of F1 has little to do with sport and more to do with pleasing the ADD crowd.
Joe, I think there’s a mistake in pit stop list. Perez was given drive through and stop and go, not two drive through penalties.
Konsalnet
Talk to Pirelli. It is their list…
Joe, interesting stats. Do you know if all of Hamiltons tyres were new (apart from the first set of soft tyres obviously)?
Interesting that you rate Button’s drive as great Joe. I thought he was a bit off form, the pit incident and getting passed by his team mate weren’t good for him. I actually think JB is a little too easy to overtake, I look back at China and think why not close the door like most others would? Then I consider Singapore last season where he was ahead of Lewis into turn one from the grid and basically let him back past. And then I think of Turkey Last year where yet again Jenson jumped out of the way (granted that was to avoid a collasion). The point is JB needs to stamp his authority a bit in this respect, because Hamilton has no fear of sticking his car in a place where the likes of Alonso, Schumacher, Massa, Vettel or Webber would chop across it, whilst Button gives the place up.
I agree that RBR got Vettels strategy wrong, I think he drove a great race (bar his start), and because of the fluctuation of tyre performance people assume he didn’t do well. Not so I’d say.
@Aron – nothing amazing about Narain’s one stopper, 3-4 laps from the end of the race he had around 18-20 secs of lead over Liuzzi, all of which got obliterated thanks to soldiering on the dead tyres. If HRT management and Colles is cognizant to the fact that Narain’s sponsors are paying their bills they should have brought Narain in put fresh tyres and sent him out he would have still finished ahead of his team mate.
Unless of course Pirelli was paying the team to do some tire testing on race sunday.
While finishing 22-23 is not a big deal to sweat over, but a year down the line some ignorant fan is going to wave the race result and claim that Narain was beaten by Liuzzi, and all the details are going to be swept under the carpet.
@Joe – People working in F1 work on cars and should know when they are debugging a problem in the car, they change one variable at a time and try to isolate the root cause, Tyres, KERS, DRS are changing too many variables and while those related to F1 may not like it, all the variable changes resulted in doctored racing.
Simple solution to problem is reduce aerodymics increase mechanical grip, but F1 in its typical style has made teams spend zillions (all the while harping cost saving, and budget cap) and come up with fake overtakes.
a) Increase Mechanical Grip b) Reduce Aero reliance c) encourage drivers to overtake on track, don’t get irritated if they get in wake of car ahead and disturb aero balance and which requires longer pitstop (to give additional wing to car).
JPM overtook car in the days of refuelling and tyre changes, when cars were effectively light enough to be running sprints between pit-stops and had fresh tyres on them. So effectively the car ahead was not handicapped in like it is since rule changes of 2006 tyres, KERS, DRS, DDD and what not . Goes to underlines the importance of driver mindset in close racing and overtaking on track.
Alas what would F1 be if it implements cost-effective solutions.
I picked up on something you said last week though – clearly journalists do their best to get out of China after the race. I thought the race was FANTASTIC but there was barely any reporting on it. Your GP+ was a standout but China needs to wake up and realize that if they made it easier to report it would reflect well not only on F1 but China as well.
Depends what you call better racing. Strategy becomes more important than gutsy racing, and that is a step backward for F1, imho.
Yes, we saw a lot of overtaking actions, but when on new tyres compared too worn tyres, it is getting too easy imho. In this case even a Force India (using DRS as well) can pass a Red Bull (which actually happened). That’s not racing, that is only show.
You can call me old fashioned, but I just don’t like races being won or lost just because of the tyres. I rather would like the fastest driver in the fastest car win the race on it’s own merit, not by strategy.
And DRS is just unfair, because the car in front cannot use it. And it is only addressing straight line speed, not the real problem, which is that it is not possible to slipstream through corners. IMHO that should be addressed (with altered car design), not some fancy gimmick that takes care of a symptom, but not curing the patient.
DRS is fake and unnecessary. The tyres do a wonderful job. What I’d like to see now is longer pit-stops so that 1-2 stop strategies were as feasible as 3 stoppers. That would create even more speed differentials in the field due to vastly different strategies and tyre conditions, and more close fights for position (it’s not about passing, it’s a bout fighting!).
One thing that MUST improve in any case is the information about tires on the screen graphics and on Live Timing. In IndyCar they have an additional column in the T&S screen to indicate the currently used tyre for each car. F1 could even include the previously used tyres e.g. P-O-O (prime-option-option).
@Paul. the drivers are on different strategy’s all the time. not to mention they are racing for the same team and points are all that matter at the end of the day/year. it’s probably better they don’t fight it out in a tight situation as much as we would enjoy it.
JB’s race was great until his little problem in the Red Bull pit box, and then his head was done in — out of sync, passed by Lewis, immediately dropped off the pace, and then later let Webber by without even really bothering to fight.
I hope he has a little chat with himself a la Vettel after Hungary, because he clearly has the pace when he needs to, he understands this car better than last year’s, and he has some skills that Lewis can’t match. But he seems to have a soft streak that manifests itself with unsettling frequency. Breaking up with Jessica last year was probably an attempt to refocus on racing (in fact I think he said something of the sort at the time) but that’s obviously not the kind of stimulus he needs.
I don’t think you have to be a ruthless bastard to be a strong driver, but there needs to be an immovable core in there somewhere. Drivers like Hamilton, Alonso and Schumacher occupy various positions along the continuum of ruthlessness and presumably don’t need to worry much about psychology. Vettel somehow managed to forge a centre for himself after Hungary last year, and has been basically untouchable since. Jenson needs to do the same thing.
Joe, what did you make of the atmosphere at the race? Were there more fans there than usual? Just watching on TV it seemed that the grandstand was a bit fuller than usual (i.e. not empty). Are the chinese finally getting F1?
I still cant reconcile the number of people it takes to change tyres-v8 supercars do it only 3sec. faster with one person each side. 3 people on one wheel-thats ridiculous!
Now if the wet blankets at the FIA could let the drivers decide when to use the DRS and KERS on the lap, not just at three spots.
Was Mark’s qualifying the result of “bad luck” or was it a conscious strategy? And considering how well it worked out – why damage tyres gaining 0.2 seconds in qualifying if you can preserve tyres and gain 3 seconds per lap in the race – can we expect to see other teams deliberately sandbag qualifying performance in future rounds?
Sonny: Surely the members of the ‘ADD crowd’ wouldn’t even be able to start following a race like that one. The concentration required compared to before to actually understand has increased loads. It’s great.
Good news about the crowd Joe.
despite your meticulous evidence, the only thing we need to prove that the new rules are working is that cars were overtaking going into the very fast turn 7.
that speaks for itself.
[...] had been interviewed by Public Prosecutor Hildegard Baumler-Hosl earlier this month.”A great race in Shanghai (Joe Saward)“We are used to seeing half-empty grandstands in Shanghai but a change in ticket pricing [...]
Joe,
How and why do you keep a lap chart like that? I expect as you are watching the action live you are noting the places as they race by. Do you have a monitor and a feed? Do you use a live timing mobile device?
Be really interested to know more about how you engage or observe the race when it is happening.
Any tips for getting the most out of live viewing a race as a spectator? Especially this year with so much action.
sandy
I have three eyes and four hands. I used to give commentary advice in mime as well… This is easy.
I agree with your sentiments, Karen. F1 fans often seem to complain for the sake of it. Three weeks ago they were complaining that the Australian race didn’t live up to Pirelli’s promise. Last year they were complaining that because of all the one-stop races they were missing out on all the interesting strategy options developing during a race.
These were the same people that wanted pitstops to go because they would like to see some overtaking on the track. And now, after a rollercoaster China GP, I’m hearing the same people complain that all that overtaking and all those pitstops have created a race that was much too convoluted and much too confusing for them to compute…
With opinions changing faster than a Vettel pole lap and holding as much weight as a non-ballasted Red Bull, how good an idea is it for FIA, FOTA and FOM to continue to ‘listen to the fans’ and keep on changing the regulations accordingly?
Some innovations have been good, such as the stacked qualifying but for most of them I can’t help thinking that it was never broke and didn’t need any fixing. The competition in recent years has been closer than ever before in Grand Prix racing. And really how much better was the action in the golden days? The average Jim Clark race in which his Lotus didn’t break down, leaving him to utterly dominate without any pitstops or ‘strategy’ coming into play, must have been an eye-sore on television. Fortunately we only had to read the Monday paper. Either that, or we’d go out to the track ourselves, for a modest entry free, and enjoy the master revelling in his art – which was what the fan did. Who cared about the actual bloody race? And if we did, we didn’t think the overtaking was that important.
I know that FIA, FOTA and FOM feel that they must go on pandering to the masses to keep F1′s viewing numbers up, but we’ve long reached the point of a Catch 22 here.
F1 needs the TV money to survive, to remain the pinnacle (I hate that word) of the sport and to make some of the people involved wealthy men but that means reaching out beyond the anoraks who will watch anything. The multitudes want to be entertained, so they demand spectacle, excitement and lots of overtaking, which forces the authorities to continuously tinker with the rules. At the same time, however, those same multitudes claim that they love F1′s technology and hate the recent artificiality – while reining in technology and increasing some of the artificiality are precisely what is needed if they are looking for more ‘entertainment’, especially in this age in which the aero genie is out of the bottle and will never be put back in.
But they just can’t accept that there will always be boring races, just as each season manages to produce a handful of very entertaining races, whatever rules happen to be in play. You simply cannot predict when the next exciting race will come up, and nor would I want to. So I guess it’s still a sport, instead of pre-programmed entertainment…
And another thing, how come we never hear all this complaining about football after another gutless 0-0 draw? And how come we never see FIFA jump into action to introduce new knee-jerk rules after the game has produced the inevitable string of boring matches? So how come football is given the right to be a sport (and thus to be utterly boring on many occasions) whereas motor racing isn’t?
Just checked the FIA’s pit stop information and Perez’s second stop was longer so Pirelli do appear to have made a mistake from that information.
But I’m more interested in Liuzzi’s stop on lap 9. His pitlane time was 14.1s, which is only 0.2s slower than Perez’s drive through. Did Liuzzi stop in the pits or not? I don’t think it was shown on TV – but I have house guests and they seem to enjoy interrupting the viewing.
I also noticed that the FIA have a Race History Chart which is a marginally readable version of Joe’s lap chart. It has more information (having been produced by a computer) but harder to read by a long way and also not available mid-race to the person creating a lap chart (and it doesn’t show spinning cars nor marks position changes specifically).
forgot to say, it was a great race-I thought if Martin Brundle & David Coultard were confused halfway through the race, then it has to turn out a good result, and it certainly did!
Joe – should we worry about that?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/privateequity/8462237/Rupert-Murdochs-News-Corp-considers-Formula-1-takeover.html
I am sure that all these supposed F1 business writers will tell us what it all means…
Joe, wouldn’t the lap chart be a LOT easier if you just prepared some ruled-off pagesin advance, with columns for each car and rows for each lap?!
Roger,
No, because I am not looking the the lines when I write
Joe,
Thank you for posting the lap charts. I hope you will continue to post your charts after every race. After your original post mentioning “old fashioned” lap charts, I’ve been very intrigued. I printed the charts and took some time to go over the China chart and it provides a very deep understanding of what happened in the race. Posting your lap charts and taking the time to inform your readers about the process is just one more thing that sets your blog apart from the rest. Thank you for your professionalism.
Joe, Please ask Pirelli to not show such a dog’s breakfast of a list to anyone ever again. If it’s not on Excel or similar it should be hidden from view.
Other than that I really do like your own work very much.
David Mingay,
Excel is useless for journalists. These are the people that press releases are intended for.
Hi Joe, great blog.
Someone lost a wheel during the race and it was only luck that it didn’t hit a driver, marshal or spectator. Will the team involved receive a penalty for this?
No. Penalties happen at the races.
I wonder Joe if you know anything about, or spotted, something that I saw and puzzled me. On about lap 46 or 47, in the back of shot, you could briefly see either a Sauber or HRT (a white car, anyway) apparently weaving down the straight. There didn’t seem to be anyone following to justify what would have been an illegal manouvere. Seeing as no one ran out of fuel, it can’t have been a pickup problem.
The only thing I could think of was that someone was having serious issues getting their tyres up to temperature. I see that Liuzzi stopped for tyres at around that point, but took on Softs, which one would imagine would be less likely to need such treatment.
The Lap Charts!!
Thank You Joe…
You bring back to me some nice memories
I’ll go to the attic and see if I can still find some old ones…
Just a quick note backing Sonny’s thoughts. That was a whole lotta contrived action that didn’t quite come across to me as a “race.”
Alan,
I have no idea what you were watching but I watched an exciting and fascinating race, which lasted from start to finish. If you take technology to its logical limits there cannot be racing because the cars would be evenly matched because everyone would have reached the limit of physics. Thus cars would follow one another around. There would be no racing. So having KERS, DRS and different tyres gives us performance differentiators that are not contrived at all. KERS is about doing clever stuff with relevant technologies. DRS is no different to slipstreaming and the tyres show that one driver can drive faster than another without wearing his tyres out. This is great competition for intelligent viewers and for people who just want to see cars passing one another.
A race involves two or more people competing in whatever format or formula that has been decided upon. To say that using DRS is not racing is like arguing that slip-streaming was not racing. It is the same thing by a different means. If one cannot race
I think the team was fined for the wheel incident. $5k springs to mind.
I am sorry Joe but you are completely wrong. You can’t compare standard slipstreaming to someone being allowed to flatten a wing for no other reason than he has not done as good a job as the driver in front to that point. DRS is fake. When we had turbos and drivers effectively had push to pass every time they used that they were pushing their engines closer to their limits and they were burning more fuel. So they were balancing risk against potential gain which is a similar calculation to that is performed by any driver making any unassisted overtaking move. It takes no skill whatever to press the button to activate the DRS and there is no negative aspect to doing it.
F1 is supposed to be a sport so it has to be judged against a higher standard than something apparently exciting happened every x minutes. That is the measure scripted entertainment should be judged against.
I have a fundamental rule that should apply to all sports to ensure that the result is representative of the competition. The same rules must apply to all competitors at the same time. F1 now has a crazy qualifying system where drivers who out-qualify a competitor end up having fewer sets of fresh tyres for the race. The result of Webber and Hamilton’s drives on Sunday is that we are going to have lots of empty track time in qualifying in future because there is little benefit to qualifying 15 places better than your team mate.
DRS is abhorrent to anyone who is close to being a purist. Lewis Hamilton made great opportunist passes on Button and Vettel albeit with a tyre advantage but those moves count for no more than Webber sailing past a Force India with his rear wing flattened. I hate that if these rules survive we are going to produce a generation of fans who can’t tell the difference between a great opportunist pass and someone overtaking as a result of pressing buttons that the driver in front is not allowed to press.
It is perfectly possible to write a set of tech regs that allow good racing. It is done in other classes and F1 in the past had great racing with no artificial element. The example I keep quoting to people who think there never was overtaking in F1 is the day at Silverstone where Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt swapped the lead about 30 times. F1 needs to get some vastly more knowledgeable and motivated people to write the tech regs. They need to get Gordon Murray, John Barnard and Gary Anderson and give them a free hand to come up with a set of tech regs that allow normal overtaking to take place.
Steven Roy,
I do not get your argument at all. You cannot live in the past.
Joe,
I am not living in the past.
My argument against DRS is that it is fake, unsporting if you prefer. In the days when drivers had an overboost button on turbos they gained performance but risked the reliability of the engine and the other driver could use his overboost button to defend. That is fair because there is a risk to go with the reward and the other driver is allowed to compete.
Just allowing a driver an advantage because he is behind another driver is like compelling the goalkeeper in a football match to put his hands behind his back because his team is leading 1-0 and the striker is ten yards from goal. Unfair, unsporting, unacceptable.
Joe, cars “following one another around” as fast as they can, IS racing. It’s up to the teams, and a non-restrictive rulebook, to change the finishing order. GP racing doesn’t need all these hurdles.
Apologies if this has already been answered*
thekitchencynic,
I took it as the Hispania, possibly of Luizzi, had been forced off line, wide out onto the marbles, when obeying the blue flags. The resulting pick up of marbles, which with the Pirellis ofc are huge, would have dirtied his tyres. Liuizzi or Kartikeyan would have felt that weaving to put load into the tyre along the straight would have been the best and quickest way of getting rid of the rubbish, before entering the corners.
This new F1 is racing? Really? Really? Let’s just think up a bunch more gimmicks to make up for the race tracks that do not allow passing and call it “racing”. As in “do not do it but say we did”. I guess you can fool those more interested in reality TV than those who witnessed a few hundred live races with real competition amongst really talented drivers. Making passing too easy is like making people believe a non medicine drug is a real one. Crippling a competitor is racing? Really?
Sonny,
I think you have closed your mind to change. Thse are not gimmicks, anymore than any technical regulation was a gimmick
Steven Roy
For every example of races with a lot of passing, it’s very easy to counter that with a race with very little passing. This can be done for any era and any year. And then there’s the fact that lots of overtaking doesn’t automatically mean the racing was good (just as no overtaking doesn’t mean bad racing – a quick example is Mansell vs Senna at Monaco 1992).
As for DRS being abhorrent, I think we need to get rid of the wings. As wings were considered abhorrent at the time of their introduction, they obviously are no good for racing and should be banned. Or do you think they’re ok? How about high noses? Pirelli tyres (considered abhorrent by many who drove on them last time they were in F1)?
Personally, the DRS is a good idea but with a bad name. I say it’s a good idea because it does promote slipstreaming at a time when slipstreaming is an issue. And it’s not just because of the wake from the car in front but because of increased speeds and reduced braking distances, it’s a lot harder (and with a lot less time) to be able to have enough slipstream to catch and pass another car when coming out of a corner. The DRS is the equivalent of increasing the speed as though the car behind had been slipstreaming along a longer straight than the one that it is travelling on. It neatly resolves the issue but it does make arguments about when to use the system.
A thought has come to mind. With the slipstreaming battles from the 60s, what was the more interesting and exciting part – the overtaking each lap or the buildup and strategy played out by the drivers to work out where to be on the final lap to win the race? Consider that for some of those battles it was virtually guaranteed that if you were behind on certain straights that the car behind was going to overtake with ease.
Good reply, Joe, new rules, more competition, cars actually passing on the last lap to get position, seriously, what more do people want?
What I saw on Sunday was definately racing. You can talk about artificial overtakes until your blue in the face but how many DRS assisted overtakes did Hamilton make? Webber? Then Alonso v Schumachers battle took an age to complete despite DRS. All DRS does is allow fast drivers to quickly get past rolling roadblocks and fight for the win (That phrase that Bernie loves to use). If you have 2 drivers of equal talent and cars of equal performance then the DRS has little or no effect as you have the chance to attack the next lap if you’ve been passed as you’d still be within one second.
It isn’t the most effective way of doing it I agree but given the aero turbulence of modern F1 cars it is necessary. Having a front runner close at 2 seconds a lap and then getting stuck because of the turbulence when within 1 second is frustrating for drivers and viewers.
Hopefully in the future the FIA will go back to ground effects and simple wings and we won’t need DRS but until then I much prefer what we saw in China to what we saw in the Abu Dhabi finale last year.
If I have one complaint about DRS it the use of it in qualifying. What is the relevance of a qualifying lap which is 6 seconds faster than the fastest race lap. I know the cars can never hit quali pace during a race but the gap is nowhere near that big normally.
Martin
I Agree with you. The “concept” of DRS sounds wrong, like “if you are within 1 second gap, then push that button and get the position” is equal to have a rule “show blue flags to the driver in front when the 1 second gap activates”. Yes. But that is NOT what is actually hapening, as ALO SCHU showed.
And yes, DRS in qualifying has no sense at all. It has a neutral effect. Or, at least, is a different formula than the rest of the weekend. If a driver has a skill to flat the wing out of a turn sooner than his rivals, he would be not be albe to show that skill on the race.
[...] Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/a-great-race-in-shanghai/ [...]
[...] Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/a-great-race-in-shanghai/ [...]