2013 Formula 1 UBS Chinese Grand Prix

Ladies and Gentlemen, hello and welcome to ManUtdDaredevil’s official UBS Chinese Grand Prix race thread. With the last race seeming like years ago, all I can say is welcome back F1. The last race made a lot of us unhappy with ungentlemanly conduct from the finger and Ross Brawn's team orders. Anyways let's look to the future and hopefully an exciting race. Shanghai generally delivers as a fun race, so fingers crossed this will be another good one and not a finger dominated bore fest. As usual you can read all the boring stuff about this race from F1.com. I'll stick with the fun stuff.

Let’s get down to business. The Shanghai international circuit extends its welcome to the Formula One roadshow. He who must not be named won the last race with sneaky underhanded tactics and proved to us all that he's a ruthless son of a finger. Sadly being a successful F1 driver means you have to be at times.

Based on the last race and qualifying session the mercs look very strong and they won here last year and there are positive sounds coming out of McLaren that they've sorted out the issues with their car, so it's anybody's guess what the grid and race would look like. Alonso will also be up for it, trying to make up for his DNF, the last time out. So without further ado, let's begin;


Race Details

Race Date: 14 Apr 2013
Circuit Name: Shanghai International Circuit
First Grand Prix: 2004
Number of Laps: 56
Circuit Length: 5.451 km
Race Distance: 305.066 km
Lap Record: 1:32.238 - M Schumacher (2004)

Race Schedule

Fri 12 April 2013
Practice 1 03:00 - 04:30
Practice 2 07:00 - 08:30

Sat 13 April 2013
Practice 3 04:00 - 05:00
Qualifying 07:00

Sun 14 April 2013
Race 08:00

All times UK

A few facts

With the emphasis on tyre wear there will be a familiar chorus of disapproval from some quarters, most likely Red Bull, but not Force India. Providing they can get the wheelnuts off their cars during pit-stops the Silverstone-based team should be looking at another strong race, well aware they gave up a big haul of points in Malaysia.

Felipe Massa has a great personal target to aim for. Not only is he leading Fernando Alonso in the Drivers' table, he has outqualified his team-mate four races in a row. Nobody has done that to Fernando five times in a row. Having lost out through a self-inflicted wound at Sepang, Alonso will be very keen not to drop further behind Massa and the rest of the grid in China, so it may be that we see a conservative approach from him

Two things we haven't seen so far in 2013 are the Safety Car and Bernie Ecclestone - with a lot of behind-the-scenes machinations about the commercial agreements governing F1, it's a surprise that Bernie hasn't been more visible. There are a lot of loose ends to be tied up in connection with 2013, let alone 2014 and beyond. And with two rainy weekends, it's surprising we haven't had a Safety Car either.

What we should also look out for is the length of time that a Soft compound tyre can last on fullish tanks. Because if the race does prove to be like a re-run of Melbourne there may be a few cars playing it tactically in Qualifying. We might get cars making a token run in Q3 on the harder Medium tyre - not putting much of a heat cycle through it to establish a position around rows 4 or 5, slightly above somebody who doesn't bother to come out at all in Q3.

Source for the facts; F1.com

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