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Ferrari won the opening race of the season, but can they repeat the feat, remain upbeat and defeat the elite?
Mercedes have qualified on pole for the last five Chinese GPs and won four out of those five races, they won their first race on their return to F1 in China and are tied (with Ferrari) for the most wins there, each with four.
Shanghai International Circuit is 5.451km long circuit with 56 laps in the race, giving a total distance of 305.256km, making it the second shortest race in 2017 behind only Monaco. This will be the 14th race at the track, eight races (61.54%) have been won from pole position and only a single race (7.69%) has been won from second on the grid.
Lewis Hamilton is the most successful driver in Shanghai with four wins to his name, two while driving for Mercedes and two for McLaren. Eight drivers have won the Chinese GP, three have won multiple times, Hamilton (4) and Alonso (2) are the only drivers currently racing to have won multiple, though it would be highly surprising if Alonso added to his Chinese GP tally.
Pascal Wehrlein has withdrawn himself from the race again, Antonio Giovinazzi returning to the seat yet again, while some people are critical of this I back his decision. It’s better for him to wait until he’s fully fit and ready than rush it, underperform and potentially make any injury worse.
The Silly Stats
There are over 1.3 billion people in China, if you gave every single person in China an F1 car (because why not) the train of cars would stretch 7,158,683.5 kilometres or 4,448,200 miles.
That is long enough to loop around the Sun one and a half times, or 179 times around the Earth.
The giant panda has a top speed of around 32kph or 20mph, which means that it would take 10:13.237 to complete a lap of the Chinese GP staying at that speed.
