RacingNation.com
Home / F1 / Hamilton Takes Three In A Row In China

Hamilton Takes Three In A Row In China

Lewis Hamilton gets soaked with champagne by teammate Nico Rosberg (right) after winning the Chinese Grand Prix Sunday. Despite his third win in a row, Hamilton still trails Rosberg by four points in the world championship.  [Photo by Getty Images]

SHANGHAI, China- If Lewis Hamilton could foresee what his Mercedes car would have been years ago, he might have moved sooner, but later arrived is better than none at all, and Sunday at the Chinese Grand Prix, he proved that his reality of having a fast car happened, as the Briton easily won the race over teammate Nico Rosberg by 18 seconds, with Fernando Alonso finishing third for the first podium of the season for Ferrari.

“The team have done an amazing job and all the hard work both here and at the factory is really paying off at the moment”, stated Hamilton. “This car is just unbelievable; in the final laps, I was pushing a little bit more to keep up the tire temperatures and it just felt great to drive. I’m so, so happy today.”

The start was a gem for Hamilton, as he maintained a huge gap with a two second gap on the third lap, to increasing it to a 6.9 second lead five laps later. But Hamilton did not stop there. He kept the pace up as high as 18 seconds going into the final laps of the race.

While the Mercedes of Hamilton was dominating, Alonso, Rosberg and the two Red Bulls of Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel were in the thick of the action as by lap 23, Vettel’s car was much slower than his teammate, and refused for a few laps to let him pass by. But Vettel soon realized that his chances were hopeless and his progress was slowing his teammate, so three laps later, Riccairdo finally passed and moved in closer to Alonso but fell short of taking the final podium and finished a respectable fourth, while Vettel ended up in fifth.

For the rest of the grid, Nico Hulkenberg took sixth while Valterri Bottas finished seventh. Kimi Raikkonen was a disappointing eighth for Ferrari, while Sergio Perez and Dani Kvyat rounded up the top ten finishers.

For Hamilton, it was his 25th career win, and his third in a row. For his manufacturer, it was its third 1-2 in a row, the first in over ten years. But Hamilton knew the best thing to do was to keep pushing, knowing that his rivals could make new updates on their cars since the next few races will be closer to their bases in Europe.

“We had to make a lot of changes after P2 in terms of the set-up of the car but after it rained on Saturday, we didn’t know exactly how it would go today.” Said Hamilton. “There was a lot of hard work done, sitting down with the engineers so that we didn’t guess anything and just made the right steps in anticipation for today. I really want to give a big shout-out to the team in Brackley and Brixworth for embracing me last year, for building this amazing car and engine and for continuously pushing forward with so much positive energy in 2014. We are definitely on a roll right now; I’m working hard, the team is working hard and we just want to improve even further when we get back to Europe. “

Share Button