Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes, Shanghai International Circuit, 2019

2019 Chinese Grand Prix grid

2019 Chinese Grand Prix

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Row 11. Valtteri Bottas 1’31.547
Mercedes
2. Lewis Hamilton 1’31.570
Mercedes
Row 23. Sebastian Vettel 1’31.848
Ferrari
4. Charles Leclerc 1’31.865
Ferrari
Row 35. Max Verstappen 1’32.089
Red Bull
6. Pierre Gasly 1’32.930
Red Bull
Row 47. Daniel Ricciardo 1’32.958
Renault
8. Nico Hulkenberg 1’32.962
Renault
Row 59. Kevin Magnussen No time
Haas
10. Romain Grosjean No time
Haas
Row 611. Daniil Kvyat 1’33.236
Toro Rosso
12. Sergio Perez 1’33.299
Racing Point
Row 713. Kimi Raikkonen 1’33.419
Alfa Romeo
14. Carlos Sainz Jnr 1’33.523
McLaren
Row 815. Lando Norris 1’33.967
McLaren
16. Lance Stroll 1’34.292
Racing Point
Row 917. George Russell 1’35.253
Williams
18. Robert Kubica 1’35.281
Williams
Row 1019. Antonio Giovinazzi* No time
Alfa Romeo
20. Alexander Albon** No time
Toro Rosso

*Did not set a time within 107% of the best time in Q1, given stewards’ permission to start
**Did not set a time within 107% of the best time in Q1, given stewards’ permission to start, will start from pit lane

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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40 comments on “2019 Chinese Grand Prix grid”

  1. How on Earth both RBR and Haas managed to get their calculations wrong? Both sent their drivers out too late to reach the S/F line before the chequered flag. Incompetence at its best.

    1. RBR did NOT sent their drivers too late out. At least VET was behind them and still managed to get P3. Stop blaming others when your man messes up.

    2. Watching Q on sky, crofts 1st reaction, blame vettel, for max missing out. The replay showed everyone behind max reacting to time running out, max and RB made a blunder there, still like jere said many drivers missed out. Anyhow bias sky, as always, always on an agenda, keep pessimistically saying ferrari is quicker, misreading testing, misreading all the time, so annoying for the viewers who see whats actually going on, my predictions champ is looking great.

      1. @peartree – watch F1 on mute. Does wonders for ones blood pressure (and hearing, sanity, …). I’ve started doing that this year :)

        1. I like the bbc 5 live commentary (I think I have often mentioned it already?) from the f1 app, tend to use that, have F1tv on mute @peartree, @phylyp, that works better. Though not today as it was very very intermittent, sigh.

          F1tv nowadays also allows me the option of Dutch, so I can cycle among commentators with each their own bias

          Dutch – obviously heavily Verstappen biased, but also a different style, which is sometimes enjoyable, but comes over as quite uninformed too at times;
          German – very focussed on German drivers, somewhat pro Vettel, more pro Red Bull in general – left over from when Vettel was there, or austrian influence? – but slightly biased against Verstappen, definitely against Hamilton, and a bit against Mercedes – bit weird that, they seem willfully blind to some things;
          French, Spanish: not good enough at those to listen to them;
          English – sky, well, you know, do have some good info at times, love chandok, brundle can be good, but I think he’s too sure he knows well, Rosberg has his moments, but I think he needs to allow himself to be more open and controversial if that’s his opinion

          1. Ah, I don’t even have any F1 TV options here in India (apart from the historic archive access), so I’m stuck with Sky F1 :(

          2. In Portugal we can buy the service but we don’t have support, commentary or the page in Portuguese. So have to listen to the wonderful sky commentators.

            That or have someone tell constantly how they miss Alonso, but Sainz is very good too.

            Should have went for eleven sports. But for 25€ the F1 tv pro wasn’t a bad deal

          3. You know under audio options on F1TV you can switch commentary audio off right?

          4. @bosyber I’ll try that, thanks. I like sky to but like @phylyp put it not listening to sky when they go off “Does wonders for ones blood pressure (and hearing, sanity, …)”

          5. @peartree, @phylyp good luck! As I said, sometimes most of the audio options aren’t great in my ear, but at least I can watch the screen, choose either to cycle the available audio options to minimize each irritation barrier :) And yes, one of the options is ‘FX’ (or mute, of course), which has the cars, and the car radio too, which I use with that bbc 5 live radio from the f1 app on my phone. … Though not so much this weekend (as said, that was very often not there, but, every time great to hear when it did come through :)\\

            On the whole, I am really well provided for f1 viewing nowadays (and could do Buxton’s pre/post shows from youtube or f1 app/site if I felt I missed those, which mostly, I find I do not really). Hope it improves for others soonish too!

      2. José Lopes da Silva
        13th April 2019, 8:50

        I watch RTL without understanding German and feel great.

        1. I see you are on a NOS pack deal my friend

  2. VER keeps on blundering. “YOU HAVE TO GO NOWWWWWWW.”
    And he keeps on blaming others, when he’s the one messing up by not stepping it up. VET, who was behind him in sector 2, did and got a P3 in probably a slower car.

    MERC keeps emphasizing the top end speed of FER while in the meantime they’re much quicker in the corners, more than compensating for the lack of that top end speed.

  3. Questionable tactics from Mercedes in the Q3 out lap. Holding everyone up with a very slow lap.

    Vettel ruthlessly needed to overtake Max in the last corner blowing his lap.

    Max will be bery angry

    1. Angry with Vettel and couple of other drivers who overtook him into the hairpin and that red mist will be fun for the race tomorrow.

      1. The lion – really a pussycat ;-)…!

    2. They really needed to deal somehow with that unusual Ferrari pace.

    3. What was questionable about it? The others could have tried to pass them. RB were caught in the middle of the politeness, not the place for it, it’s F1.

      1. What should max have done in the last corner before starting his lap? Race with Vettel? That is also blowing your lap.

        Vettel can count on max blowing his lap this season

        1. What would Vettel? Miss the start line?

        2. No, Red Bull should probably have sent him out a bit earlier, not sure there was much Max could do at that point really, apart getting rid of his anger and pushing to do things differently in their internal evaluation (ie. his anger was misdirected at the other drivers rather than his team). I hope he gets punished if he does indeed intentionally blocks Vettel somewhere in a qualy, that’s uncalled for.

          Pity, they (well, he?) did seem to have good speed this weekend, would have been good to see whether he could get in between the Ferrari’s

    4. @anunaki RBR and Haas should’ve sent their drivers out 30 seconds earlier then none of this would’ve happened.

      1. That’s true of course

  4. This is total bs from Mercedes, I think I am not having a good day and need to rant and rave. Also I am the biggest bad loser in the universe, something which is recognised by everyone who knows me as well as by myself. I am also a suspicious person by nature. Why do Mercedes keep on saying that their car is slower than everyone else’s? Are they trying to influence the betting odds? Why are the teams allowed to control how much power their engine produces with the push of a button? How much performance is Mercedes hiding? If they program their engine to produce maximum power how much faster would they be able to go? A second a lap faster? Two? Five? How do we know they cannot go that much faster? How do we know there is not some kind of “match fixing” going on and Merc is just playing everyone for a fool?
    I don’t bet on anything for money, but I know that billions of people probably do.

    1. This is going to sound terribly immature but…BOO HOO. Cry me a river. Mercedes owe you nothing and they go about their business in am incredibly successful manner.

    2. Well, staying away from that rant a bit; apart from one thing @aliced, Mercedes are required to give their customers the same PU (and thus power modes!) as they enjoy, so if they had a whole other level of PU mode somewhere stashed away: either we’d see Williams get off that back row more by using it, and Racing Point into Q2,Q3; or Mercedes would be running highly illegal only to hide a chunk of performance, which if it ever came out would be a very lame reason to be thrown out of the championship, and quite odd too:

      yeah, sorry we got caught, but we didn’t want to show our pace and make it a fight between our two drivers, like we had for three years from 2014-2016, it was just too much. But, now we are caught, so in 2020, we won’t have Toto crying ‘fast competitors’ and will just go win it full out – see you then, kby,thx!

  5. Max just told on tv that he will no longer respect the unwritten rules of qualifying anymore

    He is very angry with Vettel blowing his lap

    1. Mad Max…

    2. Max should probably direct his anger at his team for exposing him to such a thing.
      And I say that as someone who would really like VER to win the race tomorrow, because that would probably mean he had a HELL of race.

  6. Mclaren suddenly losing the pace they’ve shown for the opening two races. I wonder if straight line speed or drag is still an issue for them. They looked nowhere close to Q3 today.
    Glad to see Renault put in a strong performance today, especially Ricciardo. This should be great team-mate rivalry for 2019.
    Stroll just put in his 3rd Q1 exit in a row. Don’t know how people on this site were claiming that he’s matching Perez on pace.

    1. To be fair, it has been pretty marginal, at least in the sessions, and Stroll has been in front of Perez quite a few times. Even once when it matters (Australia). Perez is stronger, no doubt, but Stroll hasn’t been as bad relative to that as people had predicted, so far.

      Dan Ric and Pierre Gasly are doing much worse so far, relative to expecations and team mates.

      1. @magon4

        Dan Ric and Pierre Gasly are doing much worse so far, relative to expecations and team mates.

        It’s only the 3rd race, relax man.

        1. I am relaxed hehe. just wanting others who criticise certain drivers (Stroll, Vettel) to relax as well…

      2. Well, Dan outqualified Hulk this time (by 0.004s – guess the pace in the car?), so not too bad there, right @magon4?

        1. seems to me that Dannyboy got a little lucky there. let’s see in the race. don’t get me wrong, I rate Dan. He is great. But so is Nico.
          just don’t like that people love to criticise certain drivers. imagine if leclerc had beaten vettel today. now, bottas beat Hamilton and people are pretty mute…

    2. 3rd Q3 exit for 2019, 7th Q3 exit in a row since last season.

  7. Optimus prime
    13th April 2019, 8:28

    Astonishing gap between max and gasly

    1. That’s ghastly

  8. The usual suspects up front, didn’t see the kerfuffle that caused the RBs to miss their last qually attempt. Couple of people saying how angry Verstappen is. Hope he doesn’t carry it over to the race.
    Good to see both :) the Renaults in the top 10 and their times aren’t to bad either, now reliability…fingers crossed.

  9. Kyle (@hammerheadgb)
    13th April 2019, 11:09

    Early entry to the “stats and facts” – this is the first Q3 session since the 2011 Singapore Grand Prix to end two-by-two all the way through the order.

    This comes after near-misses in the 2017 Azerbaijan GP where Ricciardo suffered an issue that restricted him to 10th while his team-mate qualified 5th; and the 2018 Australian GP where Bottas crashed out of Q3 hence finishing 10th, while team-mate Hamilton went on to take pole by six tenths.

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