Presenting the Shanghai preview! This thread is tailored to give you, my followers, an edge by uncovering the circuit's characteristics and offering insights into what you can anticipate on race day. 🏁🏎️
I will be giving a rundown of the past few races to help us piece together the nuances of the Chinese GP. After a long-awaited return post pandemic to the track in one of the largest cities on earth, racing finally comes back in 2024! The circuit is built on a swamp and cost the Chinese government an eye watering $450mn back in 2003 now that’s approximately $750mn today! The main grandstand and paddock are incredible and definitely unique in their construction and scale. The last time we raced in Shanghai it was the 1000th GP in F1, we have raced another 105 GPs since that race back in 2019. Since then, Hamilton has won 28 GPs, Verstappen has won 3 titles, and the world of F1 has been graced by Yuki Tsunoda. Compared to the 2019 GP only 14 of the drivers from that race remain on the grid, rookies at this circuit will be: ZHO (hometown boy), TSU, PIA and SAR. Some drivers such as OCO and ALO have raced at the circuit previously but did not in 2019.
The track: A high-speed circuit with high tyre stress factors, courtesy of the various HS corners. Sectors 1+3 features some tight low speed corners including the circuits 2 hairpins. This circuit isn’t similar to Bahrain 🇧🇭 as way too many have been implying on twitter! The circuit is definitely front limited with a lot of lateral stress put through the tyres, this is exacerbated in Sector 2, though the rear tyres get some punishment in Turns 3 and 6 due to their not-totally-straight exits. High levels of downforce are rewarded here due to the high-speed corners and the first sector, straight-line speed is not as important as Ferrari found out in 2019, see Race Debrief later.
Overtaking down the backstraight here is easy enough despite the marbles that are found off the racing line. The long straight also rewards great DRS efficiency which also favours the higher downforce setups that teams will likely run here. Pirelli chose to run the balanced level of compounds in 2019, with C2/C3 and C4 being utilised, they may follow suit but I wouldn’t be surprised if they went with the C1 through to C3 tyres this season. (Update as of 14th March they did not opt for the harder compounds). As the track is built on old swampland, the tarmac has become unstable and I am unsure whether any resurfacing has occurred since 2019 (update - yes) + with China’s lack of motor sporting, the track will likely be in a rough state, this may compound its tyre eating nature, and will create high track evolution due to the tracks unused state - aka ‘green’.
Race + Qualifying analysis:
As we have not yet raced here with ground effect cars, we simply cannot predict with great accuracy how this year’s cars will perform round the circuit, add to that the complexity of it being the first sprint weekend in F1 for 2024. China has always been a 2+ stop race however, we did come close to a 1 stop in 2019 as the Merc had a significant degradation advantage over the Fer. They covered off the pitstop of VET to ensure the win, this is where we were treated to a superb doublestack by Merc.
In 2018 there was a late SC in which both RBs were awarded with a very timely late stint on softs which would have realistically meant a 1-2 or at worst a double podium, but for VER to spin both himself and VET in the process of overtaking at the penultimate corner.
This circuit has seen a fair share of Safety Cars over the year with a historical record of 43.75% and this average increases to 50% of all events seeing either a full SC or VSC as happened in 2019, which was also only 2nd race in China to feature a VSC alongside 2017. There’s only ever been a maximum of 2 SCs in the race here which has happened on 4 occasions (25%). There’s yet to be a red flag here.
Despite the fairly high level of incidents the track still fairs a high level of classified finishers is 85% which would equate to 17 of the drivers this weekend finishing the race. When we’ve seen wet or changeable conditions this falls to 78% or 15.6 classified drivers. The fewest number of classified drivers was back in 2017 (dry) and even then, it was 15 cars, although the lowest % of finishers was back in 2010 with only 71% Classified Drivers.
The choke point of the first twisting corner will be crucial for escaping any contact, especially if someone comes in like a torpedo! First lap DNFs are uncommon with 4 in total and 3 of those coming in a rain soaked 2010 GP.
Pole position is crucial here to dictate the tempo behind, with the circuit favouring the polesitter nicely – only 3 occasions have seen them finish outside the top 2! In fact pole is so important here that with all tracks on the 2024 calendar with representative number of races it has a pole-to-win conversion of 56% or the 4th highest. The circuit has historically favoured a balanced car (MH downforce) that is able to look after the tyres across the whole lap in qualifying – LH is unsurprisingly very quick around here with the most poles (6) due to his ability to keep life in his tyres across the whole lap.
For the race efficiency is king with the need for good tyre preservation and high-speed performance so a loaded rear wing will be beneficial for both tyres and overtaking down the 1.2km straight.
Thank you for reading through my preview ahead of the Chinese GP!
(Data and stats accurate prior to the 2024 race)