SHANGHAI, China — Vodafone McLaren Mercedes always likes to talk about how it wins as a team and loses as a team. And it was a true team effort that caused Lewis Hamilton to slide off the track and throw away his — and the team’s — chance to win the driver’s world championship in China.
“When I got out of the car I was obviously gutted for both myself and the team,” Hamilton said. “I haven’t made a mistake all year, but I am over it now.”
It was a team mistake, too, because McLaren kept Hamilton out too long on his intermediate wet tires on a drying track. As a result, his tires were so worn out that it didn’t take much of a misjudgment on his part for the car to plow into the gravel trap as he came into the pits.
Had he finished, probably in second place, Hamilton would have clinched the title.
Instead, he goes into the season finale Brazilian Grand Prix in a three-way fight for the title. With 107 points, Hamilton still has the edge, with a four-point lead over Fernando Alonso and seven points over Kimi Raikkonen.
Raikkonen won in China, keeping superb control of his Ferrari in the tricky, changing conditions to give the Scuderia its 200th Grand Prix victory. Alonso finished second in his McLaren, thus cutting eight points off Hamilton’s points lead.
While far from the blinding torrential downpour of the Japanese Grand Prix, a light rain still created an exciting race in China. Everybody started the 56-lap affair on the intermediate Bridgestone wet tires.
Polesitter Hamilton took the lead ahead of Raikkonen, Felipe Massa and Alonso who had qualified in that order. Hamilton was one of the first to pit, coming in at the end of lap 15 and taking on another set of intermediates. The other three pitted several laps later, but none of them changed tires.
As the track dried, Hamilton, in the lead, really started to struggle. Raikkonen attacked fiercely and finally got by on lap 29.
McLaren decided to leave Hamilton out for a few more laps before calling him in to change tires. When he finally pitted, he slid off into a gravel trap on the pit entrance.
Unlike Japan, where the drivers were just trying to survive the bucketing conditions, they were really able to race in Shanghai. The variations of tire wear and chassis set-up and driver skill in the wet made for some great battles further back in the pack that went on for most of the race.
And, as is often the case, the rain jumbled the usual finishing order. Sebastian Vettel, on a one-stop strategy, finished an outstanding career-best fourth in his Toro Rosso Ferrari. The weird conditions suited the ill-handling Honda, and Jenson Button stormed to his best finish of the year — fifth.
Tonio Liuzzi held off Nick Heidfeld’s attacks, and the Toro Rosso crossed the finish line .551 second in front of the BMW Sauber.