Chinese Grand Prix: Race Recap

Hulkenberg took the start on Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tires from ninth position and carved his way through to seventh place on the opening lap, before relinquishing those spots to both Scuderia Ferrari drivers. Hulkenberg came in on lap eight for White hard tires and cycled through back into the top 10. The Virtual Safety Car – and then full Safety Car – was deployed when Valtteri Bottas’ car stopped on track, bunching the pack together. 

Hulkenberg came into the pits on lap 24 for another set of hard tires, and held 10th position, before gaining a spot at the second restart after passing Daniel Ricciardo. The German battled with the recovering Lewis Hamilton and while the Mercedes driver moved ahead, Hulkenberg was able to maintain 10th thereafter - registering a third points result of the season for the team.

Magnussen started from 17th on the grid on hard tires and ran a lengthy first stint before pitting on lap 18 for another set of the hard rubber. Magnussen moved forwards towards the cusp of the top 10 but was involved in an incident in the post-Safety Car restart with Yuki Tsunoda. The Dane sustained damage to the front-left of the car, necessitating a pit stop on lap 28, at which he took on medium tires. Magnussen was issued a 10-second time penalty for the collision and classified in 16th place at the checkered.

Up front Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen claimed a comfortable victory, ahead of McLaren Racing’s Lando Norris, with Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Perez third. 
 

Nico Hulkenberg: 

“It was a faultless and clean race from my side today. I think it was a well-managed and well-controlled race from the team. It’s a positive and I’m very happy about that – we got that one point that was up for grabs today. One of the top-five team’s cars had a problem and that’s the spot we got because of it, otherwise it’s not really possible to race with them. It also shows we need to have a perfect qualifying on Saturday and a perfect race on Sunday to be able to be where we are today. We couldn’t have done much more. One point, in our world, is a lot!”

Kevin Magnussen:

“It just really wasn’t our day today to be honest. We started 17th after a bad qualifying yesterday – we took the consequence of that today. Sometimes you can make it back, but today we couldn’t. We had attempted a one-stop strategy, we had to bail out because the degradation was too high on the hard. As soon as I came out on the new hard rubber, I had the puncture because of the incident with Yuki – so had to pit again for the medium. I effectively had to do a one-stop anyway, even though we didn’t want to. Things were working well with the car though, we seem to have decent pace in it, that was also the case in Sprint qualifying and the Sprint race earlier in the weekend.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“It was amazing to get a point again today with Nico. In terms of Nico’s race, from everyone – driving, operations, pit-stop, it was perfection. We knew exactly what we had to do in terms of getting ourselves into a good position to get that point – initially against Bottas. Both communication and execution were good. Honestly, I think we managed to execute a perfect race with Nico – it was brilliant. With Kevin, unfortunately we didn’t have luck from qualifying, so we started from the back and couldn’t really do the race we wanted to do. Now we look forward to Miami. I think we can take a lot of confidence from this race.” 

Today's Data:

Event: Chinese Grand Prix – Sunday April 21
Location: Shanghai International Circuit
Layout: 5.451-kilometer (3.387-mile), 16-turn circuit
Weather: Cloudy
Air Temps: 19 degrees Celsius (66.2 degrees Fahrenheit)
Track Temps: 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit)
Race Winner: Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing

Team Result:
Nico Hulkenberg – Started 9th / Finished 10th (Running – 56/56 laps)
Kevin Magnussen – Started 17th / Finished 16th (Running – 56/56 laps)