Win number six for Nico Rosberg of Mercedes in China Formula One race

Kvyat’s teammate outperformed the rest in the field with his brilliant racing, despite the fact that his car suffered in puncture in the early part of the race. Daniel Ricciardo got the much needed points for his team Red Bull by coming in fourth. Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari came in fifth while Williams’ Felipe Massa came in sixth.

Others who gathered points in the race in the first ten included Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz (8^th and 9^th respectively) while Williams' Valtteri Bottas came in tenth. Incidentally all the 22 cars completed the race.

For India’s Force India team, they could only salvage an 11^th and 15^th position, won by Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg respectively. The race initially saw a bit of a bump when Kvyat raced towards the inside of Vettel at Turn 2 which made the latter to cut to the left and into the path of Raikkonen. The two Ferrari cars made contact resulting in Raikkonen’s car half spinning and forcing him to pit with slight damage to his vehicle. Vettel too dropped to eight.

“...Obviously it’s difficult to judge how it looked from his point of view, but my start wasn’t so great, so I was a bit on the back foot into turn one and then I think Kimi locked up, went a bit wide, I wanted to go on the inside to overtake him. I think Daniil was trying to do the same thing with me, but then Kimi came back and I had to sort of be in the middle. He was coming with a lot of speed into that gap. I was very surprised, so I had to steer some sort of left. At the same time Kimi was coming across and there was no way, so we made contact, which is a shame because you don’t want the same cars, same colour touching each other. In the end we were lucky – I could continue, he could continue, but surely not the best result for the team, so sorry for that. But after, it was a very entertaining race, a lot of cars that I had to overtake; it was good fun...” said Vettel after the race.

There were other cars kissing too when Hamilton lost his front wing after contact with Felipe Nasr of Sauber as the latter was trying to avoid the track drama. Romain Grosjean of Haas too damaged his the car’s nose on the Sauber car of Marcus Ericsson.

Lap 3 the drama continued when Ricciardo's tyre deflated on lap three, forcing him to pit. With debris all over, all the cars had to pit after the safety car was deployed. It was time for tyre change too. When the race resumed on lap eight, Rosberg took the lead. While Rosberg had a clear lead throughout, the fight was between Kvyat and Vettel, the former keeping the lead till around the 35^th lap, after which a smart dive by Vettel ensure that he stuck to his second position till the end of the race.

After the China race, Rosberg leads with 75 points, Hamilton is second with 39, Ricciardo is third with 36, while Vettel has 33 and Raikkonen 28. In the constructors' stakes Mercedes has 114 points to Ferrari's 61, Red Bull's 57 and Williams' 29.