Autobayng News Team
What makes a great Formula 1 race? It’s a subject we discuss every weekend in Rate the Race.
Since 2008 you’ve rated almost 400 grands prix and sprint races. So which was the highest-rated race during that time?
The answer is a race which took place 15 years ago: the 2011 Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai. Is that an unexpected choice? A worthy one?
Is it a round which springs mind when you think of F1’s most exciting races? It’s certainly an interesting one given the current debate over the quality of racing in F1’s new era.
Today’s debate surrounds the new power units and the Overtake mode causing what some disparagingly term ‘yo-yo racing’. Go back 15 years and a similar debate surrounded the introduction of Pirelli’s high-degradation tyres and the new Drag Reduction System – the aerodynamic equivalent of today’s Overtake mode.
The third race under the new rules was undoubtedly a humdinger. How far the recent rules changes deserved credit for it was another matter.
The prospects for a close race did not look good. Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel, who had won the last four grands prix, took pole position by seven tenths of a second in his Red Bull. And team mate Mark Webber was unlikely to pose a threat having gone out in Q1 due to a problem with his Kinetic Energy Recovery System – the comparatively mild hybrid component used at the time.
But when the lights went out McLaren team mates Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton mugged Vettel immediately. The action scarcely relented over the following 56 laps.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Button bided his time, knowing his Pirellis were fragile, but unsure just how hard to push them. Further back Rosberg pitted early and benefited from an unexpectedly powerful undercut.
This was one of two factors which surprisingly put him in the lead. The other was a comic turn from Button, who first of all missed his first call to come in, then pulled into Vettel’s Red Bull box when he did arrive. Vettel, who had just passed Hamilton, jumped Button in the confusion, but all three emerged behind Rosberg’s Mercedes.
Vettel eventually passed Rosberg for the lead but radio and KERS faults compromised his race. Red Bull stuck to a two-stop strategy but behind him drivers were finding three stops quicker. With 58 pit stops over the race, drivers repeatedly found themselves dropped back into traffic, having to fight their way out.
Many of the changes of position were sorted out on the back straight where drivers hit their DRS buttons. But plenty of action happened outside the DRS zones too. Hamilton put a superb pass on Button into turn one and eventually got past Vettel thanks to his fresher tyres and judicious use of KERS at the exit of turn six.
Webber discovered that a first-round elimination in qualifying brought the upside of a stack of fresh tyres. He used his to climb from 18th on the grid to pass Button for the final podium place on the penultimate lap.
There was plenty more going on throughout the field, including a spirited tussle between multiple champions Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso. The drama seldom let up over the 96-minute race and it’s not hard to see why readers raved about it in the comments.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
After the chequered flag readers awarded it an average score of 9.24 out of 10. In the 15 years since, only the similarly dramatic rain-affected races at Interlagos in 2012 (also a championship-decider) and the Hockenheimring in 2019 have been rated higher.
Does the 2011 Chinese Grand Prix deserve to be regarded as one of the all-time great races? It is partly a matter of personal taste. For me, the artificiality of DRS always tainted the racing in this era. That said, there was much to enjoy about this race which DRS didn’t touch.
However F1’s reliance on high-degradation tyres to produce lively races, inspired by the previous year’s Canadian Grand Prix, yielded diminishing returns over the months and years which followed. As teams understood how to get the best out of the rubber they increasingly avoided the kind of trap Vettel and Red Bull fell into at Shanghai.
But those who are turned off by the ‘yo-yo racing’ seen over the first three races this year – who appear to be considerably greater in number than F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali would have us believe – may draw some comfort from that. As teams better understand how to get the best out of their cars, we may begin to see less inconsequential position-swapping.
Although Pirelli’s tyres generally became less extreme in the years that followed, with some exceptions, many drivers remained vocal in their criticism of their fragility. Foremost among those was the one whose passes thrilled so many in Shanghai: Webber.
“In years gone by you could race hard when you were behind people,” he reflected, “but that’s not the case in 2011 due to the tyres.” Two years later he left his Red Bull team and F1.
The parallel with Max Verstappen’s recent threats is obvious. At the heart of that lies the same debate over what is great racing and what is an artificial, made-for-television contrivance.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Formula 1
- “Overtaking is overtaking”: Domenicali denies F1’s yo-yo racing is “artificial”
- The crashes F1 is trying to prevent may be rare – but the danger is obvious
- F1 returning to India soon after 2027 sounds like wishful thinking
- Verstappen loathes F1’s new generation of cars – but what do his rivals reckon?
- The ‘throwback weekend’ is back in fashion. But it’s a flawed concept – especially for F1
