THE Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg still has the best chance of winning the Chinese Grand Prix this weekend.
In Bahrain they raced each other for the chequered flag after the safety car intervention and showed that they have a pace advantage of nearly two seconds a lap over the opposition.
This is a huge amount in F1 terms and it will take the others considerable time to make it up.
We can, however, expect the other teams to claw their way back into a competitive position.
I expect Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari to make the biggest gains in the short term, but they will have to challenge and beat Force India Mercedes, which made huge strides at the last race in Bahrain, in the process.
We can also expect better performances from Williams, Mercedes and Lotus Renault, all of whom have been unlucky.
Talking about luck, or the lack thereof in terms of good luck, is the hugely talented Daniel Ricciardo.
As I write (on Tuesday) he had just started his appeal with FIA for his cancelled second position in Australia.
Team boss, Christian Horner is optimistic that he will have Ricciardo’s position reversed as they have gathered more positive evidence regarding the fuel flow meters used.
Ricciardo is said to have breached the maximum 100kg per hour fuel flow limit! Cars are allowed 100kg of fuel for the entire race.
Latest news on Michael Schumacher is still not good. Although his eyes have flickered, he has not really shown any other positive signs of coming out of his coma that started at the end of December 2013.
He has, in the meantime lost 25 percent of his body mass. Schumie holds the lap record at Shanghai, set way back in 2004 at 1:32:238 and it will be interesting to see if anyone can beat this time set 10 years ago in a 3-l car with the latest 1.6-l turbos!
TV times: race – Sunday, April 20 at 9am.
