Maranello, 8 April – The Formula 1 World Championship stays in Asia for Round 3, moving on to China. “It’s a very different circuit to the one in Malaysia, both in terms of its technical characteristics and when it comes to the weather,” says Esteban Gutierrez, Scuderia Ferrari’s third driver.
“Shanghai has many fast corners, such as turn 1, that leads on to the long finish straight. This, along with the fact that usually, it’s quite cool in Shanghai, means the tyres are made to work in a very different way when compared to Sepang. In fact, in Malaysia, we benefited from the fact our tyres had very low degradation in the high temperatures. However, in China, the track surface will be much cooler and there are some very heavy braking points: at the end of the long straight, you actually have to decelerate from 330 km/h down to 60 in around 120 metres.
It’s definitely a good passing opportunity, but if you don’t have a well-balanced car, then you can suffer from tyre graining after just a few laps. “I think it will be a harder race than Malaysia for us,” concludes Esteban. “But, all the same, we hope to be able to reduce the gap still further to our competitors and to make the most of our current potential with both our cars. China is a very important market for Ferrari road cars and we want to do well in front of the many Prancing Horse owners and fans there.”
there are reports from China that Kimi has lost his passport yesterday and origanizers are now helping him to get a visa again. We will see if he will be there tomorrow
quoteChinese GP - Kimi: “Not quite like last year”
Shanghai, 9 April – On Thursday before the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, Kimi Raikkonen addressed questions from the media. Many of them focused on his predictions for the week end. “Obviously we have to put in a clean weekend with no issues, then I’ m sure we could be pretty happy with the result. This is a different track but so far the car has been working well in all kind of conditions on every place and I don’t see reasons why it should be different here. Here it can be a little bit different because it’s cold and the track is challenging, but of course if you have a good car it helps. Tomorrow we’ll go out and see but I don’t expect big surprises.”
Can you say you can challenge Mercedes even if, unlike Sepang, the weather here is not so hot and this one is not a rear tyre limited track? “All track are different and every condition too, and one car can behave better in a place that in another one. Maybe we are not where we would like to be, but compared to last year things have changed a lot even if we still have a lot to do.”
The win in Malaysia is a very good result for the team and for Sebastian. “We knew from testing we have a good package but the two first races for me have been pretty difficult , although I could take some good points in Malaysia. We keep pushing as hard as we can trying to do things right knowing that every race can be different, but generally I think we can be quite strong everywhere. In general we know we have the speed but we have to get rid of all the issues even if they are not our fault like the puncture”.
Things were very, very interesting in FP. Mercedes and Ferrari looks closer then at Malaysia, it does seem like there could be a good fight. Kimi was once again doing an excellent job today. Good one lap pace and long run pace. Mercedes and Ferrari might actually have similar pace, but it seems like Mercedes's tyres are degrading quicker. This should once again be a very interesting race. Riccardo also showed decent pace, so perhaps Red are improving.
Kimi did a great run on the medium tyres. I can only hope that things does not go wrong for Kimi again in some way. I mean seriously he cant have terrible luck every, single, race, at some point he must have a normal weekend. I hope it can perhaps happen here, but if something goes wrong again, I properly wouldn't be surprised either. "Sigh" the life of a Kimi fan!
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Wed Apr 08, 2015 12:01 pm
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Where is your brain??? 
Andrea,
