In some ways the Chinese Grand Prix had a very different pattern to the sprint race, but ultimately Oscar Piastri did much the same as Lewis Hamilton had the previous day: defend the lead from pole with good positioning and no-compromise moves (against Max Verstappen in Hamilton's case, against George Russell in Piastri's), get straight out of DRS range, eke out an advantage but not too quickly, taking care of the tyres, and win.
But actually, the tyre part of it turned out to be a much less delicate balancing act than the day before as this time they were fine. The mediums that were screaming for mercy after 19 laps on Saturday and which had grained the fronts after about four laps were problem-free on Sunday.
The track had rubbered in further and what had been a crosswind into the fast Turn 1 on Saturday was a nice headwind this time, reducing the damaging high-speed slip on the fronts. It was enough to make the difference; the graining of the medium tyre was drastically reduced and the hard C2 which no one had tried turned out to be super-robust.
It made the race a comfortable one-stop. The Racing Bulls and Hamilton tried to bring their races alive by switching to a two-stop, but it didn't work. Without the graining the degradation of the fronts was very low and while the rear deg still needed to be managed it wasn't to the extent where a new set regained you the long pitstop loss.
So without the graining complication, McLaren reverted to being the fastest car. "Ferrari were better than us on Saturday," assessed team principal Andrea Stella.
But both made changes for Sunday. McLaren's worked and Ferrari's did not.
Hamilton, starting from fifth and therefore without the clear air advantage he enjoyed in the sprint, had opted to put more front end on the car, as did Charles Leclerc. "There was a development Charles had tried in Bahrain testing which I hadn’t," related Hamilton, "and we both took it for today. But it didn’t work." At least not for Hamilton.
The Mercedes, which Russell had put on the front row, didn't have quite the McLaren's pace in the race. But this was still not Melbourne levels of pace advantage for McLaren. That only seems to happen when the challenge is controlling high rear tyre temperatures. Piastri and Lando Norris were fastest here, but not by enough to guarantee the result. Not until it became evident that actually this was a clear one-stop race.
"That took away the difficulty for us of who to cover if it was between a one [stop] and a two," explained Stella.
But while having most of the field on the same game plan removed the jeopardy of a finely poised strategy game to make Piastri's day simpler, the change in tyre performance potentially brought a different threat to his win: from team-mate Norris.
When it was all about graining fronts on Saturday, Norris was downbeat, seemingly defeated already. "Whenever we have graining, I really struggle, personally," he readily admitted after a poor performance in the sprint, in which he finished eighth. "I just can't drive a car with no front end," he elucidated on Sunday, "when it becomes too understeery."
In the way Norris naturally drives there's greater overlap in the braking and cornering phases compared to the more straightforward style of Piastri. It loads the front tyres up for longer on corner entry. At a circuit where the long corners and coarse new surface were inducing front graining, it hurt Norris more than Piastri. As such, Norris began the race trying to use a more Piastri way of driving.
But with the more rubbered-in surface of Sunday and graining no longer such an issue, Norris soon realised he was back. "I felt a step behind on Saturday," he said, "but today it came to me and I think I had the best pace of all out there. Even when I was in Oscar's dirty air, I still had the pace."
So once he'd got by Russell in the race's opening seconds (and retaliated on Russell undercutting ahead at the stops with a committed move into Turn 1 two laps later), Norris felt he could still win this, that he had potentially better pace than Piastri. His game plan was just to stay within reach, saving his tyres so he could launch an attack in the last 12-15 laps.
Piastri suspected as much; regardless of the pace he set, he noticed Norris was not dropping back. So Piastri too began to save his tyres. In this way the McLaren advantage over Mercedes was probably made to look smaller than it really was.
Before it was certain that it was a definite one-stop, but after the first stops, McLaren was concerned that Russell could still be within undercut range of Norris. So it asked him to up his pace for a couple of laps to be safe. Which was something of an inconvenience for Norris because not only would it involve eating into the tyres he was trying to save, but it would take him into Piastri's dirty air and thereby cause further tyre damage.
Piastri was shrewdly aware of the situation and saw no need to up his pace to create a bigger gap for Norris to close into to get out of Russell's reach - until eventually he was asked to do so. Just the little nuances of what could well be a title battle.
Ultimately Norris' challenge was thwarted by his brake problem, which began manifesting around 10 laps from the end, his pedal travel getting longer each lap. "We know the nature of the problem, which we wont disclose for IP reasons but there was a leak in the system," said Stella. "Not the brake lines."
Towards the end, the 100-metre braking point for the Turn 14 hairpin had become lifting off at 300 metres for Norris. He judged it beautifully to just keep Russell off his back. "I think another half-a-lap and I'd have got him," said Russell, an assessment with which Norris agreed.
"That Mercedes is like a dragster out of Turn 12," radioed Leclerc as he was trying to apply the pressure to Russell. "It's got so much traction."
Leclerc’s race was an incident-packed one, with the loss of his left front wing endplate a few seconds into the race against the sister Ferrari of Hamilton. It cost what Ferrari estimates as 20-30 points of downforce (around 0.3s-worth in theory) yet he was clearly quicker than the struggling Hamilton.
Early in the second stint, Hamilton volunteered to let Leclerc past, such was his struggle with the balance. By which time they were a couple of seconds behind Russell. Leclerc gradually closed the Mercedes down, suggesting that without the damage he might have been McLaren’s closest challenger.
"Over the rest of the lap, we were quicker than him," said Leclerc of Russell, "but out of Turn 12, I'd say he was gaining maybe half-a-second between there and through the following corners." Without the straightline speed to pass, he made no further progress and towards the end his front tyres were giving out, deprived of the front wing's extra downforce.
Although he crossed the line fifth, having dropped behind Verstappen's Red Bull late on, he was excluded for being 1kg underweight. The tyre wear of the unexpected one-stop had tripped up Ferrari's calculations. Making it a double blow for Ferrari, Hamilton was also excluded - for an excessively worn underbody plank.
Why both Ferraris were disqualified from the Chinese GP
Hamilton was losing out to Leclerc on the exits of Turns 9 and 13, trying to take greater speed in, and was suffering understeer through the final corner. The contrast was stark between this and the driver who'd blitzed the sprint race from pole.
Whatever changes Ferrari had made to the car in anticipation of minimising front graining had made it an unresponsive beast on Sunday. He's still clearly feeling his way in understanding the dynamics of the car and its systems, but that sweet spot of Saturday illustrated what's possible when it all aligns.
With Verstappen's Red Bull chasing him down, Hamilton elected to make a second stop. With his new hard tyres he was by far the fastest car on track as he returned but it was nowhere near fast enough to recatch Verstappen before the end and he crossed the line sixth.
Verstappen actually had a good turn of speed on the hard tyres in the second stint, making up on Russell and the Ferraris all that he'd lost on the mediums in the first stint. But still a few tenths off McLaren pace. "It's strange," mused Verstappen on the contrast in competitiveness between the two stints. "I don't think it's about fuel load because the balance was the same. I just had more grip."
It's possible he pushed a little too hard, too early on the mediums - but actually his in-lap was super-fast. "We still have a lot of analysis and understanding to do," he summarised.
Behind the top six, a feisty Esteban Ocon led a great day for Haas, the car transformed since Australia, with Ollie Bearman coming through strongly to 10th from his lowly grid position in the sister car (the pair subsequently promoted to fifth and eighth in the final classification).
Kimi Antonelli took damage to his underfloor on the first lap (probably from the Leclerc front wing debris) giving him a madly oversteering Mercedes for the rest of the day, restricting him to eighth, just ahead of Alex Albon - who ran long enough on his mediums to briefly lead the race, the first time a Williams has been there for many years.
Lance Stroll's Aston Martin and Carlos Sainz's Williams moved into the points after the Ferraris, and Pierre Gasly's Alpine, were excluded.
This was the 50th 1-2 of McLaren's history. There are probably going to be a few more this season.
