Not the most spine tingling race if I'm honest, yet as ever there is enough satire thrown up to mull over.
Looks like the Mercs controlled absolutely everything, and they very much seemed to win the race at the slowest possible speed. I think Hamilton could have been half way ahead to China before the end of the race, and Rosberg should have probably had more in hand over Vettel as well. I think they're just taking as little out of the car as possible and hiding some of their true potential at the moment.
Another story of two halves for Red Bull. What is clear is that the chassis is very definitely as good as they come, if it was powered by a Mercedes, they'd be winning. But Renault are gradually sorting out the problems as well and I don't think it'll be too long before the two will be perfectly married again. It's a shame how the second car has very firmly engaged Mark Webber mode though. Pit stop problems, unsafe releases, ten place grid penalty for the next race, bits falling off and finally breaking down. If Ricciardo can keep smiling through that then he's a better man than most.
Alonso and Hulkenberg did decent jobs, they were at times just about hanging on to the Red Bulls, shame for Raikkonen, shame for Perez.
So much for McLaren's half a second, Ron evidently forgot that Alonso took that on his way out of the door in 07. Quiet race for Button, a couple of rookie errors for young Magnussen.
Williams, a little bit disappointing. I think the testing form raised expectations a bit too high. Maybe the track and conditions exposed the car's key weakness a bit more than other tracks might, but they struggled more than their direct rivals with the tyre degradation. They made a strategy blooper with Bottas, left him out on shagged tyres, lost him about 8 seconds and track position. If it wasn't for that he'd probably have beaten Massa and had more chance of overtaking Button.
I think the media are kind of making a mountain out of a molehill with the "team orders issue". For one they forget that Bottas was told not to hassle Massa, until Massa had overtaken Magnussen (which he never managed) early in the race. And later in the race, they never gave Massa a direct order to let Bottas through. They simply told him that Bottas was faster, and not to hold him up.
They should have gone easy on the old "Valteri is faster than you" line though...
poor Felipe would have been flashing straight back to Hockenheim 2014. That said, he was correct in saying it wouldn't have made any difference to the team result and it was unlikely that Bottas would have got past Button, if he couldn't actually pass Massa anyway. Even though Bottas showed stronger overtaking skills today, Massa had a good chance to pass both McLarens and didn't make it stick on either.
LOL @ Maldonaldo... he made a fantastic choice to leave Williams for Lotus.
Kobayashi did a wonderful job of getting in the way of faster cars (i.e Kimi), but kudos to him for managing to keep that eyesore in touch enough to gain track position during the pit-stop phases anyway.