Power Ranking the Formula 1 Teams After 2015 Chinese Grand Prix
Mercedes brushed aside Ferrari's challenge at the 2015 Formula One Chinese Grand Prix without even breaking a sweat.
Following Sebastian Vettel's shock victory in Malaysia, the German team looked vulnerable heading into the race. But though the red cars followed the the silver ones closely throughout the opening two-thirds of the grand prix, the result was never really in doubt.
Victory for Lewis Hamilton, second for Nico Rosberg; normal service resumed.
Lotus may well have joined in the celebrations with their engine supplier. The Enstone team have had appalling luck so far in 2015, but Romain Grosjean finally got a trouble-free race and duly scored their first points of the year.
But for the likes of Red Bull and McLaren, the champagne is firmly on ice. These two giants of the sport scored just two points between them in Shanghai and will head to Bahrain with little hope of rapid progress.
Looking at reliability, qualifying and race pace, here's how they and all the teams currently rank.
Note on Power Rankings
F1 team power rankings ignore the points table and instead present a snapshot of where each team currently stand in relation to their competitors based on the three key factors of reliability, single-lap and long-run pace.
All position changes are relative to those in the previous set of rankings, created after the Malaysian Grand Prix. You can find them here.
10. Manor
1 of 10
No Change
Manor made progress by getting both cars to the end of the Chinese Grand Prix, but they still lag a long way behind the rest of the field.
Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi qualified on the back row, the quickest of the two a full three seconds down on the next slowest car.
That sort of gap is only going to produce one kind of race. The two Manors finished two laps down after a lonely grand prix spent racing each other.
They remain adrift in 10th.
9. McLaren
2 of 10
No Change
McLaren appear to have made improvements to their reliability but are still slowest of all bar Manor.
Jenson Button qualified 17th, around three-tenths of a second shy of making it to Q2. Fernando Alonso set a near-identical time to line up 18th.
On soft tyres, the two McLarens were quicker than Daniil Kvyat's medium tyre-shod Red Bull in the opening stages. However, even against the struggling Renault power unit, the Honda in the rear of the McLaren could not produce sufficient straight-line speed to allow them to overtake.
After the first stop, the two MP4-30s lost touch with the rear of the midfield and showed no sign of being able to catch up. They did briefly come into close proximity to Pastor Maldonado's Lotus after the Venezuelan made two mistakes, but the pace difference between the two cars was clear.
Only some smart defensive driving from Button prolonged the battle, which eventually resulted in a collision. Alonso finished 12th, his team-mate a post-penalty 14th.
That doesn't sound so bad—but they were still two-and-a-half minutes slower than Mercedes over the race distance.
They remain ninth.
8. Force India
3 of 10
No Change
Force India again failed to score points as they struggle with an underdeveloped car.
The two VJM08s continued a two-by-two formation at the rear of the grid. Nico Hulkenberg went out in Q1, while Sergio Perez was slowest of all in Q2. They lined up 15th and 16th.
Hulkenberg made a good start, but his race was over after just seven laps with a loss of drive. Perez also made up a few places early on.
The Mexican's pace was usually better than the cars he was racing, but the lap times flatter the car's true performance because he was on a three-stop strategy. Pitting one more time than the rest of the field, Perez narrowly missed out on the points when he came home in 11th.
Per Autosport, a heavily revised "B-spec" car is due to arrive for the Austrian Grand Prix.
Things will undoubtedly improve when it is ready, but for now, Force India remain eighth.
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7. Toro Rosso
4 of 10
Down Two
Toro Rosso's fundamentally good car is being badly let down by an unreliable and underpowered Renault engine.
It had the pace to reach Q3, but both Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr. exited qualifying in the second part. They started 13th and 14th, respectively, after neither extracted the maximum over a single lap.
Verstappen had the better opening lap of the pair, moving up to 11th. His pace was good as he attempted to carve through the field, executing beautiful overtakes on both Saubers and Sergio Perez's Force India. He was up to eighth before a power unit failure put him out a few laps from the end.
Sainz gave himself a lot to do after falling to the rear of the field following a spin on the second lap. A gearbox issue made his quest to catch up an impossible one, and he ended up 13th.
Both cars had more than sufficient pace for the points, but you get no points for breaking down.
Toro Rosso fall two places to seventh.
6. Sauber
5 of 10
No Change
Strong-starting Sauber are making hay while the sun shines. The Swiss team achieved a double-points finish for the second time in 2015.
Felipe Nasr was the quickest of the team's two drivers, qualifying ninth with a lap of one minute, 38.067 seconds. Marcus Ericsson also made it through to Q3 and started 10th.
Both made reasonable starts, but as the race progressed, it was clear they did not have the same race pace as a number of cars that started behind them. Both Toro Rossos had better speed, as did Pastor Maldonado's Lotus and Daniil Kvyat's Red Bull.
But Sauber's apparent bulletproof reliability came up trumps as those around them faltered. Nasr finished eighth and Ericsson 10th—keeping Sauber fourth in the constructors' championship.
They hold station in sixth.
5. Red Bull
6 of 10
Down One
Red Bull, like sister team Toro Rosso, are lower than they should be because their power unit isn't playing ball.
Daniel Ricciardo put in a good lap to qualify seventh, but he was almost two seconds slower than pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton. Daniil Kvyat failed to hook the car up over a single lap and started down in 12th.
A terrible start saw Ricciardo lose 10 places on the opening lap. He made progress back through the field, but it was slow—the Red Bull simply didn't have sufficient straight-line speed to give him a fair shot at overtaking.
He eventually clawed his way up to and finished ninth, but he had to rely on others dropping out to get that high.
Kvyat had a difficult opening stint on the medium tyre. He'll have been hoping to make up time when he switched to the softs, but he didn't even reach his first pit stop; the Renault power unit in the back of his RB11 failed, putting the Russian out after just 15 laps.
Another weekend to forget for the once-dominant team. They fall a place to fifth.
4. Lotus
7 of 10
Up Three
Lotus scored their first points of the season after a strong showing in Shanghai.
Romain Grosjean was again the team's top qualifier, putting his E23 eighth on the grid. Pastor Maldonado missed out on Q3 by 0.007 seconds and had to settle for 11th.
Both made up a place on the opening lap, and two quick overtakes by Maldonado put him onto Grosjean's tail. The team curiously allowed him to undercut the Frenchman at the first round of stops, and Maldonado rose to seventh.
The two Lotuses ran together at a similar pace throughout the second stint, clear of the rest of the midfield but losing time every lap to the cars ahead. They looked set to secure a double-points finish, but a couple of errors from Maldonado dropped him out of contention.
Grosjean retook seventh, and that's where he finished.
We've finally seen Lotus have a trouble-free race, and the signs were promising. They look a bit slower than Red Bull but appear far more likely to reach the finish line.
Lotus are up three spots to fourth.
3. Williams
8 of 10
No Change
Williams spent another race in a world all of their own.
Felipe Massa's fine run of qualifying form continued. The Brazilian outpaced Valtteri Bottas by two-tenths of a second to line up fourth. Bottas was fifth.
At the start, Massa tried to put pressure on Sebastian Vettel, leaving the door open for his team-mate to pass around the outside of Turn 1. The Finn's presence in fourth was short-lived—countryman Kimi Raikkonen overtook into Turn 6 and Massa followed him through.
That was about as exciting as it got for Williams. They would have been closer to the leading quartet had they been able to run two soft tyre stints—instead, they went for two on the medium and so were significantly slower in the middle of the race.
Massa was around 50 seconds down on leader Lewis Hamilton when the safety car emerged, with Bottas not far behind.
Williams stay clear in third.
2. Ferrari
9 of 10
No Change
Ferrari couldn't make it two wins in a row as they were firmly put back in their place by Mercedes.
Sebastian Vettel qualified third. His lap was good, but he was almost a second slower than pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton. Kimi Raikkonen couldn't get his car to work the way he wanted and ended up down in sixth.
The Finn was fourth by the exit of Turn 6 on the opening lap, and—as it was for Williams—the rest of the race was fairly dull for the Scuderia. Neither driver even attempted an overtake after the first lap, and neither had to defend from an attack.
The only interesting part for the team was watching the gap to Mercedes. It looked very close early on, but once the medium tyres went on, it was clear the Silver Arrows had been cruising.
Vettel finished third, 20 seconds down on Hamilton when the safety car came out a few laps from the end.
Raikkonen was fourth, and Ferrari remain second.
1. Mercedes
10 of 10
No Change
Mercedes produced the perfect response to being defeated in Malaysia.
Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg shared the front row, separated by just 0.046 seconds in favour of the Brit. The closest competitor was nine-tenths of a second slower.
It was formation flying at the start, and though Rosberg attempted to push Hamilton harder throughout the opening stint, Mercedes too had a relatively dull grand prix.
There was a bit of drama mid-race, as Rosberg became concerned by how slowly his tyre-saving team-mate was driving. But though a few words were exchanged between the drivers and their race engineers, nothing exciting came of it on the track.
Mercedes did not show their true pace in China; winner Hamilton ended up 20 seconds clear of the quickest Ferrari, but the real performance gap between the two teams was greater.
The German team hold station in first, chalking up a 22nd straight race at the top of the rankings.
Can anyone dislodge them in Bahrain?
Lap time and qualifying data used throughout sourced from the official F1 website and the FIA.
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