Alonso puts himself back in Drivers Championship frame with win in China

14Apr 2013

Fernando Alonso turned third position on the grid into a convincing win in the Chinese Grand Prix, says James Frankland...

Fernando Alonso converted third on the grid into a dominant victory in the Chinese Grand Prix, winning by over 10 seconds from Kimi Raikkonen with polesitter Lewis Hamilton coming home third for Mercedes. Hamilton was under serious pressure from world champion Sebastian Vettel at the end, the Red Bull driver closing rapidly on new soft tyres and missing out on a podium place by just two tenths of a second.

In a race where tyre strategy was extremely fluid, it emerged that the leading trio of Hamilton, Raikkonen and Alonso had all opted for the same approach - run as far as possible on the soft tyres, get rid of them at the first sign of degradation, and run the rest of the race on the more durable medium tyre. Those who opted to run contrary to that included Vettel, who was really the only one to make it work significantly by gaining five places from start to finish and challenge for the podium, while Jenson Button also showed well, moving up three places to finish fifth but was more than 20 seconds adrift of the Red Bull at the flag.

Mark Webber suffered more bad luck, failing to convert early promise into a decent finish. He was, as expected, demoted to the back of the grid after being found to have less than the required amount of fuel in his car during qualifying, but then got himself into contention by stopping on the first lap to get rid of the soft tyres. This brought him into play, running close to Raikkonen but at his next stop the right rear wheel was not attached properly, eventually falling off at the penultimate corner after he toured slowly back to the pits to retire.

Alonso's win brings him right back into the fight for the title, now just nine points behind Sebastian Vettel, with the ever-consistent Kimi Raikkonen second, just three points down on the Red Bull driver. The results of today's race mean Vettel has lengthened to 2.62 in the Driver's Championship market, while Alonso has come in from 4.7 to 2.9 after firmly outpacing Vettel in Shanghai. Raikkonen ought to be in the mix also and can be backed at 8.2, which might be as long as it gets for Kimi if he stays in touch with the leaders in the standings.

Red Bull have moved out slightly to 1.82 in the Constructor's Championship market, reflecting the 13 points lost to Ferrari today with the gap between the two outfits coming down to just six points. Ferrari have moved up to 2.8 from 3.9 three weeks ago after Alonso failed to finish in Malaysia. I like the look of Ferrari in this market - they are staying in touch with Red Bull (at this stage last year they were third, 27 points behind Red Bull and a further 24 behind McLaren) and will surely only build on their strong start when Formula One returns to Europe.

Before that we have the Bahrain Grand Prix next week, a track on which Alonso has tasted success before, winning his debut race for Ferrari there in 2010, followed home by Felipe Massa in second place. It's a track which ought to favour Ferrari but also Lotus, who could have won with Raikkonen last year, so check out the early odds for next week's race in Sakhir.