Hamilton Wins Chinese Grand Prix

After an exciting race at the Shanghai International Circuit on the weekend, Lewis Hamilton goes on to the next leg of the Formula One Grand Prix Championship with a few more notches on his belt. Hopes are high that he’ll be able to clench the championship this year – a feat which is made even more special by the fact that it is exactly 50 years since the first British driver ever won the Formula One world title.

Lewis Hamilton is often considered to be the first ‘black’ driver in Formula One. Hence his winning this year’s world title would be yet another great accomplishment for British Formula One. Nevertheless a lot can happen between now and the end of the race and while the 23-year-old driver is currently in the lead, a similar lead in last years world title slipped between his fingers in the final races. While no one can predict what will happen in the last few championship races of the season, what is clear is that Hamilton absolutely dominated the Chinese Grand Prix from start to finish.

After world champion Kimi Raikkonen has slipped a bit too far down the standings, he has pledged to help Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa in his bid to win the world title rather than waste time trying to recover. And that is exactly what he did by easing his pace and letting Massa gain a place during the last few laps of the race. However Hamilton was clearly in top form and it seemed nothing would give Massa the boost needed to overtake him and claim the winner’s trophy. Massa finished second but that doesn’t mean that McLaren driver Hamilton can rest on his laurels. He still needs a further four points to be sure that the world title will not slip through his fingers a second time.

While it may seem that Hamilton just had the better skill that day, it would seem instead that a lot was determined by the tires used by the Ferrari and McLaren teams and this probably affected the handling of the vehicles quite a lot during the race. McLaren chose to use hard tires, while Ferrari opted for softer tires. That seemed to give Hamilton the boost he needed – he launched off the starting grid, led cleanly into the first corner and was 1.1 seconds ahead of competitor cars by the end of the first lap. It took ten laps just for the Ferrari team to gain on him. It was a mistake that Ferrari is unlikely to make again. It is now just a matter of time before the 2008 World Champion is crowned and all eyes are on Hamilton and Massa as they compete for top honors.