china

The Chinese grand prix was quite a good one.

I have to say I think the DRS actually doesn't help in China.  The problem with it is it makes overtaking too easy and on the straight, rather than proper battling overtakes into the corner.  This is particularly the case on the long straight that then goes into the big horseshoe corner.

This has always been a place where overtaking has been possible, but with the DRS it means they overtake on the straight before the corner, rather than going into it.  Now I don't think it means there's more overtaking than there would otherwise be, but it does mean the overtakes aren't quite as interesting.

There was also plenty that happened in the race.  When it turned out one of the tyres behaved more like a qualifying tyre than a race tyre I was a bit worried it would be fairly predictable - if the tyres are closer or there's more of an advantage revealed during the race then it can throw strategy into disarray, which makes things more interesting.

However, as it happened it didn't seem to be a problem.  Indeed, the end was made quite exciting because Vettel changed onto the soft tyre and was hunting Hamilton and Kimi down at the end.

The BBC coverage was also quite extensive.  It's weird - they seem to have ramped up the coverage on the races they do in full, despite supposedly scaling it back previously to save money.  The practices were even shown live on BBC 2 where usually they would be on the red button, so they had to ramp up what they did.  Usually when it's just red button they just commentate on the broadcast - no extra bits.

I'm increasingly convinced that a big part of their decision was the Olympics - both in terms of airtime available and the expense of having to give them full coverage sucking cash away from other sports.

Anyway, it's a double header next weekend with Bahrain.  Bahrain is usually a pretty dull race, and it's one the BBC is just doing highlights of.