page_title: 2010 Chinese Grand Prix
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: 2010 Chinese Grand Prix / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: The Shanghai International Circuit, a motorsport race track situated in the Jiading District of Shanghai and home of the annual Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix. Image taken on April 7, 2018, by a Planet Labs SkySat satellite.
context_page_description: The 2010 Chinese Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at the Shanghai International Circuit in the Jiading District of Shanghai on 18 April 2010. Approximately 85,000 people attended the event. It was the fourth race of the 2010 Formula One World Championship and the seventh running of the race. The 56-lap race was won by McLaren driver Jenson Button from a fifth position start. His teammate Lewis Hamilton finished in second and Nico Rosberg of the Mercedes team was third.
  Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel won the eighth pole position of his career by posting the fastest lap in qualifying. Fernando Alonso for Ferrari, started from third, and passed both Red Bull cars into the first corner. However, the stewards deemed that he had jumped the start and incurred a drive-through penalty. The safety car was deployed on the first lap, after a three-car collision at turn six, and remained out for four laps. Rosberg led from laps five to 19 until Button overtook him. Intermittent rain made track conditions slippery though Button maintained the lead for the rest of the race to secure his second victory of the season and the ninth of his career.
context_section_description: The 2010 Chinese Grand Prix was the fourth of nineteen scheduled single seater races of the 2010 Formula One World Championship and the seventh running of the event. It was held at the 16-turn 5.451 km (3.387 mi) Shanghai International Circuit in the Jiading District of Shanghai on 18 April. Tyre supplier Bridgestone brought four tyre types to the race: the soft "options" and hard "primes" dry compounds and the intermediate and full wet-weather compounds. The soft compounds were denoted by a green stripe on their side-walls; the wet compound tyres were identified by a green line at the bottom of their central groove.
  Going into the race, Ferrari driver Felipe Massa led the Drivers' Championship with 39 points, two ahead of his teammate Fernando Alonso in second and jointly held the position with the leading Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel, who had won the Malaysian Grand Prix two weeks earlier. Jenson Button of McLaren and Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg were tied for fourth with 35 points. Ferrari led the Constructors' Championship with 76 points and McLaren were a further ten points behind in second. Red Bull stood in third place with 61 points, Mercedes were fourth with 44 points and Renault rounded out the top five with 30 points.
  Button had won the Australian Grand Prix and his teammate Lewis Hamilton finished sixth in the previous two races of the season. Despite this, the McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh said that the team did not meet its targets but sought to establish themselves at the front of the field, "One of the greatest qualities of this team is its considerable strength in depth. After establishing a strong and solid start to the season, we're confident we'll become an even more formidable contender as we head into China and then the start of the European season." Others teams in the field predicted the team would have an advantage with the MP4-25s F-duct (a device which increases the top speed of a car by stalling the rear wing), though Hamilton said he expected Red Bull and Ferrari to challenge them, while Button stated he was uncertain whether his car would be quick enough in qualifying trim but felt it was fast for the race, "I feel that when I get to Barcelona, I'll have everything that I want to be 100 per cent. Where I am at the moment is already very good, I'm very comfortable with the car and everyone in the team."
  Two weeks before the race, the governing body of motor racing, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), wrote to all of the teams that any system discovered to make adjustments to the suspension and ride height of a car to achieve an aerodynamic advantage while in parc fermé conditions after the end of qualifying and before the start of a race would be outlawed under Article 34.5 of the F1 Sporting Regulations and Article 3.15 of the Technical Regulations. It came after McLaren suggested that Red Bull had used a ride height device on the RB6 at the preceding Malaysian Grand Prix, which the latter outfit denied. The team's engineering director Paddy Lowe stated that they had stopped development on its own suspension system after clarification was confirmed, "We were aware over the last few months of a different approach to it [the suspension system]; an approach which historically we hadn't thought to be the typical interpretation [of the regulations], and we were reacting to that."
  Several teams made modifications to their cars in preparation for the event. Red Bull installed a small vertical exhaust duct to the rear of the RB6 to stop hot air from hitting the exhaust onto its rear wheels and better direct airflow towards the diffuser's side channel. Mercedes introduced a modified rear wing controlled by pressure sensors to feed airflow through two small openings and onto the back of its flap. Ferrari brought a revised aerodynamic package for the F10, which included a new frontal and curved splitter, an altered diffuser, and an extra vane to straighten the flow of air beside the splitter. During the Friday practice sessions, Alonso tested a modified rear wing, which direc
caption: The Shanghai International Circuit (pictured in 2018), where the race was held.
exif: {"Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "paint.net 4.0.16"}