2001 Chinese Grand Prix

### **Report:**

**The Chinese Grand Prix started off with Hanf launching away from the rest into turn 1 where the early chaos began.**

**The BAR Honda's took P7 and P8 early on after the first corners, while Belal took the lead away from Hanf.**

**Meanwhile the battles in the midfield and in the front were going on, Koopman was shunted off-track by Schaaphok who crashed himself out of the Chinese GP with those actions.**

**Kress meanwhile showed immense pace by overtaking Trulli for P3 and driving the fastest lap of the race, which was never beaten throughout the whole Grand Prix.**

**The new BAR-Honda driver Kulap Nguyen battled against the second Ferrari driver Faizal Mehrabi, who eventually had lost his fourth position to the thailandish-driver after a amazing battle through several corners of the track.**

**Shortly after Hanf was able to regain his race-lead but had to give it away only a few laps later due to him spinnin' round. Meanwhile in the same lap Mehrabi was crashed out of the Grand Prix by Jarno Trulli who had driven into the rear of the german Ferrari driver. Mehrabi suffered severe rear wing damage including the loss of his right rear tyre.**

**Belal started to expand his lead to more than 10 seconds, and led the race confidently on for multiple laps. Meanwhile Belal's dominance, both BMW's battled for P4 with Koopman getting the upper hand.**

**Kress started to ask his team for full power which he quickly got from his team to catch up Isaac Belal and possibly challenge him for his race lead.**

**Kress started catching up 0.5 seconds per lap, but then spun in the start/finish straight due to pushing too hard. This incident pushed Nguyen onto the podium positions.**

**Several laps later both BMW's started to catch up Nguyen alot and in the end overtook the thailandish-driver. After Belal's pit-stop both BMW's led the race infront of Nguyen, who had no chance sticking with those as they battled for the lead.**

**Koopman once again took the lead away from his team mate and showed who was the quicker guy that weekend. Only moments later as Belal heads out of the pit-lane he's involved into a heavy crash with Jules Moreau who didn't see Belal coming out of the pits and pulled right into Belal's racing line. The crash ended up Moreau's car splitted into two.**

**Luckily for Belal, he was able to continue his race by just pitting once again and getting his car fixed, while Moreau might have suffered some minor injuries in his heavy crash and had to give up his race.**

**Belal wasn't the only driver to have pitted twice in a row tho, as Nguyen and Hanf had to make a double-stop as well due to some problems, which helped out Tobi Kress to get back up into the Top 3 ranks.**

**Unfortuneatly Kress didn't know what was coming towards him, as he went three-way round the first straight after the first corners along with Koopman and Raikkonen which made Koopman and Kress collide heavily.**

**This opened a door for Raikkonen to possibly win the race, but he eventually lost his race lead to his team mate Nico Carrasco, due to his car getting hit by some debris of that Kress & Koopman incident.**

**Meanwhile Belal who still was in the race, fought back into the Top 10 ranks, as well as Carrasco fighting off Irvine and Hanf to defend his fresh gained race-lead.**

**Irvine started to slow down alot, which put Hanf past him as well as Nguyen. Carrasco had to fight off Hanf for three more laps to win the **Chinese Grand Prix of 2001**.**

**Carrasco succeeded in keeping Hanf behind until the final lap at the final long straight before the start/finish straight, where Hanf slipstreamed himself past the Sauber-Petronas driver.**

**Hanf crossed the line in first in photo-finish fashion, infront of Nico Carrasco and Kulap Nguyen.**