A selection of images from across the weekend, as Shanghai International Circuit hosted round three of the 2015 Formula 1 championship.

“It feels like we’ve started the season proper”

Shanghai International Circuit, Sunday April 12

McLaren-Honda got both cars safely to the finish in today’s Chinese Grand Prix, Fernando and Jenson finishing 12^th and 14^th respectively.

Both drivers started on the Option tyre, but then ran constrasting two-stop strategies. Fernando switched to Primes at his first stop, which made his car oversteer, before fitting Options for the run to the flag. Despite a longer-than-planned stop (to clear debris from the rear wing), the softer tyre enabled him to make up significant ground to the cars in front.

Jenson, switched to a second set of Options at his first stop, setting a string of competitive midfield times, before ending the race on the Prime. He struggled with a lack of rear grip on the harder tyre, which dropped him into the sights of the Lotus of Pastor Maldonado, with whom he enjoyed a spirited tussle for many laps.

Into the closing laps, the action between Jenson and Pastor intensified, the pair passing and re-passing each other before colliding on the high-speed entry to Turn One. Pastor was pushed into a spin, and the contact broke off Jenson’s right-hand front-wing endplate. With his car’s balance not too badly compromised, Jenson made it to the finish line in 13^th, but was later given a five-second penalty for his role in the Maldonado accident, which cost him an extra place.

The incident enabled the closely following Fernando to move cleanly past. When a late-race Safety Car period neutered the race, he came home 12^th.

FERNANDO ALONSO, MP4-30-03

“This wasn’t the easiest race for us. We weren’t very competitive at the beginning, then we had a few issues with the aero behaviour of the car, they slowed me down in the middle stint, but I was able to push a bit harder on the soft tyre at the end of the race.

“We still need to learn a lot more about this car in order to extract its maximum, but an afternoon like today was extremely useful for us as it enabled us to better understand the car.

“It was a useful race for me too: my longest stint during winter testing was 12 laps; in Malaysia, I did 22; and here I completed the race, so this is a step forward.

“Hopefully, we can improve again for Bahrain.”

JENSON BUTTON, MP4-30-01

“Today wasn’t too bad – we’re still fighting at the back of the field, which is a shame, but it’s positive to see that we’re progressing.

“My middle stint on the Option tyre wasn’t too bad – I don’t think our pace was too bad at all on the softer tyre – but the Prime was a bit trickier in those closing laps. A lot of that was due to all the blue flags and traffic I encountered – they meant the tyre temperatures dropped off quite a bit through the stint. It wasn’t easy.

“Regarding the collision with Pastor, I thought there was room on the inside – a collision is something you never want to see happen. It was just a misjudgment, I guess.

“Still, we go to Bahrain hoping for more progress, although the circuit configuration doesn’t suit us, so heading to Europe will hopefully work out a little bit better for the team.

“We need to improve at every race because we’re quite a way back.”

ERIC BOULLIER – Racing director, McLaren-Honda

“First, it’s a real positive for the entire team that we managed to get two cars to the finish with no issues whatsoever during the race. I think that’s a great reward for Honda, and we should congratulate them – today’s double-finish is the result of an enormous amount of hard work, much of which goes unappreciated, so I want to personally thank everybody working in Woking, Sakura and Milton Keynes for their efforts. It’s great that we’re starting to make solid progress. 

“Second, our race pace showed further improvement: Jenson drove strongly in the middle stint, and Fernando was reasonably quick relative to the others in the final stint.

“Fighting towards the back of the pack still isn’t where we want to be. We know we’re not in a position to fight for points yet – but, little by little, we’re getting there. And we must keep pushing to ensure there are improvements coming for every race.”

YASUHISA ARAI – Honda R&D senior managing officer – chief officer of motorsport

“After today’s result, it finally feels like we’ve left this long period of winter testing behind us, and started the season proper.

“To get both cars to the finish of the race is one more item off our list, and we’ll now continue to push forward race by race to achieve the targets that we’ve set for ourselves.

“It may appear that we’ve only achieved a minor objective, and we know there’s a lot of work ahead, but the whole team deserves credit and thanks for all of their hard work.”

“Our main priority now is to finish tomorrow’s race”

Shanghai International Circuit, Saturday April 11

McLaren-Honda will start 17^th (Jenson Button) and 18^th (Fernando Alonso) in tomorrow’s Chinese Grand Prix.

Jenson’s first Q1 run saw him set a 1m39.936ss lap-time. After boxing for fresh rubber, he improved to a 1m39.276s, set using the Option tyre. His time was just 0.060s behind 16^th position, and two tenths short of making it into Q2.

Fernando completed a quick installation lap at the start of Q1 to ensure that his car was working following his early departure from FP3 with an engine ignition problem this morning. He then followed up with two runs, both on Option tyres, initially setting a 1m40.327s, then bettering it with a 1m39.280s. He will start 18^th.

JENSON BUTTON, MP4-30-01

“I guess we hoped we might be just a bit closer than we were today; in practice, we’d looked a bit more competitive, certainly.

“We’d found a reasonably good balance with the car, in fact, but the lap-time isn’t quite there yet. In addition, the cars in front of us seemed to make a big leap forward this afternoon – whereas we didn’t – so we’ll need to find out why that was.

“So, overall, we’ve made some improvements this weekend, but qualifying just didn’t go our way. Hopefully, things will be better tomorrow, and we’ll be able to race some of the cars that will start in front of us on the grid.”

FERNANDO ALONSO, MP4-30-03

“We were two tenths away from the mid-pack – and close to getting into Q2 – today. We’re getting there, and this is another step forward, but we’re still under-performing, so we need to keep improving.

“Our main priority now is to finish tomorrow’s race; that’ll allow us to learn more about the car and uncover any possible problems. Obviously, two DNFs in Malaysia wasn’t an ideal situation for us, so, regardless of the result, we need to make the finish here in China.

“This has been another positive weekend – everyone in the team is excited about the progress we’re making.”

ERIC BOULLIER – Racing director, McLaren-Honda

“I’d hesitate to use the word ‘disappointing’ to describe this afternoon’s qualifying performance, but I think we’d all hoped for a little more, particularly after looking like we’d made a respectable improvement in all three of this weekend’s practice sessions.

“Fernando’s afternoon was obviously affected by the car failure on his out-lap in FP3 this morning, but he responded magnificently, and the parity between our drivers today demonstrated exactly why we hired them: because they can get absolutely everything from the car, and leave nothing out on track. Superbe!

“Additionally, both Fernando and Jenson know how important it will be to finish tomorrow’s race. Hopefully, it will give us another opportunity to narrow the gap to the cars in front. In fact, while today’s grid positions of 17^th and 18^th don’t necessarily reflect it, this weekend does indeed mark another step forward: in Australia we were 2.836s off the best Q1 time; in Malaysia the gap was 2.367s, and here it was 1.774s.

“That gives everyone in the team reason to feel encouraged.”

YASUHISA ARAI – Honda R&D senior managing officer – chief officer of motorsport

“In FP3 we had a small ignition system issue on Fernando’s car, so we couldn’t ride the momentum that we’d gathered during yesterday’s positive FP1 and FP2 sessions. It’s an unfortunate result, especially since we’d been closing the gap.

“I want to say a big thank-you to all the mechanics for their hard work to get Fernando’s car ready for qualifying. And we hope that the race tomorrow will bring us some positive results.”

“There’s been progress today – hashtag progress!”

Shanghai International Circuit, Friday April 10

McLaren-Honda enjoyed a positive first day of practice in Shanghai – both cars regularly ran inside the top 10 in both sessions, eventually finishing 10^th (Jenson Button) and 12^th (Fernando Alonso) at the end of this afternoon’s session.

The MP4-30 appears to behave fairly well around the fast sweeps of the Shanghai International Circuit, although it is still too tricky to get an accurate read on performance as various cars were running on different fuel loads, and a mid-session yellow-flag period (to retrieve Felipe Massa’s car) meant that some drivers were compromised while attempting to set lap-times on fresh Option rubber.

Nonetheless, the team has gathered some positive momentum, which it will take into tomorrow’s practice and qualifying sessions.

JENSON BUTTON, MP4-30-01

“We look reasonably good out there, but that can perhaps be explained by the fact that we seem to have been able to extract the maximum out of our car today, whereas perhaps some of the other teams haven’t.

“Still, the car’s nice to drive – especially when we’re running on the Option tyre. However, our one-lap pace seems to be better than our performance over a long run, which is a turnaround from how we went in Malaysia. But I think we can make some improvements in that area for tomorrow.

“Irrespective of today’s finishing position, the feeling with the car is good. There’s still room for improvement, but I’m nevertheless looking forward to the rest of the weekend.

“There’s been progress today – hashtag progress!”

FERNANDO ALONSO, MP4-30-03

“It’s been a very positive Friday for us – I enjoyed both sessions. We completed our aero programme during the morning, and then focused on set-up work this afternoon.

“All the updates we brought here seem to be working as we’d expected, and they’ve put us closer to the mid-pack. It’s very encouraging to see that we’re moving firmly in the right direction – it’s a question of time as to when we’ll become competitive.

“Obviously, we began the season from a lower starting point than some of the other teams, so it’s been easier for us to make quick improvements, but the team is so focused and determined to improve – that’s very impressive.

“While it’s been great today to run in the middle of the pack – and I want to be able to maintain that sort of progress – we need to keep our feet on the ground: we saw in the first two races that the others tend to take a step forward in qualifying, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”

ERIC BOULLIER – Racing director, McLaren-Honda

“While we won’t get carried away with seeing both cars finish this afternoon’s session in respectable positions, it’s always encouraging to see signs of positive progress.

“As we witnessed in Malaysia a fortnight ago, we’re continuing intensively to develop and improve MP4-30, and today’s sessions proved to be no exception. Indeed, both Fernando and Jenson were reasonably happy with their cars’ balance, and our engineers will look to refine that tonight.

“Tomorrow, we’ll acquire a much clearer read of our rivals’ respective performance once we get into qualifying. But, for the moment, it’s nice to see that we’re continuing to take some good steps forward with both the chassis and the power unit.” 

YASUHISA ARAI – Honda R&D senior managing officer – chief officer of motorsport

“Today, we saw some positive progress with the power unit’s hardware reliability – and that has led us to be able to adjust the energy management system to cater for the needs of both Fernando and Jenson. I’m looking forward to a further step tomorrow.”