F1 has returned to Shanghai for the first time since 2019.
Max Verstappen put in a performance of his own in a Grand Prix that was interrupted by two safety cars in quick succession midway through the race.
BBC Sport's chief F1 writer Andrew Benson answers your questions after the Chinese Grand Prix.
Is it the car or the driver?If you traded players like Max Verstappen and Nico Hulkenberg, where would they finish? – Becky
This year's Red Bull, like the two before it, looks set to go down as one of the greatest F1 cars in history. And it's clear that any top driver can win.
But not everyone has the perfect ease of winning like Max Verstappen. And Dutch teammate Sergio Perez is proof of that.
Last year, Verstappen won 19 of 22 races. However, Perez was second to him only four of those times, which is a pretty grim statistic.
Red Bull started the year looking, if anything, better than last year, with Perez finishing second behind Verstappen with three of his four wins, but when the Dutchman retired in Australia I couldn't take advantage of it.
To answer your question about Hulkenberg, he and Perez were almost evenly matched when they were teammates at Force India, but Perez finished first in the championship in two of their three seasons together. He finished on the podium, something Hulkenberg had never achieved before.
Of course, there are better drivers than Perez on the grid, and they would all win in a Red Bull over Verstappen – Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Lando. Norris, Carlos Sainz and probably others too.
However, Verstappen is operating at an extremely tenuous level at the moment, and everyone in F1 knows that. So the answer to the question of car or driver is both.
image source, Getty Images
What needs to happen in F1 to bring it back to the days when it was competitive and unpredictable? After a lifetime of joy, it became boring – Sean
It is true that there is little competitive crisis in F1 at the moment, with Verstappen seemingly able to win from almost anywhere on the grid.
Red Bull's rivals hope they can close the gap over time. But realistically, Verstappen is likely to dominate for the next two seasons and it will be until new chassis and engine regulations are introduced in 2026 before any meaningful changes occur.
Is Lance Stroll good enough for F1? Another incident in China, where his teammate Kevin was completely outclassed and outclassed.
During the safety car restart in China, Lance Stroll clearly made a serious mistake by slamming into the back of Daniel Ricciardo's running back. But he's usually a perfectly capable F1 driver and definitely has talent. For example, he took pole position for Racing Point in the 2020 Turkish wet race.
Having said that, most F1 insiders would agree that he ranks last in the current driver rankings, and he has had seven years to prove himself, and his father It's no exaggeration to say that if it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't have driven. A billionaire who owns the team he races with.
As for his teammates performing well and being good, yes, that's a fair comment. But his teammate Alonso is exceptional, to say the least.
Stroll may not have been able to beat any teammate other than Williams' Sergei Sirotkin in F1 in 2018, but he was much better than Alonso against other teammates, including Sebastian Vettel.
Where do you think Williams will end up in the long term?It seemed like we made some progress last season, but it feels like we've taken another step back – John
It's a little early to say Williams has regressed. He finished 7th last year and is now 8th after five races this year. They haven't picked up any points yet, but it's been a very difficult start to the year.
Team principal James Bolles took a risk by going into the season without a spare chassis, a move that was driven by his desire to bring the organization up to date and something that absolutely needed to be done. was. It bit him as the driver kept crashing the car.
Voles is a smart guy with a clear vision of what he wants to achieve with Williams. But no one should underestimate the amount of work it will take to make them a truly modern F1 team.
Lewis Hamilton will move to Ferrari next year, but does he have a realistic chance of winning another Grand Prix? – Chris
At the moment, Hamilton's choice seems like a wise one, given the relative competitive positions of Ferrari and Mercedes.
Whether he can win again depends entirely on two things. It's whether Ferrari can produce a competitive car in the time he's driving for Ferrari, and whether he's faster and better than Charles Leclerc.
No one knows the answers to those questions yet.
What does the future hold for Valtteri Bottas and Chou Guanyu if Audi targets other drivers? – Miles
Frankly, it's not very good. Sauber will become Audi in 2026 and is expected to be acquired by the German car company later this year.
CEO Andreas Seidl is pursuing Carlos Sainz and is also considering Nico Hulkenberg. Valtteri Bottas could also stay – he is a very solid performer.
Chou Guanyu is not expected to remain in office. But he has enough money that other teams could be interested. But it's just power.
image source, Getty Images
Why would Mercedes in particular send their drivers out so late in the first qualifying that they only had one lap to get enough time? Lewis was 18th in China – Janet
There is a limited number of tires in qualifying, and if a driver wants to have two new sets of soft tires for the top-10 shootout, they cannot use two new sets in both qualifying 1 and 2. There aren't enough tires.
He should use a used set for the first run of Q2 (or Q3) or a medium set for the first run of Q1. Alternatively, he could only run once in Q1 or Q2.
But that's not what happened to Hamilton. He simply made too many mistakes and locked his front wheel at the turn 14 hairpin.
This was due to the tailwind on the day, but as Hamilton said, “It wasn't my best qualifying.”
The set-up changes he chose as an experiment to improve his understanding of Mercedes' cars did not help.
