Chinese Grand Prix: Like Mexican wrestling, without the Spandex

In Mexico City the other week, for a Formula E race, I took time out to watch some lucha libre, Mexico’s gloriously theatrical wrestling.

Most combatants wear masks, the rules are stretched even more than the wrestlers’ trunks, and the battle between good and evil is played out in every round.

It’s carefully scripted circus with a twist, and it’s a body-slamming hoot.

This season, there’s been more than a hint of the lucha libre spirit in F1, from the boo-hiss shenanigans around qualifying to the demolition derby at the start of the Bahrain GP.

F1 stars have their own unique headgear and the rules are always being stretched. F1 insists on fire-resistant undies and overalls but don’t mention Lycra trunks to Bernie Ecclestone, just in case.

Deep down, I know that, as a long-term fan of F1, I should despair when the sport starts to look like a Mexican circus but … two tickets for the front row please.

And so it was that, as the 2016 Chinese Grand Prix got under way, I’d barely had time to rustle up some nachos and a bottle of Sol before the clowning around kicked off. Here are a fistful of lucha libre-esque highlights.

It’s tag-team time

Turn one at the Shanghai circuit is one of F1’s best, a long 270-degree right-hander which invites opening-lap incidents.

It didn’t disappoint. Kvyat dived down the inside of Vettel, squeezing him from the right. Raikkonen, recovering from a slide, cut back across the track, squeezing Vettel from the left.

Crunch. Vettel couldn’t back out quickly enough and thumped his team-mate off the track. If this had been lucha libre, Vettel would be theatrically denying he’d accidentally launched his tag-team partner into the crowd, and pointing an accusing gloved finger at the bad guys in the other team…

Good versus evil: Who’s the bad guy here?

…Which is, of course, what Vettel did.

He was straight on the radio to his team, calling Kvyat a ‘madman’ who had carried out a ‘suicidal’ move.

It was to get better. In true lucha libre style, Vettel took the fight out of the ring; in this case, he confronted Kvyat in the pre-podium room, in one of those wonderfully awkward exchanges that occasionally brighten up the post-race routine.

‘You,’ he barked, ‘asking what happened at the start. If I don’t go left, you crash into us and we all three go out – you are like a torpedo.’

Kvyat, all tooth enamel and incisors at the best of times, grinned his most embarrassed grin but countered, with a dismissive shrug, ‘I was racing… I’m on the podium, you’re on the podium.’

So who was the bad guy? Sorry, Seb, the boos are for you. Yes, you were squeezed from both sides but, come on man, this is the first corner of a Formula 1 race, it’s not exactly an unusual situation.

Yes, Kvyat did shoot down the inside, but that’s what racing drivers do when they spot a gap; as Ayrton Senna said, ‘If you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver.’

Kvyat was driving the best-cornering car on the circuit – his Red Bull is even quicker than the Mercedes in slow and medium corners – and was entitled to have a go; Raikkonen had already made a dog’s dinner of the corner, and you, Herr Vettel, were stuck in the middle.

As a four-time champion, if the best you could do was wallop your team-mate, then that’s just life. But thanks for mouthing off – it’s good to know you still have the showmanship skills of those lucha libre lads.

Tactics: If you can’t be best, be craziest

And so to Lewis Hamilton and his particular struggles. Lewis has long since mastered the art of showmanship, from his natty jewellery and penchant for rapping to his way with an ear-catching quote (this week, he said of his boss Toto Wolff: ‘Toto is a very big part of the journey I’m on.’ Lewis does deep, too.)

This weekend, Hamilton brought a family-sized box of problems. He arrived with a five-place starting penalty for a gearbox change, eclipsed that with an ERS problem in qualifying that left him at the back of the grid, and then opted not to start from the pitlane from where, arguably, he’d have been less likely to get involved in first-corner contretemps.

Inevitably, he did have a first-corner bump (with Nasr, avoiding Raikkonen) and had to pit to replace a front wing.

The safety car was deployed on lap four, to allow debris to be cleared.

That’s when Mercedes’ strategists appeared to start popping the crazy pills. Hey, as the lucha libre people know, the show’s more important than the strategy, hmm?

Hamilton was pitted not once but twice under the safety car (he radioed to double-check, and was told ‘We have a plan’), Mercedes deciding to get his super-soft tyre run out of the way quickly and then return to the more durable softs for the rest of the race.

All of which meant that, by lap six, Hamilton had already completed three pitstops. Still, at the re-start he was third-last, so he’d still made up a couple of places.

But his car had been damaged at that first corner, its front wing dragged underneath, causing both aerodynamic and suspension problems. As a result, said Hamilton, it drove ‘like a four-poster bed’ and was chewing up its tyres.

In total, Hamilton pitted a remarkable five times for tyres; his garage must have looked like Kwik Fit had done a drive-by fly-tipping.

When is a sneaky lunge good? When I do it

In F1, as in lucha libre, you want your bad guys to be hypocrites, you want them to complain when someone does something to them that they’d do to someone else. You want them to wind the crowd up.

As Shanghai’s bad boy of choice, for one day at least, Vettel played a blinder.

Having gone bonkers about Kvyat’s first-corner lunge, Vettel didn’t hesitate to execute a particularly cheeky lunge of his own – under the safety car and in the pit-lane entrance, no less.

When Hulkenberg slowed too much on the pit entrance (he was penalised for the move) Vettel stuck two wheels on the grass and went past three cars.

Cue much anger from fans about Seb overtaking under safety car conditions but, in the pit-lane approach, that is legal.

Vettel knows the rules and took full advantage of them, lunging legally past competitors… just like Kvyat did at that first corner. Boo, Seb; hiss, Seb; and a great move, Seb.

Win with knockouts, win with submissions

If Rosberg was a wrestler, he’d have floored the opposition completely in Shanghai, including the most important opponent: his team-mate.

Rosberg’s sixth win on the trot, and his third of the season, is not so significant in terms of the 36-point lead it gives him over Hamilton – far bigger deficits have been overcome.

But other statistics tell a different story, and you gotta love a statistic.

On the one hand, Rosberg now holds the record for most F1 victories without winning a championship – 17, one more than Sir Stirling Moss, who never took the big prize. That’s an ominous figure, but…

…Rosberg is now one of only ten drivers ever to have won the first three races of an F1 season. All nine before him have gone on to be champ that season, starting back in the 1950s with Alberto Ascari.

Of course, the 2016 season is the longest in history and, as such, there are far more opportunities for Rosberg to be caught.

Still, what we’ve learned is that, if Rosberg can get his car to the front, he’s all but impossible to stop.

It’s believed the Mercedes is optimised to lead, rather than race. In other words, it’s designed to go fast in clean air, qualify at the front and drive off into the distance.

In dirty air, there’s more doubt about how easily it would pass Ferraris and Red Bulls.

We’ve still not seen that tested – in China, if Ricciardo hadn’t picked up an early puncture while leading, we’d have got a taste of just how temperamental the Merc is in turbulent air (Hamilton’s seventh-place finish was in a damaged car, and didn’t tell us much except that even a wrecked Merc on fried tyres can pass most of the field).

But, at the moment, Rosberg is winning for two reasons: he’s knocking out his team-mate, helped by Hamilton’s bad luck, and other teams are rolling over in submission (we’re looking at you, Ferrari, you’ve yet to have a clean race).

Is Lewis on the ropes?

Before last season’s Mexican Grand Prix, Hamilton got in the Arena Mexico ring, to try his hand at lucha libre.

Fresh from his championship victory, he executed a nicely choreographed take-down on Místiko, a white-masked luchador with an apparently forgiving nature when it comes to F1 drivers.

That’s the last time I saw Hamilton win anything. Days later, Rosberg took victory at the Mexican Grand Prix and he hasn’t looked back since.

It’s strange that I still keep expecting Hamilton to turn the tables on Rosberg at any moment, when there’s no reason to doubt the German’s ability.

But perhaps that’s in the script for later in the F1 season. Perhaps.