The city of Shanghai is a bit too hectic for my taste. However the Shanghai International Circuit is a very impressive facility and an interesting challenge for the drivers and engineers.
The lap itself is fairly typical of a Herman Tilke design with a huge range of corners, starting with turns one and two which combine to form what seems like a never-ending right-hander. You arrive in seventh gear at 185mph and you only start to brake when you turn into the corner. You can’t brake very hard, so you’re braking for a long time as you slow the car down to second gear. To be quick around the whole circuit you need to have a neutral-handling car, which generally results in oversteer through here.
You approach turn three over a little jump downhill. It’s a left-hander and can be entered in first or second gear, depending on your gear ratios. At this point the tyres are still very stressed from the long first corner, so you’re sliding a lot and it’s difficult to make a good exit, which is very important because turns four and five are flat-out kinks and are followed by a straight.
Turn 13 is a long, banked right-hander. It’s easy-flat, but you still need to concentrate because it’s easy to destroy your tyres if you apply too much steering lock. The longest straight on the track follows and you’re braking from 200mph for the hairpin. This is the best overtaking point on the lap and it’s easy to lose 0.2s by getting your braking wrong, so you need to focus on getting the car into the apex.
Turn 15 is a flat-out kink and suddenly you’re into the last corner, turn 16. It’s a very interesting corner because you can carry a lot of speed at the apex if you can find the right rhythm. Then you’re back on to the start-finish straight to begin another lap.
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