Fernando Alonso of Ferrari won the Chinese Grand Prix ahead of Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus and Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes. His win makes three different winners in the first three races of the 2013 season.

The story of the race was Sebastian Vettels’s determined drive in the last two laps, but Hamilton did just enough to hang on to third place. He began lap 53 some 11 seconds behind Hamilton but was closing in fast. At one point in the last lap, Vettel had reined in much of Hamilton’s lead and was just two seconds behind the Briton but ran wide to lose the initiative.

Hamilton himself had the chance to go up to second on the 56th lap, drawing up to just over half-a-second behind Raikkonen but could not summon enough speed to overhaul the Finn.

Popular with the Chinese fans, Raikkonen was a model of consistency with his 20th consecutive finish in Formula 1, despite his bad start.

Podium Interview:

Alonso: “After the retirement in Malaysia, second in Australia, we are looking good. The team tried to slow me down to conserve so we had some pace in the pocket as we know when to use it.”

Raikkonen: “Without the slight damage to my car in the incident with Perez, we could have done better.”

Hamilton:”We had a great race but our pace dropped away in the closing stages. We did not quite have the pace of the top two.

The teams trave to Bahrain for the next race in a week’s time.