The Driver's Eye: China

Sky Sports F1's Anthony Davidson looks ahead to the challenges and dilemmas Shanghai presents for a F1 driver...

The Shanghai International Circuit is a circuit I know very well because I was actually the first driver to complete a lap of the track in a F1 car back in 2004 - the year China made its debut on the calendar - during my days as the Friday test driver for BAR! Now almost ten years old, it's a circuit that the teams will know well and most will have on their simulators. The drivers themselves will have spent plenty of time since Malaysia in the simulator, although, in the main, they will have been focused on specific work on their car set-up and future developments and using any simulation of Shanghai just as a way of getting their eye in ahead of the season's resumption. For those drivers who haven't been there before, visiting China can be quite a daunting experience because the country has such a unique culture - and a very different one to ours! Going there for the first time really is quite an eye-opener and Shanghai is such a vast city that it can take quite a while to get into the swing of things. Of course, a driver will be looked after by his team, but there's no way of avoiding that China represents a full-on experience! In terms of jet-lag, it's an awkward destination because Shanghai is seven hours ahead - exactly the same amount as Malaysia, where we've just come home from. It's a schedule that is playing havoc with our body clocks; having adjusted first to Australian time, and then Malaysian, we've now had a week or so acclimatising to European time just to return to the time we've just shaken off! It's quite a difficult situation and one that some drivers will have tried to overcome by staying out in, for example, Australia, as Mark Webber did, or somewhere like Hawaii, where Jenson Button was. The other dilemma every driver has to answer is where to stay when in China this weekend. There are two options and the first is to stay in the city. As you would expect of all such major cities, Shanghai has plenty of good hotels to choose from, but the traffic means that it can take as much as an hour to reach the circuit if you stay in town. Not many F1 drivers have a Chinese driving-licence so if any of them stay in the city they will have to rely on a completely different driver to ferry them to the circuit and back to the hotel - and that can be quite an experience to say the least! Fighting the traffic in Shanghai makes Milan's rush-hour look like a sedate country drive and if you can get to the track without hearing the hooter at least a hundred times it's considered quite a good run... The majority of drivers will know this, of course. They will have done the city thing before and will appreciate that staying close to the track is important because it gives them extra time at the circuit to go through the data with their engineers at the end of a day's running and that they can get then back to their nearby hotel room as quickly as possible in order to relax. Most of the more experienced drivers do now stay very close to the track and I do think that makes a beneficial difference. As for the circuit, the first thing that has to be said is that the sheer scale of the complex as a whole is mind-blowing - and that's still the case for those of us who have been there many times before. Shanghai boasts the biggest infrastructure of any track we go to during a season - it's mighty impressive and it almost feels like you are visiting NASA or something of that ilk! If there's a downside, it's that the complex is so large, and the pit-buildings are so spread out, that you can feel a little lost on occasion. Normally in a Formula 1 paddock, everyone is very close together and you can jostle about. At this track, you literally need binoculars to see if anyone is around! It is a little bizarre, to be honest. The track itself is one that I've liked ever since I first drove it in 2004. It might seem a little flat and lifeless from a distance, but for a driver in the car it presents a demanding challenge with plenty of interesting corners. It's also a circuit which provides plenty of overtaking opportunities, and with the weather usually unpredictable and changeable, going there is always an exciting prospect. Anthony Davidson's Corner-By-Corner Guide To Shanghai