Two races on two very different tracks with two winners in two very closely matched cars -- the 2017 season is already shaping up to be a thriller. At both races the result could have swung either way and at this stage it's impossible to guess which way the next round will go. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have a fight on their hands, and they're relishing the battle.
"Right now, we're fighting up against a four-time world champion," Hamilton said after the race. "He is at his best and he is phenomenally quick. Ferrari are at their best in years. So we're at our best as a team, and I feel like I'm at my best.
"The ultimate fighter always wants to go up against the best battle he can have because then when you come out on top, it's so much more satisfying. I love this fight. It's going to go right down to the end of the season, and I hope for both of us there's nothing mechanical comes between our sheer battle in ability."
In China it was a messy start to the race that prevented the head-to-head battle between Hamilton and Vettel on track. In an attempt to gain an advantage over Mercedes, Ferrari pitted Vettel under the Virtual Safety Car on lap two while Hamilton stayed out. It could have been the decision that won the Chinese Grand Prix if Hamilton had made a pit stop in normal racing conditions later in the race, but the Mercedes pit wall was offered a lifeline with a full Safety Car two laps later. As a result it was Vettel who was disadvantaged the most out of the top six cars and then had to spend the rest of the race fighting back.
By lap 39 he had worked his way back to second place (with some outstanding overtaking manoeuvres along the way) and it was then that we saw just how closely matched the two cars were. On lap 40 Vettel set a new fastest lap with a 1:35.423. Hamilton reacted on the next lap by upping his pace by a full second to a 1:35.798. Vettel started to chip away at Hamilton's lead until lap 44 when -- rather appropriately - car No.44 set the fastest lap of the race with a 1:35.378. At that point it was clear Vettel did not have the pace to fully close the gap in the remaining laps, but it still didn't stop him trying.
"I kept pushing because you never know, maybe Lewis is doing a mistake, or has an issue with the car so I wanted to keep the pressure on," the Ferrari driver said after the race. "But yeah, I enjoyed the fact we were racing, even though not side-by-side or right behind each other but five, six, eight seconds apart.
"To hear that he was pushing as well I think is good news. So in terms of pace it was probably a match. Sometimes he was a bit faster, sometimes I was a bit faster. Overall it was good fun."
With 18 more races remaining we will almost certainly see the promised wheel-to-wheel battle between Hamilton and Vettel emerge over the coming months, but it was a shame we didn't get to see it in China. The damp start and the track layout meant the conditions were ripe for passing moves and a single mistake could have been the difference between holding a position and losing it. The two DRS zones worked to perfection, allowing passing moves into the Turn 14 hairpin without making it too easy to pass on the straight and providing an opportunity to get close on the pit straight ahead of Turns 1, 2 and 3 where a different racing line could set up a move into Turn 6.
What's more, Red Bull's presence in the top six added another element to the battle as they mixed up the strategy options by targeting two stints on the faster -- but quicker degrading -- super-soft compound tyre. That freed up track position to allow Ferrari to try a second stop with Vettel, which in turn forced Mercedes to respond by abandoning its original plan of letting Hamilton go to the end of the race on a single set of softs. If Vettel had been closer to Hamilton, the tension both in the cockpit and on the pit wall would have been higher, creating all the ingredients for a true classic. Instead we'll have to wait.
But imagine if Red Bull enters the fight at some point in those upcoming 18 races. The thought of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen turning their private battle in Shanghai into a four-way battle for the lead with Vettel and Hamilton would be fascinating. But before we get ahead of ourselves, Red Bull is facing some pretty big challenges and the only reason it was on the super-softs in the first place was because it wasn't confident enough in its car to try the softs.
"The reason we went for the super-softs, we felt in these damp conditions, for us with our car as it is at the moment, to turn that soft tyre on would be maybe a bit too much," team boss Christian Horner explained. "We felt the more competitive tyre would be to go onto the super-soft and then have a second stop.
"At this stage in the race Ferrari and Mercedes were talking about going to the end and then obviously Sebastian triggered it with his stop, Lewis covered it. What didn't appear to make any sense was why they left Kimi [Raikkonen] that long [on the first set of softs], because he sort of ended up in no-man's land. To get our car ahead of a Ferrari and a Mercedes is a good day's work. Solid pit work, good strategy, good racing from the drivers. I think that was the maximum we could get from it."
The fact Red Bull wasn't confident enough to get the soft compound turned on shows the extent to which it is lacking downforce compared to the top two teams. Clearly there is still a lot of work to do before we get our dream scenario of three teams fighting for wins, but there is still hope and Horner is not willing to rule out race wins and championship challenges just yet.
"I think the philosophy that we've pursued and adopted is slightly different to the competitors' and we still believe in the potential of that. I don't think we've managed to extract the performance that we believe the car is capable of and that the development path should allow to open up. Hats off to Mercedes and Ferrari, they've both come up with very strong cars but I'm confident we can hopefully get into that fight a little later in the season.
"I think the regulations are so immature there's an enormous amount of potential in all areas of the car. Obviously it's a development race from the start to the finish of the year. There's an awful lot of focus going into front, middle and rear of the car and race by race they'll be progression. Definitely you can see the way Ferrari and Mercedes are working their tyres, it's very effective."
In the meantime, we'll have to make do with a battle between Ferrari and Mercedes. And if China was anything to go by, there should be plenty to look forward to.