Three and easy for Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton has completed a hat-trick of victories for the first time in his F1 career by easing to victory in the Chinese GP ahead of Mercedes team-mate and title rival Nico Rosberg.

Leading the race from start to finish, Hamilton was in cruise control as he cruised to his third successive victory.

The 2008 World Champion is now just four points behind Rosberg in the Drivers' World Championship despite the German's sturdy recovery to second place as Mercedes wrapped up a hat-trick of their own with a third consecutive 1-2 for the dominant Silver Arrows.

Yet the German's post-race demeanor told a telling tale with Rosberg seemingly lost for words as he contemplated the scale of his defeat, measured at eighteen seconds at the finishing line but perhaps psychologically even more emphatic.

Hampered by a loss of telemetry, Rosberg expressed himself "happy with second" but in what appears to be a two-car battle for the championship, the smart money will be on Hamilton taking the lead of the title in two weeks' time in Spain.

With Hamilton effectively only racing himself after pulling away from the field at a rate of a second per lap from the start, and Rosberg cutting through the field like a knife through melting butter in the class-apart W05 after a bumpy ride through the first corner, only the ongoing travails of Sebastian Vettel provided compelling intrigue.

Meanwhile, Vettel suffered the humiliation of being passed - and then left far behind - by Ricciardo even after refusing to obey an instruction from his Red Bull team to let the Australian through. "Tough luck," responded a grumpy Vettel. But it's 2014 which is turning out to be tough times for the four-times champion.

Ricciardo, though, is proving to be the unexpected success story of the new year, although not even the Australian's aggression and underestimated raw pace was enough to prevent Fernando Alonso claiming Ferrari's first podium of the campaign.