Both the drivers and the team racing engineers find the track — built on marshland on more than 40,000 stabilizing concrete pillars — challenging.

“The Shanghai International Circuit is a very demanding track,” said Giampaolo Dall’Ara, head of track engineering at the Sauber team. “Its peculiarities are several sections with a combination of braking and lateral forces as well as traction and lateral forces. This puts some demands on the car with regards to braking stability and overall balance.

“The straights are also quite relevant for lap times,” he said, “especially the very long one where you need speed in qualifying as well as for overtaking in the race.”

The circuit has provided some surprise results.

For instance, in 2007, just as Lewis Hamilton seemed to be coasting to a certain drivers’ title in the first year of his participation in the series, his McLaren Mercedes team made a bad call on tire strategy. He raced around the track during a wet race with tires that were worn down to the canvas and finally skidded off into a barrier just as he made his way into the pits to change tires.

He failed to finish the race and lost 10 points to Kimi Raikkonen, in a Ferrari, who won the race, and then went on to win the title in the last race of year. Hamilton won the race and the title in 2008, however, and then won the race again in China last year.

“I have some vivid memories of racing in China — some good, some not so good,” Hamilton said. “I’ve won there twice. Both were victories I’m really proud of. In 2008, it was a very important race, and I really needed a good result for the championship, and we had a pretty much perfect weekend with pole position, fastest lap and the race win.

“Then in 2011, coming off the back of a difficult weekend in Malaysia, I had a great race, kept pushing every lap and managed to take the lead right at the end. It was a very important win, because it showed that we could be a force in the championship that year.”