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Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix 2026 - Race Weekend Discussion
Chinese Grand Prix
Shanghai International Circuit
March 13-15, 2026
Sprint Race Qualifying Results -- SPOILER
| Pos. | No. | Driver | Team | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1:33.030 | 1:32.241 | 1:31.520 | 13 |
| 2 | 12 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 1:33.455 | 1:32.291 | 1:31.809 | 13 |
| 3 | 1 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 1:33.783 | 1:33.086 | 1:32.141 | 13 |
| 4 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 1:33.148 | 1:33.042 | 1:32.161 | 15 |
| 5 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 1:33.813 | 1:33.038 | 1:32.224 | 13 |
| 6 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1:33.194 | 1:32.602 | 1:32.528 | 16 |
| 7 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 1:33.970 | 1:33.405 | 1:32.888 | 15 |
| 8 | 3 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 1:34.170 | 1:33.564 | 1:33.254 | 17 |
| 9 | 87 | Oliver Bearman | Haas F1 Team | 1:34.280 | 1:33.501 | 1:33.409 | 16 |
| 10 | 6 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull Racing | 1:34.447 | 1:33.620 | 1:33.723 | 15 |
| 11 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Audi | 1:33.997 | 1:33.635 | 14 | |
| 12 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | Haas F1 Team | 1:34.087 | 1:33.639 | 13 | |
| 13 | 30 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 1:34.110 | 1:33.714 | 13 | |
| 14 | 5 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | 1:34.291 | 1:33.774 | 14 | |
| 15 | 41 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | 1:34.495 | 1:34.048 | 13 | |
| 16 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | Alpine | 1:34.592 | 1:34.327 | 12 | |
| 17 | 55 | Carlos Sainz | Williams | 1:34.761 | 6 | ||
| 18 | 23 | Alexander Albon | Williams | 1:35.305 | 6 | ||
| 19 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | 1:35.581 | 5 | ||
| 20 | 18 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 1:36.151 | 7 | ||
| 21 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Cadillac | 1:37.378 | 8 |
Source: F1.com
Sprint Race Results -- SPOILER
| Pos. | No. | Driver | Team | Laps | Time / Retired | Pts. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | 19 | 33:38.998 | 8 |
| 2 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 19 | +0.674s | 7 |
| 3 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 19 | +2.554s | 6 |
| 4 | 1 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 19 | +4.433s | 5 |
| 5 | 12 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 19 | +5.688s | 4 |
| 6 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 19 | +6.809s | 3 |
| 7 | 30 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 19 | +10.900s | 2 |
| 8 | 87 | Oliver Bearman | Haas F1 Team | 19 | +11.271s | 1 |
| 9 | 3 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 19 | +11.619s | 0 |
| 10 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | Haas F1 Team | 19 | +13.887s | 0 |
| 11 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 19 | +14.780s | 0 |
| 12 | 55 | Carlos Sainz | Williams | 19 | +15.753s | 0 |
| 13 | 5 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | 19 | +15.858s | 0 |
| 14 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | Alpine | 19 | +16.393s | 0 |
| 15 | 6 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull Racing | 19 | +16.430s | 0 |
| 16 | 23 | Alexander Albon | Williams | 19 | +20.014s | 0 |
| 17 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | 19 | +21.599s | 0 |
| 18 | 18 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 19 | +21.971s | 0 |
| 19 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Cadillac | 19 | +28.241s | 0 |
| NC | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Audi | 12 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Cadillac | 12 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 41 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | 11 | DNF | 0 |
Source: F1.com
Qualifying Results -- SPOILER
| Pos. | No. | Driver | Team | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 1:33.305 | 1:32.443 | 1:32.064 | 15 |
| 2 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1:33.262 | 1:32.523 | 1:32.286 | 13 |
| 3 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 1:33.522 | 1:32.567 | 1:32.415 | 19 |
| 4 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1:33.175 | 1:32.486 | 1:32.428 | 20 |
| 5 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 1:33.590 | 1:33.130 | 1:32.550 | 20 |
| 6 | 1 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 1:33.535 | 1:32.910 | 1:32.608 | 20 |
| 7 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 1:33.788 | 1:33.003 | 1:32.873 | 21 |
| 8 | 3 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 1:33.417 | 1:33.098 | 1:33.002 | 20 |
| 9 | 6 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull Racing | 1:33.632 | 1:33.352 | 1:33.121 | 20 |
| 10 | 87 | Oliver Bearman | Haas F1 Team | 1:33.687 | 1:33.197 | 1:33.292 | 19 |
| 11 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Audi | 1:34.116 | 1:33.354 | 12 | |
| 12 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | Alpine | 1:33.634 | 1:33.357 | 15 | |
| 13 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | Haas F1 Team | 1:33.974 | 1:33.538 | 14 | |
| 14 | 30 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 1:34.139 | 1:33.765 | 15 | |
| 15 | 41 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | 1:33.906 | 1:33.784 | 15 | |
| 16 | 5 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | 1:33.549 | 1:33.965 | 14 | |
| 17 | 55 | Carlos Sainz | Williams | 1:34.317 | 10 | ||
| 18 | 23 | Alexander Albon | Williams | 1:34.772 | 10 | ||
| 19 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | 1:35.203 | 9 | ||
| 20 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Cadillac | 1:35.436 | 9 | ||
| 21 | 18 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 1:35.995 | 9 | ||
| 22 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Cadillac | 1:36.906 | 6 |
Source: F1.com
Grand Prix Results -- SPOILER
| Pos. | No. | Driver | Team | Laps | Time / Retired | Pts. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 56 | 1:33:15.607 | 25 |
| 2 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | 56 | +5.515s | 18 |
| 3 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 56 | +25.267s | 15 |
| 4 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 56 | +28.894s | 12 |
| 5 | 87 | Oliver Bearman | Haas F1 Team | 56 | +57.268s | 10 |
| 6 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 56 | +59.647s | 8 |
| 7 | 30 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 56 | +80.588s | 6 |
| 8 | 6 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull Racing | 56 | +87.247s | 4 |
| 9 | 55 | Carlos Sainz | Williams | 55 | +1 lap | 2 |
| 10 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | Alpine | 55 | +1 lap | 1 |
| 11 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Audi | 55 | +1 lap | 0 |
| 12 | 41 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | 55 | +1 lap | 0 |
| 13 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Cadillac | 55 | +1 lap | 0 |
| 14 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | Haas F1 Team | 55 | +1 lap | 0 |
| 15 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Cadillac | 55 | +1 lap | 0 |
| NC | 3 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 45 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | 32 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 18 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 9 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 81 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 0 | DNS | 0 |
| NC | 1 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 0 | DNS | 0 |
| NC | 5 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | 0 | DNS | 0 |
| NC | 23 | Alexander Albon | Williams | 0 | DNS | 0 |
Fastest Lap: Kimi Antonelli // 1:35.275 on lap 52
DOTD: Kimi Antonelli
Source: F1.com
Next race:
Japanese Grand Prix
Suzuka Circuit
March 26-29, 2026
Congrats to Kimi on his first grand prix win! I suspect this is just the first of many for him.
On the other end of things, seeing seven cars DNF, with four of those DNS, across five teams, is pretty shocking. At least for someone who only started watching F1 since the pandemic. I don't remember seeing such bad reliability over the previous five seasons. I guess that's what happens with new engine regulations. Though at least both Cadillacs finished this time. That's gotta make them happy.
Anyway, it's after 5am for me, so I'm going to bed.
Antonelli really did keep Russell at bay, right? Was Russell nursing some sort of issue or not? He did great to make the most of Russell's shocker of a qualifier, even though he did put in a good lap to start second. But if he held off Russell without Russell being burdened by any issue, that's an amazing confidence boost. I could totally see that translating into a proper title challenge, which is desperately needed if Mercedes are going to stay so far ahead of the rest of the teams (which I very much hope is not the case).
As far as I know, Russell didn't have any issues in the race, just the first run of Q3
Yes, it was a true win.
George compromised his tires battling the Ferraris and couldn't catch Kimi. Kimi won the race by dispatching Lewis and Charles quickly.
I think Antonelli mainly just kept his nose clean and got ahead of the Ferraris early while Russell had to fight through them. The Ferraris also started fighting with each other instead of working to get closer to Kimi so that also slowed Russell down. They went from being 2.5s behind Kimi to like 7-9s behind and then once Russell got ahead, he kept the Ferraris at bay while managing his tires.
Beginning of the turbo hybrid era (before ground effect) in 2013-2014(?) felt pretty similar. But that was for a longer period of time, with less cars dropping it felt like. But they would have spectacular engine failures throughout the early races. Good times.
Beautiful race, big congrats to Kimi on his first win! Absolutely loved watching the Ferrari's fight, had me and my friends on the edge of our seats! I do think it was a bit stupid of Ferrari strategy wise to have the driver's fight when they were only 2.5s from Antonelli. However, at the same time, hopefully Leclerc and Hamilton understand how these car react when in a battle like that so they can better fight against the Mercedes later.
The DNFs + DNSs were pretty shocking to see. I only tuned into once the pre-start procedure was happening and was quite shocked to see 4 cars not even start. Reliability definitely seems to be a bigger issue than I ever recall watching, but I also only started watching in 2019. Good to see both Cadillacs finish, it was kind of sad watching Alonso wave Perez goodbye as Perez sped past him. I really hope that Honda have at least one car finish in their home GP and that they use the gap after Japan to really focus and improve reliability.
what a race! love the back and forth from Lewis and Sharl. Really liked this, even without McLaren and all of the retirements. If we can have some version of this all season, it'll be a good one.
Pool-wise I did really well this week. I'm waiting for the pit to be posted, but I pulled 12 this week, which will likely be my record for the season.
edit: it’s nice that Ferrari could race and nobody said anything about Rosso Corsa Rules. Once the kinks are ironed out, i think this new regulation set is going to be good.
Yes, the toing and froing is fun to watch. I do appreciate the criticism that it's artificial, but the cars still look twitchy when they're going round the outside at time, the passes are not all just sweeping by on a long left-hander like in Melbourne. I must confess I don't understand WHY these cars actively decelerate on the longer straights, I need to watch/read some kind of explainer, but if they could fix that, I could absolutely be at peace with the idea that the drivers have a fairly hefty chunk of power that they have to strategically deploy. I actually like it more than just having DRS zones, which often translated to "you can pass HERE and THERE on this circuit, now go race".
DRS trains were the worse. You know something is good when Lewis says the back and forth with his own teammate was some of the best racing of his career. eventually the others will catch up and we’ll have a tight grid, too. the midfield is looking really great, too.
I think that slowing in the straights comes from a lack of battery. they’ll probably just dial it back 30% and everything will be perfect. i think it’s something along those lines.
it’s so nice to see kimi, lewis, and bono hugging :)
So what exactly is wrong with Aston Martin? I guess it’s mostly Honda’s fault?
Has Aston Martin's F1 super-team turned into a disaster team?
Also notable is the relatively good performance of Haas this year.
I've been tracking some conversations and articles over on r/formula1 subreddit and it seems like both Honda and Aston have contributed to this disaster.
I saw some stuff that said Newey was making design changes into this past winter. And some of those weren't communicated to Honda. Which if true, is wild. I don't understand how you can design a chassis without taking into effect the engine. I also saw some people saying that when Honda fired up the ending on a test stand, not attached to the car, there were no vibrations out of the ordinary. Only when it was attached to the chassis did things start looking bad.
And as your article points out, there appears to be some management issues within Aston Martin. The TP seems relatively weak compared to Newey. Is Stroll, Sr., as CEO/owner taking command of the situation like Zak Brown or even Toto? Feel like we rarely see Stroll, Sr. around.
Certainly Honda isn't blameless. Engine reliability is definitely on Honda. Also, seems like when Honda decided to leave, they lost a lot of their engineers and (makes sense; they're going to go elsewhere in the company or leave altogether). Even though the decision reversal was relatively quick, I imagine workers weren't waiting around. Was that loss of experience truthfully communicated to Aston Martin? Seen some rumors that maybe it wasn't.
Lack of communication cuts both ways, yet affects all.
In the end, I feel bad for Alonso. Hell, even Lance. And I rarely feel bad for Lance. It's just a shitty situation for the drivers to be in. Can't even do their job as drivers. Both companies have failed them.
Aston Martin is supposedly looking for a new Team Principal.
I saw discussion about this on r/formula1.
The redditors are joking that it will probably be Horner, which actually makes sense and he obviously had great success with Newey.
Here is an article about it (In Spanish)
Aston Martin looking for a new team principal
Do you think that Leclerc had the upper hand apart from the lockup that saw Hamilton pass for third, the position he kept to the end? I'm enjoying seeing Hamilton back up on the horse, but I'm just not sure whether his powers are now diminished to the point that Leclerc can consistently beat him. I think Hamilton at his peak would have had trouble with Leclerc, but would have beaten him eventually, he was just boring in a good car, like Verstappen in a good car. I think Leclerc doesn't quite have that insane high-level consistency.
It's so hard to say since this is Lewis we're talking about, y'know? But I do agree that Charles' issue is that he's not as consistent as Lewis or even Max. That's been pretty evident whenever Charles fights with others towards the front, IMO.
I also think Charles doesn't have that "edge" in the same way those two others have, but that hasn't really salient so far this season, I don't think. Both Lewis and Charles, probably because they're teammates, seem keen on clean, fair racing against each other. So far, anyway.
That's it, that almost robotic nature of Ham/Ver that makes them boring might make a Lec title tilt a nail-biting affair. I've been fascinated by how hard they've raced this season and I always find it interesting when the gloves come off (to a greater (Ham-Ros) or lesser (Nor-Pia) extent) between teammates that are truly battling for a championship.The cancellations of the upcoming grands prix are going to put a bit of a damper on the start of the season, though. We'll only just have got into the swing of things when it's all "mid-season break" mode again.
I imagine AM-Honda might be happy about that break! More time to figure out wth is going on with their car. But yeah, definitely a shame that the Middle East races have been cancelled. And more generally, without getting too political here, about the situation as a whole.
At least we'll have gotten three races done this month. We still got Japan in a couple weeks.. Gonna be real embarrassing if AM-Honda still can't complete a race with both cars.
I think it was last year in Indycar where their season started, they had their first race, then it was like a month until the next one. And that was planned that way! What a way to kill the excitement at the start of a season 😑