What the teams said – Sprint Qualifying in China

Mercedes

Mercedes gave the paddock an ominous warning when they finished 1-2 in practice, Russell one tenth ahead of his team mate. And the bad news for the rest is that they continued that form in Sprint Qualifying. Russell had the edge throughout, his car on rails and there were no issues as he grabbed Sprint pole with relative ease. Antonelli pushed him the whole way, matching his team mate in the first and second sectors, but he could not extract the same pace from the car in the final third and had to settle for second.

The stewards did investigate the teenager for impeding Norris earlier in Sprint Qualifying, but took no further action.

George Russell, 1st, 1:31.520

"I am happy that we were able to secure pole position for tomorrow’s Sprint race, the first Sprint pole of my career. The W17 has been feeling great the entire day, and we’ve been able to make the most out of the car in today’s qualifying session. When the wind picked up in SQ3, we began to lose some speed on the straights, like others, but still managed to put all the sectors together and secure a front row for tomorrow’s race.

"Despite our pace, we are cautious of the threat posed by others. We also know that anything can happen during a Sprint race, especially at the start. We’ve been working hard with the team on our getaways from the grid and have plenty of learnings from Melbourne. We will also need to focus on tyre management as we always see a lot of graining at this track.

"We’ll keep working overnight to ensure a good Sprint race tomorrow but also a successful qualifying session for Sunday’s Grand Prix."

Kimi Antonelli, 2nd, 1:31.809

"Securing a front row for tomorrow’s race is a good way to start the weekend. Congratulations to George for Sprint pole too; this continues our strong form as a team from Melbourne. Despite that, we know there is still a lot of work to do to improve. We will go through all the data from Friday and analyse how we can put ourselves in the best possible position for the Sprint but also the all-important Qualifying session. Tyre management can be challenging here, and our starts were a limiting factor last weekend; we need to put all this together to perform as best as we can and fight for victory and pole tomorrow.

"The overall positive is that the car felt good all day today. We need to keep it in that good window and, if we can do so, then I think we can bring home strong points in the Sprint. I’m looking forward to racing tomorrow and continuing this first Sprint weekend of the season."

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

"We did a decent job of landing the setup in a good place today and the drivers were happy with the car from the first run in free practice. From there, we made some relatively minor tweaks during the session and into Sprint Qualifying but mostly it was to follow the track evolution.

"The Sprint Qualifying session was fairly uneventful; the car was working well on both compounds and it's great to have got both on the front row. The sprint races are very good learning for the Grand Prix, not to mention an opportunity to score useful points. We've been doing a lot of work on starts and formation lap energy management over the last few days so tomorrow is a good opportunity to put that into practice. It's also helpful to understand how the tyres behave; this track is pretty tough on the fronts, so the drivers are going to have to manage that quite carefully."

McLaren

Piastri seemed to have the edge on Norris again in practice, but when it mattered in Sprint Qualifying the World Champion found his best form. He managed to beat the Ferrari cars and grab third, so should be right in the mix at the start tomorrow. Piastri will just be hoping to make the start, after last weekend’s crash in Melbourne. But as to what sort of race pace they have, that remains to be seen – especially considering they will have the fast-starting Ferraris to deal with off the line.

Lando Norris, 3rd, 1:32.141

“A positive Sprint Quali, I’m pleased with the lap and P3 is as good as we could have achieved today. To be ahead of both Ferraris is positive, I wasn’t sure that would be possible after FP1. Tomorrow we’ll do what we can to maximise our result in the Sprint race. The first lap is the best opportunity for overtaking, but we know the competition are strong, and then we’ll turn our attention to Qualifying in the afternoon.”

Oscar Piastri, 5th, 1:32.224

"A decent Sprint Qualifying. We executed a good session, the car felt pretty good and everything was smooth. There is still a big gap to Mercedes, so we need to work out how we can maximise our performance even more ahead of the Sprint and Grand Prix Qualifying tomorrow. Let’s see what we can do.”

Neil Houldey, Technical Director – Engineering

“The entire team have put in a lot of work both at the factory and trackside after the last event to maximise the car's performance this weekend in China. It was pleasing to see that we made some progress between Free Practice 1 and Sprint Qualifying today, benefitting from the important changes we made in both our deployment and car setup.

“While we appeared to be the third quickest team in the opening stages of Sprint Quali, our drivers really delivered in the SQ3 session to extract the performance potential from the MCL40.
“We recognise that the next few months will still require intense hard work, and we're absolutely ready to rise to that challenge, but for the opening day of running in Shanghai, there are definitely positives to take away. We're pleased with today’s result, and we’ll review everything overnight to focus on making further developments as we still have plenty of competitive sessions ahead of us this weekend.”

Ferrari

Hamilton spun early on in FP1, flat-spotting his tyres and hampering his programme. He had to run the softs earlier than the rest, which meant his times were not quite representative. Ferrari also opted to switch away from their ‘flip flop’ wing after practice, reverting to the rear wing spec they used last weekend.

Both Scuderia cars seemed to be in the mix and made it to SQ3, with Hamilton pipping his team mate. But they lost out to Norris, with Leclerc also behind Piastri. They might get some of those positions back with another fast start tomorrow, but they will still have their work cut out to fight for the win.

Charles Leclerc, 6th, 1:32.528

"It wasn’t a great session. Unfortunately, I lost half a second on the back straight on my second lap in SQ3, and we will have to analyse the reason for that to make sure we can come back tomorrow. We should be a bit stronger in the Sprint race than we were today, however, the front runners still seem to be a step ahead, so we will see what we can do to challenge them."

Lewis Hamilton, 4th, 1:32.161

"I’m really pleased with how the session went today. After a tricky practice, the team did a great job getting the car into a much better window, and it felt fantastic to drive in Sprint Quali. There’s still some work to do back in Maranello to find more performance on the straights, which has been our main weakness but we’re strong through the corners, which is encouraging. Overall, the car felt good, and tomorrow’s Sprint will be a good opportunity to keep building our weekend."

Fred Vasseur, Team Principal

"Today’s Sprint Qualifying was more positive for us than the result might suggest. Lewis did a good job in what was a very tight fight with the McLarens. Charles’ was also very competitive but in his second run in SQ3 was not as strong in the final sector and we will analyse the data in detail to understand what happened, as he didn’t have the same energy deployment as on his first attempt. Tomorrow we will see what we can achieve in the Sprint race, but I’m confident we can aim for another solid result. In free practice we also ran the reverse rear wing to gather additional mileage before introducing it on the car."

Alpine

Colapinto stopped in the fast lane of the pits midway through FP1, with Alpine still struggling with a few reliability gremlins, but both drivers had trouble-free running in Sprint Qualifying. Colpainto could not extract enough pace to make SQ3 but Gasly did, and then topped the midfield to boot. In fact, the Frenchman out-qualified both Red Bull cars in a solid display.

Pierre Gasly, 7th, 1:32.888

“I'm extremely pleased with today's result in Sprint Qualifying, especially after last week in Melbourne which didn't live up to our expectations. We found a lot more performance and good learnings from Australia that we carried over into this weekend. We tried to put everything together and I felt a lot better in the car, straight from the first lap out of the garage. It's good to be more competitive here and comfortably making it into SQ3 and mixing it with the top four teams. I've been feeling good in the car and there is certainly more potential than what we showed last time out. We will try to carry this positive momentum into tomorrow and see if we can bring home some points for the team.”

Franco Colapinto, 16th, 1:34.327

“It was tricky today and wasn't the result in Sprint Qualifying we had hoped for. We didn't take the step forward we needed to compete for places in SQ3. Ultimately, we lacked the pace today, which we need to understand why that is. We lacked pace compared to Pierre, who was quick today and did a great job, which is great for the team who are putting in a lot of work and is positive also that there's more potential in the car. I just need to understand more on my side how to extract it and where we can find improvements. We will try to learn as much as we can in the Sprint Race tomorrow, see if we can make up some places and put the learnings into practice for tomorrow's Qualifying.”

Red Bull

Red Bull lacked pace in Shanghai, with both drivers only just scraping through to SQ3. For Hadjar that was an improvement, after he found himself down the order in practice. Verstappen went for two push laps in the shootout, Hadjar only one. But neither driver could make much of an impression on the front few rows, with the team apologising to Verstappen over the radio after the chequered flag for the lack of pace in the RB22.

Max Verstappen, 8th, 1:33.254

“The whole day hasn’t been great pace wise. We have had low grip, which has been our biggest problem, and no balance unfortunately. We are losing quite a lot of time in the corners and then, of course, this starts to trigger other little problems. The big problem for us is the cornering. We will need to go away and analyse what we can do ahead of tomorrow and figure out our main limitations and we will see how we go."

Isack Hadjar, 10th, 1:33.723

“I can be happy with the lap that I put together, it was good. I'm not too far off Max so that's a positive but I'm not sure what happened to our pace or why we were half a second off. We need a little bit more of everything to be competitive tomorrow, we struggled with grip today and our power wasn't where we wanted it to be. The gap to McLaren and Ferrari was bigger than last weekend, so we need to figure out why. There's a still a lot to play for over the rest of the weekend.” 

Pierre Wache, Technical Director

“Our set up for sprint qualifying didn’t play out as we would have wanted it to, so we need to analyse our performance and see how we can improve for the Sprint race and qualifying. We are understanding more and improving week by week – we’ve already made positive steps to improve energy management and have made improvements on the chassis side based on what we learned from Australia. We are making progress, but we are not quite there yet. Tomorrow’s sessions will bring major learnings to help us get closer to where we would like to be.” 

Haas

Bar one late spin for Bearman, he impressed in practice, giving Haas high hopes of making SQ3. And the Englishman delivered just that, qualifying ninth for the Sprint. Points only go down to P8 though, so he needs a fast start if he wants to score. As for Ocon, he was not far off, with the margins in the midfield very, very tight. As such, Haas have an opportunity to split strategies and learn plenty about the tyres ahead of Sunday’s Grand prix.

Esteban Ocon, 12th, 1:33.639

“We're working hard to get the car to where we want it to be. It felt better from FP1 to Sprint Qualifying, but there are still a few things that we need to investigate to improve it for tomorrow. There's potential, and our understanding of the car is quite high now, so hopefully we can get on top of our issues and get the maximum out of it."

Oliver Bearman, 9th, 1:33.409

“We showed really good pace from pretty much lap one of FP1, and we’ve been able to build on that and move forward. It was a tough session, the balance was a bit on edge and it was difficult to put a lap together, but we got there in the end and I’m happy with P9 today. I’m quite impressed and surprised by the gap to the leaders as we’ve seemed to close it a little bit compared to last week. Prior to this weekend, I wasn’t expecting to be in the fight for the top eight because we expected the front four teams to be so far ahead, but in the end, that wasn’t really the case. It looks like if we get everything right tomorrow, we can score some points.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal

“It’s the first Sprint of the year, and we expected a huge challenge, but we’ve really stepped up operationally compared to Melbourne. FP1 was decent, everything was in a good place, so I’m really happy with how the team stepped up from last weekend. We needed to, but that was really good. That gave us a decent starting point for Sprint Qualifying.

“It was largely a clean session with good communication and good execution. We’re learning that with these new regulations, small differences in driver input make a huge difference in the outcome. It was a shame that Esteban didn’t get through to SQ3, he had the pace for it. Ollie did a very good job getting into SQ3, and we made the decision to go out on used softs so we could save a new tyre. We still beat one of the Red Bulls, so it was an amazing effort from Ollie, and we’re still aiming for a top-eight finish tomorrow.”

Audi

It was not to be for Audi after Bortoleto’s heroics in Melbourne. This time, it was Hulkenberg who proved the faster of the duo, thought the German missed out on SQ3 by an agonising 0.015s. Bortoleto was a few places further back, after a scrappy Sprint Qualifying where he ran wide and scuffed up his tyres. However, with both still learning about their Audi power unit, there is a high chance they will move up the order come Qualifying proper.

Nico Hulkenberg, 11th, 1:33.635

“It is a shame to miss out SQ3 by such a small margin, but overall, P11 is still a solid result. In SQ2 I lost radio communication with the team, so I had to manage part of the run on my own, which made things more complicated.

“Aside from that, the feeling with the car has been good since this morning. We look to be right in the midfield fight again, which is encouraging. It’s very tight out there, so we’ll take what we’ve learned today and aim to move forward tomorrow.”

Gabriel Bortoleto, 14th, 1:33.774

"It's been a bit of a tricky Friday for us. We came across a few issues during Free Practice which appeared again during Sprint Qualifying, keeping us on the back foot. Of course, it's a different type of track from what we've had so far, with different ranges of corners, and we're discovering once again how our car is behaving. Looking at the Sprint tomorrow, let's see what we can achieve. It's a quite short race obviously, and after that, we’ll make sure to fix any issue that is going on in the background, in order to go into qualifying in a better place and give it our best."

Jonathan Wheatley, Team Principal

“A sprint weekend always brings its challenges for the teams, as there is very little time to learn about the car before going straight into sprint qualifying and then the sprint race itself - the momentum builds very quickly. With these new and very complex cars, arriving at a new circuit means you are constantly learning more about the package — understanding where the performance is and where improvements are needed, lap after lap.

“Considering those challenges, I think the team did a good job between FP1 and sprint qualifying to address the main areas where we could extract performance from the car, and the result was a fair reflection of our pace today. There are still some issues the drivers have been highlighting since the winter, which remain a focus for us as we continue to develop the car. On Nico’s side we briefly lost communication during SQ2, but the team was able to resolve that issue once the car returned to the garage.

“Our priority now is to have a clean sprint race and then see what progress we can make ahead of qualifying.”

Racing Bulls

Lindblad managed just six laps in FP1 before parking up with smoke in his cockpit. That was less than ideal for the rookie, putting him on the back foot from word go. It was therefore unsurprising that he struggled to extract much pace and hook up a lap in Sprint Qualifying, exiting down the order in SQ2. But Lawson also dropped out in that segment, so it looks like Racing Bulls do not have the same pace here that they showed last time out in Melbourne.

Arvid Lindblad, 15th, 1:34.048

“Not particularly happy. Considering it is my first time here and I did about two laps in FP1, to be relatively close and okay I don’t think is too bad. But P15 is not where I or the team want to be. Liam was a little bit better, but still not much more competitive. I am going to look at myself tonight, see where I can improve for tomorrow. We will also look as a collective to see what we can do to make a step for Qualifying. Main focus on the Sprint tomorrow but still looking ahead to Qualifying tomorrow.

Liam Lawson, 13th, 1:33.714

“To be honest, I was actually quite happy. We have had a good step from practice to Quali with set-up and honestly it was not a bad lap. We just struggled a bit more here than last week. I think Melbourne really suited our car and here, it is not as good for us so we need to try and do some work for tomorrow. In terms of set-up I felt quite happy.”

Mattia Spini, Head of Trackside Engineering

"The Shanghai circuit is quite different to Melbourne, with a lot more time spent cornering at lower speeds. With it being the first Sprint weekend of the season, we expected Friday to be quite challenging and that’s pretty much what we saw.

"Arvid unfortunately had a chassis hardware issue just a few laps into FP1, which meant he lost valuable track time, especially considering it’s his first time at this circuit. That left him going into Sprint Qualifying with only one and a half laps of preparation, so he had a steep learning curve in SQ1.

"Liam had a more straightforward FP1. Both cars made it through to SQ2, but overall, we were missing a bit of pace to fight for SQ3 today.

"We’re not currently in the point-scoring positions, but the focus now is on preparing for the Sprint, which could be an eventful session. We need to be ready to take any opportunity that comes our way, and the start, together with tyre management, will be key tomorrow morning.

"We’ll keep working on improving the car and PU setup ahead of Qualifying, as there’s still some pace to find compared to our competitors.”

Williams

Sainz had another difficult start to a weekend, with data issues costing him time in practice. He did eventually get out, but was off the pace – as was his team mate. Albon had said on Thursday that he did not think this track would suit their car and so it proved, both drivers exiting at the first time of asking. Sainz was comfortably the quicker of the two, but that will be scant consolation for the Spaniard in the wake of his team’s struggles to get on top of their 2026 car.

Alex Albon, 18th, 1:35.305

“It’s been a confusing day and clearly this isn’t the result we wanted out of Sprint quali. We have multiple limitations at the moment we are trying to understand so we need to go back to the drawing board and get a clearer picture ahead of tomorrow. As always we’ll give everything we have in front of the Chinese fans for tomorrow’s Sprint race and qualifying sessions.”

Carlos Sainz, 17th, 1:34.761

“This weekend was always going to be difficult for us with this circuit exposing the weaknesses in our car. Missing half of FP1 didn’t help either, as I couldn’t prepare properly for this session and had to adapt every lap. As it stands, we first need a clean weekend before aiming for better results. I'll use this weekend to test different setups and try to make up for the track time I’ve lost so far. The target is to maximise our performance and keep gathering learnings to help the team.”

James Vowles, Team Principal

“Tough day, which isn’t a surprise after Melbourne, but doesn’t hurt any less as a result. This evening will be about reflection and looking at what other approaches we can do to make sure we maximise the opportunities across the remainder of the weekend, and looking at how we might be able to extract more out of this car before we bring performance to it."

Aston Martin

Aston Martin had a relatively smooth opening day in China, with both cars able to take part in the practice session and Sprint Qualifying. The team were running flow-vis paint too, as they continue their vital data collection. Neither Alonso nor Stroll were able to escape SQ1, but their main aim will be to make it to the chequered flag in the Sprint and build from there.

Fernando Alonso, 19th, 1:35.581

“We did some laps in Free Practice and only managed SQ1 today. I think we did the best we could and we are still far away from the others. We will try to improve again tomorrow, complete as many laps as we can, and build our understanding of this package.”

Lance Stroll, 20th, 1:36.151

“We gathered important data so that's a positive, but we are still battling the same issues we had a week ago in Melbourne. Ultimately, we don't want to be fighting for P19 and P20 so there's lots for us to work on, but we came to China with the main objective to continue learning more about the car.”

Cadillac

Cadillac had a slightly tricky Friday in China. A fuel systems issue was detected on Perez’s car late in FP1, and as such, the team did not have time to fix that prior to Sprint Qualifying. That meant the Mexican could not take part and will start from the back of the grid tomorrow. Bottas at least gathered some valuable data for the team as he did take to the track in SQ1, exiting in P21.

Valtteri Bottas, 21st, 1:37.378

“We had a deployment issue which impacted my laps and meant we couldn’t get the most out of the session. We need to investigate fully now. Otherwise, it’s quite difficult to say where we would have ended up. We’ll try to address everything as a team ahead of the Sprint Race.”

Sergio Perez, 22nd, No time set in SQ1

“It’s a shame that we couldn’t participate in Sprint Quali. We struggled with a fuel system issue in the morning and then unfortunately we couldn’t fix it in time for this afternoon. The team is working really hard at the track and back at the factory to find a solution so we can get ready for our first Sprint tomorrow.”

Nick Chester, Chief Technical Officer

"A difficult day today, but at this early stage in our journey we are still finding issues and fixing them in real time. We detected a problem with the fuel system on Checo’s car in practice and could not rectify before Sprint Qualifying. We had a slightly smoother day on Valtteri’s side of the garage, but a significant deployment issue meant that we were unable to set representative times. All the same, every lap we do gives us more valuable information that lets us move forward.”

Pirelli

Dario Marrafuschi, Pirelli Motorsport Director

"During Sprint race weekends, it’s always challenging for teams to fully assess tyre behaviour as they only have one hour of free practice. During this session, the teams used one set of medium tyres and one set of soft tyres, without carrying out any significant long runs. The hards were saved for the following days, and some teams may consider using them in their strategies for Sunday's race as early as tomorrow.

"The Sprint, which is most likely to be run on Medium tyres, will certainly provide a clearer picture. The performance difference between the two compounds used on Friday is around six tenths. Interestingly, in the first two qualifying segments, the C3 was once again able to deliver maximum performance on the second push lap after completing a cooldown lap.

"Temperatures are cooler than last year, the track is still dirty and has less grip than we will see on Sunday as the track evolves. As happened last year and as expected, some graining appeared on the front-left tyre, which is the most stressed by Shanghai’s corners, and to a lesser extent on the front-right, although the impact on overall wear remains limited. On this circuit, teams tend to prioritise protecting the front axle, shifting the balance towards the rear as much as possible."