History Has a Way of Repeating Itself

It was an amazing return to the Shanghai International Circuit after five years of absence. Although it was business as usual, it was the battles further down the field that made this one of the most memorable races in recent memory.

From a home hero’s welcome to that strange crash at the Turn 14 hairpin, let’s have a look at the highlights of the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix.

Qualifying

With the first sprint race weekend format taking place in Shanghai, qualifying was held on a Friday instead of the usual Saturday slot. It was a fairly standard session with Q1 seeing Magnussen, Tsunoda, Sargeant, and home hero Zhou Guanyu knocked out.

The biggest surprise of Q1 was Lewis Hamilton’s failure to make it into the next session, as he struggled to extract more pace from his W15.

The start of Q2 was halted by an early crash for Carlos Sainz, who brought out the red flags after spinning out of the final corner and making contact with the barriers on the exit. Both Alpines, Ricciardo, Albon, and Stroll were the drivers knocked out in Q2.

It was a great effort for Nico Hulkenberg and Valtteri Bottas to get their cars into Q3. It was a fairly average session with Verstappen clinching pole and Perez helping Red Bull get a front-row lockout.

Fernando Alonso also put in a brilliant lap to deny Norris a top three start, despite being nearly four-tenths off Verstappen’s pole time.

Sprint

Qualifying for the sprint race was extremely chaotic with the heavy Shanghai rain throwing in an extra bit of excitement.

Many drivers including Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc struggled in the wet conditions as they found it difficult to put a clean lap in. It was a scrap to put the best lap in after Verstappen had ruined all his chances, with Hamilton putting in a barnstorming lap time.

Lando Norris took provisional pole but had his lap time deleted, which left Mercedes to celebrate Lewis’ pole. A few moments later, the race stewards reinstated Norris’ lap time, giving him the sprint pole. It wasn’t much of a great defence from Norris as the first lap saw him run wide, losing several positions.

Verstappen made excellent progress to fight his way to P1, pulling out a 13 second gap to Hamilton in P2. Arguably the highlight of the sprint race was a four-car shootout for the final podium between Perez, Leclerc, Sainz, and Alonso. Leclerc and Alonso were scrapping away for P3 and pushed each other off the track.

Perez took advantage of the pair battling and made a beautiful double-overtake – reminiscent of Hamilton’s famous Silverstone “through goes Hamilton” move.

Perfect in papaya

Lando Norris proved his worth this weekend with a consistently brilliant performance. Yes, you could say that he made an extremely silly mistake at the start of the sprint race but that shouldn’t detract from his amazing performance.

Taking pole in the treacherous conditions of a wet sprint qualifying, Norris proved his worth this weekend, with a gap of 1.2 seconds between him and Lewis Hamilton in P2. It was particularly surprising result as the usual frontrunners Red Bull struggled to set the pace.

Despite dropping down to an eventual sixth-place finish for the sprint race, Norris’ pace was still impressive when considering the re-emergence of Ferrari and Aston Martin. Norris’ qualifying for Sunday’s race was exceptional too.

The McLaren driver was denied a top three start by Alonso but both McLarens had a great opportunity to score a few points. In the race, Norris had an excellent chance at a podium, and he did exactly that.

The Brit made great progress getting ahead of Alonso for P3 on Lap 2 and matched the pace of Sergio Perez in P2. Following the virtual safety car and the two safety cars in the race, Norris found himself in a brilliant position to maintain a P2 finish and a 15th career podium.

Oscar Piastri had an unlucky run this weekend after suffering damage from the concertina at the hairpin with Ricciardo and Stroll.

Tsunoda, Ricciardo, and Hulkenberg get involved in a rare incident at the hairpin 😱#ChineseGP #F1
— Race Reaction (@RaceReaction) April 21, 2024

The Aussie still managed to hang on to P8, bringing home yet more valuable points for the team from Woking.

Back to square one

It seems like ages ago but the last time Formula 1 came to Shanghai, it was Lewis Hamilton who claimed his 75th win at the 1000th F1 Championship Grand Prix.

Hamilton shocked the grid with P2 for the sprint qualifying, showing his natural talent that won him 103 races.

This was, however, sadly the highlight of his weekend as he failed to make similar performances in both qualifying and the Grand Prix.

Qualifying just didn’t work for the Brit as he put in what he thought was a sufficient time to take him into Q2. Sitting in P12, the Mercedes garage watched in horror as other drivers behind Hamilton on the leaderboard were massively improving their lap times.

Sharing the 9th row with Kevin Magnussen clearly wasn’t what the seven-time world champion had in mind. Despite fighting his way back to P9 on Sunday, it’s clear that something’s not working at Brackley.

**Hamilton catching Ocon for P10**

**“I can’t even catch him mate. The car is so slow”**

Much like Norris, the Mercedes driver was aided by the multiple safety car periods but found it difficult to overtake the Alpine of Esteban Ocon and other back marker teams including Haas and RB.

This huge drop in overall pace from Hamilton is confusing as there simply doesn’t seem to be a straightforward answer for Hamilton’s lack of results. With his colossal switch to Ferrari looming in the distance, will Hamilton need to prove his worth as a driver to the Scuderia?

Groundhog day

15 years on since Sebastian Vettel took Red Bull’s first win and 1-2 finish with Mark Webber, it was business as usual with another double podium at Shanghai for the Milton Keynes outfit.

Verstappen took his 58th career victory at Shanghai, with 13 seconds separating him and the rapid Lando Norris. It was also his first victory in China, making it the 26th different track the Red Bull driver has now won at.

Whilst Perez did qualify P2, his lack in pace meant that Norris comfortably managed a four second gap between him and the Mexican driver.

**Sergio Perez on his Chinese GP**

**“At least we managed to get a podium, it would have been good to get a 1-2 here”**

Verstappen managed to survive three safety car restarts and, in all three of them, the Dutchman sped off into the distance, leaving P2 in the dust. It’s incredibly impressive that the field bunched up three times and Verstappen still pulled a sizeable gap to Norris in second place.

Apart from mechanical DNFs and crashes, is there anything that can stop Verstappen?

We’re off to Miami next race weekend where the weather will hopefully be much better! There’s so much to look forward to including yet another sprint race weekend. We’ll be covering it here, on Race Reaction.

In the meantime though, check out our thoughts on the new points system being considered for 2025 on the latest episode of the Race Reaction Podcast!

Final race classification

1 - Max VERSTAPPEN

2 - Lando NORRIS

3 - Sergio PEREZ

4 - Charles LECLERC

5 - Carlos SAINZ

6 - George RUSSELL

7 - Fernando ALONSO

8 - Oscar PIASTRI

9 - Lewis HAMILTON

10 - Nico HULKENBERG

11 - Esteban OCON

12 - Alexander ALBON

13 - Pierre GASLY

14 - Zhou GUANYU

15 - Kevin MAGNUSSEN

16 - Logan SARGEANT

17 - Lance STROLL

DNF - Daniel RICCIARDO

DNF - Yuki TSUNODA

DNF - Valtteri BOTTAS