Max Verstappen won the first sprint race of the 2024 season in Shanghai after chasing down and passing Lewis Hamilton to take victory.
The championship leader used DRS along the back straight to close up on the Mercedes driver before passing him at the hairpin, going on to win by over 13 seconds.Sergio Perez claimed the final podium position in third after prevailing in a multi-car battle involving him, the two Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr and the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso, who dropped out of the race after a puncture.
All drivers opted for medium tyres for the 19 lap race, aside from George Russell in 11th on the grid, who chose softs. Hamilton and pole winner Lando Norris ran side-by-side through the opening corner at the start, the McLaren running wide at turn two and dropping down to seventh place.
Hamilton led ahead of Alonso in the early laps, with the Aston Martin sitting inside a second of the leader until lap four, when Hamilton managed to escape DRS range. Verstappen caught and passed Alonso on the seventh lap, having 12 laps to make up just under two seconds to Hamilton ahead.
However, Verstappen was soon on the back of the Mercedes, helped by Hamilton locking up into the hairpin on lap eight. Verstappen used DRS on the next lap to close up on the leader down the back straight before out-braking Hamilton into the hairpin to take the lead.
Verstappen quickly pulled away from the Mercedes behind over the remaining laps, ending up over five seconds ahead by the end of the 13th lap. By the time he reached the chequered flag to claim the first sprint race victory of the season, Hamilton was 13 seconds behind.
Perez finished in third, two further seconds behind Hamilton. The second Red Bull driver had picked up third after passing both Sainz and Alonso at the same corner while the two Spaniards battled each other. Alonso suffered a puncture in the skirmish after contact with Sainz and was forced to pit before eventually retiring.
Leclerc finished ahead of team mate Sainz in fourth after the two Ferraris made minor contact with each other at the hairpin. Sainz’s contact with both Alonso and his team mate are to be investigated by the stewards.
Norris finished sixth and apologised to his team over the radio for “fucking up turn one”. Oscar Piastri took seventh behind his McLaren team mate, while Russell used his soft tyres to climb up to take the final point in eighth. Although he missed out on points, Zhou Guanyu finished in the top ten in ninth with Kevin Magnussen completing the top ten.
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CarWars (@maxv)
20th April 2024, 4:52
Norris being a one day fly again.
senproman
20th April 2024, 4:54
Surprised George was able to catch up to Oscar by the end on the softs.
If George had a better start, he might have overtaken Oscar for 7th.
Interesting information for the race: softs may hold up decently well?
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
20th April 2024, 5:33
the tires all last about the same,, it looks like this year, just some have a better compound for a few laps, maybe Pirelli are layering their compounds and just sending the same basic tire.
Cost cutting to the Nth degree. Which is to be expected because they have no competition or incentive to deliver a superior product.
This appears to be the case earlier this year with the attempt to use different tire strategies, only to find out that the tires don’t really give much of an advantage past 1 or 2 laps.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
20th April 2024, 5:35
The real problem most of the teams have right now is managing the temperatures of their tires, which Red Bull is easily able to manage, according to the Pirelli man at the team boss conference this round. The only thing the compounds are doing is allowing the cars to capture that temperature initially, and then the performance of the tire slowly walks towards a cliff, maybe more slowly than before, perhaps, given the difference (conjecture) in compounds being used on a single tire.
Jere (@jerejj)
20th April 2024, 4:56
Yes, largely straightforward with good battling thanks to Alonso’s pace drop towards the end, & also some further down the field, most of which didn’t get shown on the world feed.
I was surprised about Hulk’s sudden pace drop, though.
Either he had an issue, or tyre wear was poor.
Edvaldo
20th April 2024, 5:19
Norris is too experienced to make such a dumb mistake.
Maybe he thought this was kuala lumpur, where maybe that couldve worked, that’s the only explanation possible
Mark (@mrcento)
20th April 2024, 5:33
Was largely a dull DRS train. Only really Alonsos tyres going off at the end that closed up a pack of cars and brought it back to life.
All being normal, no point anyone showing up for the Grand Prix, Verstappen is untouchable. I know the Mercedes isn’t great and Alonso being a bit of a cork in the bottle behind made it a perfect storm for him to just drive away, but 1.5 seconds a lap over the entire field was just alien pace. Nobodies touching that. GG and congrats, he’s in another formula altogether.
The biggest mystery was McLaren. The car definitely has pace in there, but think it was partly the case that it’d have looked better than it was without a poorish start then running wide at turn 1/2 and partly the car is quick in all the wrong places for actual racing, great in the corners meaning it could make up chunks of time then just plain awful in the traction zones and draggy down the back straight meaning it could never get close to passing, even with DRS. Then the corner pace advantage also suddenly disappeared like an off switch, so safe to assume it was suffering deg, not quite as bad as Aston (especially as Norris was in dirty air, Alonso was not), but Piastris pace even in clear air, albeit no DRS, was also pretty garbage all race and even Russell on softs was catching him at the end, which is a massive concern for a medium runner that wasn’t even in any battles after about turn 4 of lap 1. Going to be a long feature race for them by the looks of it.
David BR (@david-br)
20th April 2024, 13:03
@mrcento As soon as the field was levelled (some) with a wet track, Verstappen qualified 4th.
Yes he’s good, But not another formula. Like Hamilton, Vettel, Alonso, Schumacher etc. before him, he optimizes the best car on the grid and wins accordingly. It also reduces mistakes as there’s less pressure to overdrive (as Alonso did when he was eventually caught). The ‘other dimension’ is the car alone.
w0o0dy
20th April 2024, 15:38
You do know that he only qualified 4th because of an inconsistent running engine, right? Look at qualifying: put 0,3 s on Perez and roughly 0,5 on the field.. he is extracting probably 0,2s more out of that car than anyone else is capable of.
AlanD
20th April 2024, 19:47
“he is extracting probably 0,2s more out of that car than anyone else is capable of.”
There is simply no way of knowing what other drivers would be capable of in the Red Bull. All we know is that he gets more out of it than Perez, and Perez wasn’t setting the world alight in his earlier teams.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
20th April 2024, 21:56
The truth is somewhere in the middle:
1) Verstappen is a really strong driver and most likely the best there is on the grid atm
2) It was a relatively bad sprint quali for him
3) Red bull is far superior to any other car atm
4) The only reason perez is not always up there is that top teams tend to have stronger drivers than him, aside from stroll I can’t think of any driver weaker than perez on the top 5 teams
Janith
20th April 2024, 7:14
If the cars were reversed, Max would have still won.
S
20th April 2024, 11:12
It would have been more interesting to watch, though.
miciek (@micio)
20th April 2024, 11:35
No, he wouldn’t have.
Red Bull is in another league. Both Alonso and Hamilton drive better than their cars. They showed their skill in the wet.
Hamilton or Alonso in the second Red Bull would challenge Max a lot.
erik
20th April 2024, 13:21
You just cannot help yourself can you? You only repy to denounce anything Verstappen, only react to diminise a performance of Verstappen. Are you really this hurt and trying to cope with it? You Hamiltoncultists are toxic and beyond sad at this point.
David BR (@david-br)
20th April 2024, 13:40
erik, it was a fair point, I think the toxicity is your own here. Max qualified 4th when the track and weather conditions made driving skill more important. That’s not ‘denouncing’ Verstappen, it’s pointing out that given equal cars, he wouldn’t win everything as ‘Verstappencultists’ seem to think (to use your own preferred language). Is that to say he couldn’t qualify 1st in the rain in other circumstances? Nope, Verstappen is excellent in the rain too. But not infallible. When the other parameter is Chico Pérez finishing 3rd and qualifying 2nd for the real race, it’s clearly the car that gave MV the speed to pass his rivals and win by a huge margin.
GmP (@gmp)
20th April 2024, 17:16
No it was not a fair point. It is a very trying point, very tiring. Yes the RB is good, but Max is the one that makes the difference. In the race Lewis “don’t tell me, I see him” was the one who made a mistake under pressure which led to Max closing in suddenly and able to use DRS and pass. Alonso ran out of tricks and ruined his race, luckily only himself and not Carlos. Max did no mistakes, he was because he is the best driver.
AlanD
20th April 2024, 20:01
@GMP, yes Hamilton made a mistake which allowed Max to close up, but that highlights one of the problems with F1 at the moment, that cars have no defense against DRS passes which doesn’t even require the skill and timing of the old slipstreaming passes. Hamilton made mistakes because he knew he had to find a way to make gains in the corners, to keep ahead of Max. Max made no mistakes because it was just a matter of time before he was in DRS range. There was plenty of the race left for him to pass, and he wasn’t having to wring the neck of the Red Bull to close the gap. Sainz and Alonso was much more interesting in terms of driver skills and decision making.
David BR (@david-br)
20th April 2024, 21:36
@gmp Max makes no difference. Take Max away and Red Bull still win the championship with Pérez. Same as last year.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
20th April 2024, 22:01
Fully agree with david in this case, red bull is more of a difference maker than verstappen is atm, that’s how strong the car is, and that’s even when I consider verstappen the best current driver.
miciek (@micio)
20th April 2024, 23:42
Thanks @esploratore1 @david-br
I don’t want to be toxic. I just can’t stand that we can’t see any battles between Red Bulls because the second driver is not from the top league.
@gmp Remember that people make mistakes. They make even more mistakes when under pressure. Max was under pressure in sprint qualifying because his car was not a rocket. He made mistakes, qualified 4th.
He wasn’t under any pressure in the race so he didn’t make mistakes. It’s simple as that.
Note that I am not saying he is not a very good driver ;)
MichaelN
20th April 2024, 9:38
A 13 second lead by lap 19 after taking the lead only about a third into that sprint race…
The other teams sure are loving up to FOMs requirement that all F1 fans should be competitive for wins and podiums.
AlanD
20th April 2024, 20:06
Michael, I think we can agree that the rules are “fair” in that all F1 teams had the same opportunity to build a winning car, but they are stupid in the sense that they’ve made each season progressively more boring and driving fans away. I’m sure I remember drivers a couple of years ago saying their teams wouldn’t be able to catch up with Red Bull in 23 or 24, and comments from armchair warriors lambasting them for being defeatist.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
20th April 2024, 22:03
It’s not like they were wrong, were they? Teams cannot catch up to dominant teams, they had to introduce special rules for ferrari back in 2005, they had to make changes in 2021 for mercedes and will have to for red bull too.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
20th April 2024, 9:45
What a load of rubbish that Sprint Race was.
Asd
20th April 2024, 16:15
Was it really?
There was a lot of action at the top and a lead change. Probably the best spring we’ve seen.
MadMax (@madmax)
20th April 2024, 10:00
RBR cruise is now about 1 to 1.5 sec faster than the resf. Boring.
GmP (@gmp)
20th April 2024, 17:20
Luckily there is this forum to keep us entertained with all the whiners who despite telling us they won’t watch somehow keep watching enough to write yet another comment how bad it all is. Keep up the good work.
wooky
20th April 2024, 17:49
luckily there is this forum to keep us entertained, so Max cultist can tell everyone its not the car he has, simply he is 1.5 sec faster than everyone.
GmP (@gmp)
20th April 2024, 22:34
The difference is that I like to watch the races, while a majority of the commenters here seem to not enjoy it at all. I have twice the fun: watching the race and reading the comments. How about you?
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
20th April 2024, 22:05
Dominance is indeed boring, no matter who it is, and it’s unbelievable there’s people saying it’s only verstappen; it’s already a lot if he puts in 2 tenths of a second over the 2nd best driver by himself.
GmP (@gmp)
20th April 2024, 22:48
Speak for yourself? Or even a majority? I enjoy dominance in sport. How do you develop a best team, how do you keep it the best, how do you ward of challengers? In F1 it is about the best car/driver combo. In Basketball about the best five plus one. In Football about the best quarterback. In athletics or golf the best individual. Who did not enjoy Tiger Woods or Usian Bolt? Or the Lakers and later the Warriors? After a while there will be a change of the guard, and another team or athlete rises up.
I rather see dominance by perfection that something like Indycar, or MLS soccer, where anyone can win on any Sunday, but in fact are all a level below the top in their fields.
For me an Indycar race is fun, but an F1 race is exiting. So I stay awake at midnight for F1 Thursday, Friday and Saturday. If I am at home I might watch Indycar at Long Beach, but if my spouse has different plans for Sunday, I won’t. Even with Rosenquist pipping the Penske boys by less then 0.01 second for pole.
miciek (@micio)
21st April 2024, 6:59
Perez in a Red Bull is not perfection.
Perfection is when the dominating team has two great drivers that drive the car on the limit.