It’s only the second round of the season and already the rules are changing. Will that disrupt the pecking order?
Plus, F1 could have a new championship leader by Sunday, and teams face the added challenge of a resurfaced track – again. Here are the talking points for Shanghai.Early clampdown on flexing wings
Lando Norris is well aware that the hard-won seven-point advantage he claimed in Australia amounts to very little with 623 points still available over the remaining 23 rounds.
But McLaren hit the track in great shape in Australia, claiming the front row of the grid by almost four tenths of a second. They would likely have filled the top two spots on the podium had an ill-timed rain shower not caught Oscar Piastri out.
Will they be as competitive in China, particularly now the FIA has announced a stricter new test of rear wing flexibility? A tougher test was originally planned for the ninth one, but the FIA has surprisingly rushed a new check in.
But as we’ve seen so little running so far this year, interpreting any variation in the teams’ performance is likely to be difficult. The Shanghai track has little in common with Albert Park or Bahrain International Circuit, the only venues where significant running has taken place so far.
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New track surface
The teams and drivers will have plenty to get on top of this weekend. The FIA’s new rear wing test comes as they are still getting to grips with their new cars. For many rookies, this will be their first experience of the circuit.
This may sound familiar. Teams arrived in Shanghai last year to find the track coated in a new layer of bitumen. How much grip they can expect will be strongly influenced by how recently the latest coat was laid – and whether it rains. The conditions look favourable so far.
Sprint races return
F1’s sprint race format, now five years old, remains an answer to a question no one asked. Undeterred, F1 persists in holding them, though their goal of “promoting a dash that is dynamic rather than strategic, with an emphasis on attacking” seldom lives up to the hype.
Shanghai is the first venue which will arbitrarily award extra points. F1 has never held a sprint event as early in the season as this, and it could have an immediate effect on the championship: Verstappen has the chance to take the championship lead off Norris on Saturday.
Sprint races mean a reduction in practice time from three hours to one. Teams hoping to solve problems with their cars will therefore either have to wait for Suzuka or, more likely, treat the sprint race as a practice session, as several did last year.
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F1 seeks growth in China
When Formula 1’s commercial rights holder Liberty Media took over the sport it identified two key markets it was keen to develop the sport in: The USA and China. F1’s popularity in the former is growing, thanks to its three US rounds per season.
Derek Chang, who replaced Greg Maffei as president of Liberty Media earlier this year, and spent three years as the head of the National Basketball Association in China, admitted the series needs to find ways to succeed in China.
“I don’t think our efforts in China have necessarily borne the fruit that we’d like to have seen,” he told the Financial Times recently. “I do think that, with some investment and some focus, we can turn it into a bigger opportunity for F1 and, frankly, for the fans in China.”
Any way back for Zhou?
Having a Chinese driver on the grid would no doubt aid F1’s popularity in China. Zhou Guanyu became the first Chinese driver to compete in the race last year and F1 went to the unusual length of giving him a special place on the grid after the race to park his car in front of the crowd.
However this turned out to be a farewell gesture, as Sauber dropped Zhou at the end of the season. He is now a reserve driver for Ferrari. If he can’t find a way back onto the grid, there are no other junior Chinese drivers in the lower categories who might take his place soon.
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Second chance
He at least made it further than Isack Hadjar, who arrives in Shanghai still looking to make his grand prix debut. He showed decent pace throughout practice until he crashed on the formation lap before the race. Both will be especially keen to stay out of trouble this weekend.
Are you going to the Chinese Grand Prix?
If you’re heading to Shanghai for this weekend’s race, we want to hear from you:
Who do you think will be the team to beat in the Chinese Grand Prix? Have your say below.
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2025 Chinese Grand Prix
- Red Bull reassure Verstappen over ‘when we’ll have a winning car again’ in meeting
- Mercedes explain impact of Antonelli’s floor damage on his Chinese GP performance
- “I gave a lot of lap time away in that first stint”: Verstappen’s full Chinese GP radio
- Stats: Chinese Grand Prix saw most disqualifications in an F1 race for 21 years
- Even the best driver on the grid needs a team mate to push them – Norris
Jere (@jerejj)
19th March 2025, 12:42
Early clampdown on flexing wings – Unnecessarily hasty, but unlikely to impact competitive order.
New track surface – The lap time improvement from last season will consequently be greater than it’d otherwise be, & hopefully, the new surface is fully smooth. At least rain won’t affect proceedings in all likelihood.
Sprint races return – Nothing new & not much earlier than last season anyway.
F1 seeks growth in China – Probably the same old story, i.e., neither great nor bad.
Any way back for Zhou? – Attendances have always been great & atmosphere the same as in Suzuka with or without a national driver, so he’s absence among the full-time drivers won’t be any different impact-wise than in 2004-2019.
Cadillac is literally his only option, but even that team is realistically an option only if they abandoned their target of having an American driver for the time being, which they could be forced to do in the end, depending on the super license points situations for current active American drivers in different categories.
Second chance – I’m sure they will, given the runoff space amount.
Wellbalanced
19th March 2025, 13:46
Do you think the lap time improvement from last year will consequently be greater? I’m thinking Turkey during the pandemic, when the new surface was like ice. Not impossible it goes that way in China
Jere (@jerejj)
19th March 2025, 14:33
Not impossible, but highly unlikely because the 2020 Turkish GP case was clearly a one-off thing.
Assuming everything has gone well with the resurfacing work, the improvement rate should be higher than otherwise due to the combining factors of general evolution within stable technical regulations & relaid tarmac surface.
Wut
19th March 2025, 18:11
What does you Suzuka have to do with China? Japan has a far deeper history with racing than China.
Alex Lima
19th March 2025, 13:28
Let’s assume the new wing deflection test will doom Mclaren’s rear wing. Is there a second, less flexible spare wing Mclaren is carrying with them since Australia?!? I don’t think so. I think the method applied does not represent the wing’s true deflection under aero loads (cp position over chord length, load distribution along the wingspan). In this sense, they will pass the test and will shout out loud their car is fast within the rules.
Riccard
19th March 2025, 19:12
The FIA don’t actually want to disqualify teams, so you have to imagine the 0.75mm transitionary limit ‘for China only’ has been carefully calibrated to help everybody pass it.
It appears the FIA were nervous about the impact of moving to 0.5mm straight away.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
19th March 2025, 19:27
The teams can always stiffen a piece of bodywork if they need to. It might not be the ideal solution a lot of the time, but they can always add something to reinforce it and restrict the deflection if they aren’t going to pass the new test.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
19th March 2025, 21:23
@keithedin Not if they don’t get their car until less than a day before scrutineering. They’ll be pushed to have the car ready for scrutineering with the China-specific parts on, let alone experimenting with mods to the car!
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
20th March 2025, 1:09
Less doom-doom, more vroom-vroom!
MichaelN
19th March 2025, 15:13
The untapped potential is obviously huge, but it’s hardly a surprise that F1, with the vast majority of races in times zones awkward for Chinese live viewing, and saturated with European and North-American involvement in terms of constructors, partners, drivers etc. is not a big deal in China. China after all has an enormous internal market for Chinese entertainment, Chinese sports and what have you.
And it’s not like that’s an outlier. Arguably the only truly global sporting events are the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup. Both, not by coincidence, things in which China has great interest and which the government has been keen to be involved in, whereas F1 is more of a local curiosity that Shanghai does mostly on its own.
billc
19th March 2025, 16:21
China…. sigh. I know Liberty chases the $$$ but no races in Germany and France undermine the credibility of Formula 1’s claim to be a sustainable sport.
anon
19th March 2025, 20:55
billc, we had people constantly complain about Magny Cours and dismiss it as “Magny Bores” for the dull races that it produced, and many celebrated it falling off the calendar because of that. Several of them then said “move the race to Paul Ricard, because that will be more interesting”, only for them to then complain that the races at Paul Ricard were boring and fans struggled to get to the circuit because the access routes are so poor. Most of the venues that have been used for races in France have either been decried as boring or aren’t remotely suitable now, and since we also see many on this site moan about street circuits, that option also seems to be off the cards.
Similarly, we see the same thing said about Germany – we get people moan that the modern Hockenheimring is boring, but the old Hockenheimring was also rather unpopular for producing boring races (and the drivers themselves often thought it was the worst circuit on the calendar). The modern Nurburgring also gets the same treatment, where people moan about the racing there too – it seems that, for all that people say they want a race in Germany, they also reject any of the circuits that could hold a race there.
ADUB SMALLBLOCK (@waptraveler)
19th March 2025, 20:51
I don’t know the impact it will have on F1 in China, but the Chinese economy is in terrible dissaray, with many foreign companies leaving.
MacLeod (@macleod)
20th March 2025, 8:12
@waptraveler That isn’t strange as all economies have problems …..