Formula One did not have much time to react to the chaos that was the Australian Grand Prix before the paddock packed up and flew to China for the first sprint race weekend of the season.
Shanghai International Circuit was resurfaced for F1’s arrival this season, offering better grip while reducing tire degradation. The teams are still learning their new cars, and a fresh track throws a few questions into the mix. But the Chinese Grand Prix weekend also gives the teams a better understanding of dry-weather pace, and McLaren’s gap could be bigger than initially assumed.
The problem is that a sprint weekend means a quick turnaround time between FP1 and sprint qualifying, with the practice window shrinking from 180 total minutes to just 60.
The teams also have to deal with the latest technical directive regarding the flexi-wing debacle, and the rookies will look to have a cleaner weekend than last time out when four out of six crashed.
Luke Smith and Madeline Coleman look at the key storylines heading into the Chinese Grand Prix weekend.
McLaren’s true advantage could become clearer
Lando Norris (left) and Oscar Piastri look on from the garage at Shanghai International Circuit (Clive Rose/Getty Images)
Lando Norris held on for victory in the Australian GP, crossing the line less than a second clear of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, but the paddock is in agreement that McLaren remains the overwhelming favorite heading into this weekend.
The sweep to the front-row lockout in Australia with an impressive final sector, keeping its tires alive when other teams were struggling with overheating, signalled McLaren’s pace. When conditions dried in the race and Verstappen struggled, Norris and Oscar Piastri pulled 15 seconds clear before the safety car wiped their advantage away. It was further evidence that the McLaren car is hard to match, particularly when keeping its tires alive.
Mercedes’ George Russell has been the leading voice talking up McLaren’s pace, suggesting it had a car capable of winning every race this season.
Piastri smirked when Russell’s suggestion was put to him, calling it “far-fetched,” and he said that the Australia result would be an “exceptional” race within its season. Norris also spent much of the FIA news conference explaining why the McLaren car remains so difficult for him to drive, going against his natural style. It’s a similar point to one he has made in recent years about the cars McLaren has produced.
Verstappen, the spearhead of that Red Bull success, was reluctant to draw a firm comparison between his previous advantage and McLaren’s buffer now, though he agreed McLaren was “super strong.” He also got confused at a question referring to Norris’ comments about struggling to drive the car naturally, asking the reporter, “Are you sure he wasn’t joking?”
If the rain and safety cars in Australia masked McLaren’s pace, then a dry weekend in China could be more revealing.
Luke Smith
Hamilton and Ferrari look to take a step
Lewis Hamilton gets out of his car at the Shanghai International Circuit in Shanghai on March 20, 2025 (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)
The fanfare around Lewis Hamilton’s long-anticipated Ferrari debut fizzled out somewhat through Saturday and Sunday in Australia. Qualifying eighth and finishing 10th was hardly the dream start he had envisaged. Instead, the normal growing pains of changing teams emerged through a hectic, challenging race.
The paddock consensus about Ferrari’s showing in Melbourne was that it hardly represented where the team really stands. Charles Leclerc had looked strong through practice, but struggled come qualifying, suggesting there is more pace in the car that wasn’t fully realized in the most important sessions.
Hamilton is confident he can make setup adjustments that will help unlock more performance, having got through a tricky race in Melbourne where he lacked confidence when driving a Ferrari for the first time in the wet. But he also sought to downplay the scrutiny over his radio communications with his engineer, Riccardo Adami, saying it had been “overegged” as a story in the days after Australia.
“I wasn’t saying, ‘F you’, I wasn’t swearing,” Hamilton told reporters. “At that point, I was really struggling with the car and I needed full focus on a couple of things. We’re getting to know each other. He’s obviously had two champions or more in the past and there’s no issues between us.”
Similar to McLaren, Ferrari should get a better, more accurate read of its pace in China. A sprint weekend format may not be ideal to truly bed in across three practice sessions, but Hamilton will welcome the stresses of the extra qualifying and the sprint race. It’s another opportunity to learn in live situations and move to make inroads on the papaya cars.
“We’re still just taking the time to learn the car and to extract more from it,” Hamilton said. “We have work to do, I don’t think we’re on the pace of the McLarens, but we can close the gap.”
Luke Smith
The rookies face a chance to bounce back
The Australian GP was messy, to say the least. As Williams team principal James Vowles said in a recent team video, the conditions were “treacherous.” The painted lines on the track were quite slippery, and six drivers — four rookies and two veterans — wrecked.
To recap: Isack Hadjar crashed on the formation lap, Jack Doohan on the opening lap, and Gabriel Bortoleto and Liam Lawson endured separate crashes during the second half of the race. Kimi Antonelli powered his way from a P16 start to a fourth-place finish, and Ollie Bearman finished 14th after limited running throughout the weekend from wrecks in practice.
Some fans wondered whether the rookies would struggle this season after their performance in the rain, but they’ve had limited F1 experience in those conditions. Bortoleto said Thursday, “I’ve heard from some drivers there will not be many races more difficult than this one in your career. Slicks to wet and wet to slick again, dry and wet conditions.”
The Chinese GP is expected to be a smoother race weekend, weather-wise, but there is limited running due to it being a sprint race. It’ll be some of the drivers’ first chances at stringing together a complete race weekend — and another chance at showing why they’ve earned their spot on the grid.
Madeline Coleman
The difficulties of a sprint weekend
Sprint weekends present numerous challenges, one of the biggest being the limited practice time. Unlike other sports, most F1 drivers’ in-car experience comes from the practice sessions on a race weekend.
It’s the first sprint race of the year, which can be inopportune if teams were surprised by performances in Australia, as Haas was. There’s limited time to gather data and test different ideas.
Bearman said during Thursday’s FIA news conference, “We were a bit out of the window of performance, so we have a few ideas now heading into Shanghai. Unfortunately, not enough free practice sessions — not the best time for us to have a sprint weekend, but we’ll see what we can do.”
To add another wrinkle, the track has been resurfaced. The circuit last year had specific bumps, and Pierre Gasly told reporters on Thursday that he had to make compromises on his setup last year. The hope is that it’ll be less bumpy. But it’s still a new track for the rookies and a new surface for everyone, and on a sprint weekend with limited practice time at that.
“I’m not expecting any issues, but it will behave quite differently to what we had 12 months ago,” Piastri said on Thursday.
Madeline Coleman
Will the rear-wing technical directive have an impact?
Governing body the FIA issued a technical directive (TD) after the Australian GP weekend that stricter rear-wing tests will be carried out in China, making this the latest move in the ongoing conversations about flexi-wings. The limit on how much flexibility the rear wing can have (meaning the gap between the flap and the mainplane) has been reduced from 2mm to 0.5mm. There is a tolerance of 0.25mm — but for this weekend only.
Considering the 2025 season began with a doubleheader, it is a tight turnaround for teams to make adjustments. McLaren, though, claims to not be affected. The Woking-based team has been at the center of this conversation since last year, when it changed its rear-wing design after Azerbaijan. It’s worth noting that Norris’ car was subject to multiple rear-wing load deflection tests after he won the Australian Grand Prix, and it conformed with the regulations.
“Nope. We don’t have to change anything. Ours is fine. In fact, ours was probably too good, and we probably weren’t pushing the limits enough, honestly,” Norris said in Thursday’s news conference. “If this technical directive had been applied last weekend, we would’ve been fine. It’s not directed at us — it seems to be directed (at) other teams.”
Mercedes’ Russell did agree that McLaren would have won last weekend, even with the TD in place, because of its pace. As far as whether the technical directive would change anything for Mercedes, he said it wouldn’t. He told reporters, “I don’t know who the TD was introduced for, but I’m pretty confident it wasn’t us or Red Bull. But I’m also confident for the teams it is going to hurt, it’s not going to hurt them enough that it will have any impact on the result.”
Madeline Coleman
(Top photo: Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
