Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix - Shanghai 2025
STARTING GRID:
PIASTRI 2) RUSSELL 3) NORRIS 4) VERSTAPPEN 5) HAMILTON 6) LECLERC 7) HADJAR 8) ANTONELLI 9) TSUNODA 10) ALBON 11) OCON 12) HULKENBERG 13) ALONSO 14) STROLL 15) SAINZ 16) GASLY 17) BEARMAN 18) DOOHAN 19) BORTOLETO 20) LAWSON
LAP 1: Racing is underway in Shanghai! Not the best of starts from Oscar Piastri as George Rusell challenges him going into the first corner but Russell is the one that loses places as Lando Norris comes sweeping round the outside to take second. Lewis Hamilton gets past Max Verstappen into the second corner and is clipped by his teammate into the next corner. Luckily no disastrous damage for the Ferrari’s as they continue in the race.
Both Ferrari’s get past Verstappen, despite a broken front wing for Charles Leclerc, as he manages to keep Verstappen at bay for the first lap despite the damage. There are changes around the grid from the start but no retirements or major crashes of note in the early stages.
LAP 4: Pierre Gasly gets on his radio to say “brakes on fire for Alonso” as it shows a slowing Aston Martin. A first retirement for Alonso since 2017 as he reports “I cannot brake. No brakes, no brakes”. The second DNF in a row for the Spanish driver, who is having a nightmare start to the season.
LAP 6: A replay shows that Alonso is nearly joined by Bortoleto in not finishing both of the season openers as he spins into the gravel. Luckily for the Sauber driver he is able to keep the car going and get it back on the track before being beached.
LAP 9: As the pit window nears there is a radio message between the Williams pit wall and Alex Albon. However, Albon responds saying “I am good. I am better than everyone, let’s relax. I am very comfortable.” A fiery response from Albon but showing how comfortable and confident he feels not only in the car but in his ability.
LAP 16: The pit stops are in full swing for the grid with Lando Norris coming out behind Lance Stroll who is yet to pit and more importantly behind George Russell. Both drivers are behind the Aston Martin with Russell going past Norris into the second corner. Russell gets past Stroll with ease out braking the Aston going into turn 6 but Lando is still behind him, getting past in the next few corners.
LAP 18: It takes just a couple of laps for Lando to close in on Russell and gets past going into the first corner and makes the move stick. Later in the lap Lewis Hamilton goes on the inside of Lance Stroll to move to 5th but he has his teammate hot on his heels despite missing a front end plate.
LAP 20: A great first stint from Alex Albon who was passed by George Russell going into turn 14, but was going into the pits anyway. However, Ferrari had asked Hamilton to swap the cars around on the previous lap to which he responded “when he is closer, yeah”. By the start of lap he was still ahead of Leclerc but they quickly swapped at turn 2. With Lewis seeming to closing in on George Russell he may not have been best pleased by this decision.
LAP 31: After a failed attempt to overtake Lance Stroll laps earlier, Ollie Bearman tries another maneuver against Liam Lawson. Instead of going on the inside and out breaking himself into a lock up he goes on the outside and switches back to get past Liam Lawson. A great pass by the rookie with Liam Lawson having another disappointing performance in the seemingly hard to perform in second seat at Red Bull.
LAP 33: Going into turn 14 again, Ollie Bearman does an almost identical move on fellow rookie Jack Doohan to get past him into 15th place. Another great move from the young British driver as he tries to make his way into the points.
LAP 36: Yet again Ollie Bearman makes an overtake into turn 14. This time he goes on the inside of Grand Prix winner Carlos Sainz. He gets the move done and even says “Ciao!” on the radio. The rookie was evidently full of confidence in the Haas car in Shanghai.
LAP 47: Despite already passing Jack Doohan, Yuki Tsunoda finds himself behind him again and behind his teammate. This appears to be due to front wing damage which replays showed just happened on the pit straight as he was trying to close in on Carlos Sainz. A strange thing to happen to a modern F1 car as it seems there was too much pressure from the conditions for the front wing to stay in place.
LAP 52: Norris is told “you need to limit your brake pressure” after saying that his brake pedal was getting longer and longer on lap 48. His race engineer informed him that it will continue to get worse lap after lap. With this issue, the end of the race proved to be more nerve racking than he will have liked.
LAP 53: Max Verstappen has DRS on the pit straight as he bares down on Charles Leclerc. He can’t get the move done into the first corner but swoops round the outside of turn 2. Charles tries to defend and cut off Verstappen’s line, but Max sees it coming and holds off. He gets better traction going into turn 3 and this time swoops round the outside to get past Leclerc with ease into 4th.
LAP 55: Once again Lando is told about the brakes, this time he is told “the brake situation has been getting critical”. He essentially has to lift and coast his way home, luckily just a couple of laps left of this issue but George Russell was not far behind.
LAP 56: Contrasting ends to the Grand Prix for both McLaren drivers. Oscar Piastri came home to win the race with ease by 9.8 seconds. However, Lando Norris is chased down by George Russell due to his brake issue. The chequered flag couldn’t have come quicker for Lando Norris as he brought the car home with George Russell just over 1.3 seconds behind him in 3rd.
The rest of the top 10 came home fairly spaced out. McLaren got the 1-2 they deserved last week but the conditions took over to prevent that but not this time. Not the start to the season that Red Bull would have wanted as they had to settle for 4th with Max Verstappen as Liam Lawson ended the race in 12th (due to disqualifications) with no points for consecutive races.
An interesting development after the race, with 3 cars disqualified from the race for various reasons. Both Ferrari’s disqualified with Charles Leclerc’s car found to be 1kg underweight and Lewis Hamilton’s rearward skid wear on his car found to be 0.5mm below the limit. The other car disqualified was the Alpine of Pierre Gasly, for the same reason as the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.
This meant that other teams on the grid gained more points due to moving up positions as a result of the disqualifications. The Haas drivers scored 2 top 10 finishes with double the amount of points they had when the race originally finished. Another team benefitting well from this was Mercedes as they ended up with 23 points for the weekend, as they are currently the closest competitors for McLaren in the Constructors Championship as things stand. Williams being the final team to get double points with their drivers promoted to 7th and 10th to get good points for the team.
RACE RESULT:
PIASTRI 2) NORRIS 3) RUSSELL 4) VERSTAPPEN 5) OCON 6) ANTONELLI 7) ALBON 8) BEARMAN 9) STROLL 10) SAINZ 11) HADJAR 12) LAWSON 13) DOOHAN 14) BORTOLETO 15) HULKENBERG 16) TSUNODA 17) ALONSO (DNF) 18) LECLERC (DSQ) 19) HAMILTON (DSQ) 20) GASLY (DSQ)
