Luke’s Weekend Take – Chinese GP 2024

Heading now into Saturday morning where it was time for the sprint race, and we see all 20 drivers line up on the medium compound tyre barring George Russell who took a gamble and chose to start on the Softs and attempt to make them last for 19 laps from 11^th place. After the formation laps, the lights go out and away they went. Hamilton gets away very well and gets alongside Norris straight away and they go into Turn 1 side by side, but Hamilton squeezed Norris off, and Norris ended up losing 6 places in the start as he slotted in 7^th ahead of his teammate Piastri. Later on the 1^st lap we also see Sainz trying to attack Verstappen into the hairpin but Verstappen closed the door and Perez nearly overtook Sainz due to this.

It was a mystery as to why Verstappen was not able to keep close to Alonso ahead of him and was still under DRS threat from Sainz behind. This was all cleared up on lap 3 as a radio message was broadcasted from Max to GP asking as to why his battery has no charge which explained why he was unable to get away from Sainz as everyone expected. GP replied telling him to change the engine mode and that seemed to have settled Max’s race.

Fast forward to lap 7 and we see Max actually overtake Alonso to get into 2^nd place. Max made his move on the hairpin after the back straight and started his hunt for Hamilton at the front. On lap 8 Hamilton actually comes on the radio saying that the car is not rotating on low-speed corners and at the end of the lap he went wide at the hairpin cutting the deficit to Max by half and brought him into the DRS window. Max saw this as an invitation and by lap 9 he was able to overtake Hamilton at the same spot he did Alonso. After this Max put his head down and got on with his own race and all eyes went to 3^rd place where there was a battle forming between Alonso, Sainz, Perez and Leclerc as they were all within a second of each other.

On Lap 16 is when most of the action went down as Sainz went for a move on Alonso and managed to get past him into the 1^st turn but Alonso was not about to just let that go and he attacked Sainz for the next few corners until turn 7 where the 2 touch and go off track a bit and while this was happening Perez saw his opportunity and leapfrogged ahead of the pair. Due to the contact, Alonso ended up getting a puncture and had to retire his car. Sainz on the other hand must have picked up some damage as Leclerc was able to get past him but not before the Ferrari pair touch a bit as well at the hairpin as Sainz defended a bit aggressively.

Max ends up taking the chequered flag at the Sprint Race followed by Hamilton, Perez, Leclerc, Sainz, Norris, Piastri and Russell formed the top 8-point scoring positions. Russell managed to make the softs work for him and managed to sneak into the points while we see the home hero Zhou Guanyu finish in 9^th which although is not a point scoring position, it still was celebrated by the fans very loudly as this was good news for tomorrow’s race. Max in the end managed to win by a margin of 13 seconds to Hamilton which is a big margin given that he was ahead oh Hamilton for the last 10 laps only. Alonso also ended up getting a 10 second penalty for the incident with Sainz which had no impact on the result given he retired but he was also handed 3 penalty points on his license.

We now head into the last session before the race tomorrow and this meant it was time for qualifying for the race this time and it worked a bit differently this weekend as we had 2 Parc Ferme, one for Sprint Race and one for the Main Race. In light of this, teams took the learning they got from the Sprint Race and made some changes to their setup in order to make the car better for the race and also to give them the best chance to qualify high.

In Q1 we see a moment between Albon and Perez as while Perez was on a hot lap, he found Albon slightly impeding him in Turn 1 but after the stewards investigated this, they deemed that there was no further investigation needed. Later in the session we see Sargeant cause a brief yellow flag as he spins his Williams. He was able to keep it out the barriers and managed to get back going but it was too late for him to go again at this stage and had to settle for his time which was only good for 20^th. At the end of Q1 we lose Zhou Guanyu, Kevin Magnussen, Lewis Hamilton, Yuki Tsunoda and Logan Sargeant. Perez managed to make it through to Q2 by the skin on his teeth as both Zhou and Hamilton locked up on their final run which meant they lost a few tenths on their lap time which in the end meant they were eliminated in Q1.

In Q2 it was all going well up until we see Sainz come out a bit wide on the final corner and he got his rear wheel on the gravel and lost control of his car, this sent him on a spin and into the barriers hitting his front wheel and then his rear. This incident brought out the Red Flag and it looked like it was the end of Sainz’s qualifying, but it seems that the damage on his car was not that bad and he managed to get his car going and back to the pits. After a quick inspection in the garage and the lights going green in the session, we see all drivers back out on track to set their final Q2 time and Sainz was one of them as his car also got the green light to go back out. After everyone set their time, we end up losing Lance Stroll, Daniel Ricciardo, Esteban Ocon, Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly as we see Bottas put in a great lap to sneak into Q3.

In Q3 we see Max taking provisional pole with Fernando only 4 tenths behind and then Perez in 3^rd. It seemed that the race was for the 2^nd spot. And what a race that was, the 2^nd spot position swapped 7 times on the 2^nd runs of the session which kept all the fans at the edge of their seat and in the end we see Max Verstappen on pole, followed by Sergio Perez, Fernando Alonso, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, George Russell, Nico Hulkenberg and Valtteri Bottas form the top 10. That pole from Max was his 5^th consecutive pole in a row which is the most any driver got before and also the 100^th pole position for the Red Bull Team.

Who do you think will come out on top tomorrow in the race? Seems to be like its business as usual for Max but it could get very interesting for the remaining spots on the podium. Will Zhou get points in his first home race? Tune in tomorrow to find out.