Nine things we learned from Saturday of F1's 2026 Chinese GP
Saturday at Formula 1’s Chinese Grand Prix gave us the first sprint race and a grand prix qualifying session at a circuit that better suits these energy-starved F1 cars.
Here’s everything we learned from Saturday in Shanghai:
Fresh criticism of F1 racing ‘chaos’
China’s action-packed Chinese GP sprint race was a great spectacle with further Mercedes versus Ferrari dices at the front of the field and so much midfield action that the TV director couldn’t keep up.
George Russell and the Ferraris revelled in their yo-yo racing.
“The early laps were good fun, and Charles [Leclerc] and I were just saying, it's pretty exciting racing,” Russell said.
But that excitement isn’t shared by many drivers in the midfield dogfight.
Esteban Ocon said F1 isn’t “go-karts, obviously we want a lot more overtakes, but it's just chaos. You can't really plan for any overtaking. If you do, you are going to get re-overtaken.
“You can't really seal the position. It's difficult to call it really fair battles…especially between manufacturers, some have more deployment than others. Some have quicker corners than others. So it creates big, big differences, but yeah, it is not straightforward to overtake really. It's more like back and forward.”
Haas team-mate Ollie Bearman said: “I saw a pack of about 10 cars behind me, all about one tenth away from each other. And that just confirms exactly what I was saying last week, which is that it's very processional once you get into the standard race.
“When Kimi was overtaking everyone, of course with a car advantage, you can overtake. Max was coming back through the pack. George and Lewis were squabbling.
“But when the pecking order is basically fastest car at the front and slowest car at the back, then nothing else can happen. Let's see, I want to be proven wrong tomorrow.”
Liam Lawson, who won that midfield battle in the sprint, said his enjoyment of the racing is “not super high” as “It's not racing that I'm used to”.
He believes it’s “not really so much 'overtakes' but who's got more energy [or] who's out of energy”. - Josh Suttill
Red Bull's engine is neutered here...
Red Bull’s engine has been impressing people for a good two months now, but in China it has looked limited for the first time.
OK, there was also a failure for Isack Hadjar in the Australia race, but in performance terms (and general reliability) Red Bull has only earned positive reviews at the start of 2026.
In China, though, it has seemed apparent that there is an overall performance deficit when everybody else is able to run their engines as they want. Or, in simpler terms, when the charging demands are reduced, Mercedes and Ferrari can tap into a performance ceiling Red Bull can’t quite match.
That manifests in the midfield, not just at the front.
“For us it's worse here,” said Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson. “We struggle more at this track. It's quite an energy-rich track, and it definitely doesn't suit our car as much at the moment.
“Through a 'poor' track, I think we have quite good energy management, the engine's been working very well for us. I would say that's definitely helped us.” - Scott Mitchell-Malm
...but Verstappen isn't giving Red Bull’s car a free pass
Max Verstappen delivered a scathing verdict after Chinese Grand Prix qualifying, saying “every lap is like survival” as his 2026 ire moved from broader engine disapproval to specific criticism of Red Bull’s own car.
After already calling Friday a “disaster”, Verstappen endured a miserable Saturday: a poor sprint start dropped him out of the points, and the Red Bull again looked like a midfield car in qualifying, with Verstappen eighth and Isack Hadjar ninth, slower than Alpine and only just ahead of Haas.
Despite extensive set-up changes, Verstappen said nothing improved. “We changed a lot on the car to make zero difference,” he said, describing it as “completely undriveable” and impossible to push.
The problem appears to be the chassis rather than Red Bull’s new in-house engine, with a lack of grip and persistent balance issues leaving Verstappen battling both oversteer and understeer.
Red Bull suspects cold temperatures have left it unable to fire its car into life, but has yet to understand the root cause.
Hadjar said the team is “on the edge of what we have as a package” while Verstappen expects little improvement for the grand prix, warning: “It’s not going to be a fun race.” - SMM
No more 'crazy' Q3 laps?
The laptimes are fairly impressive and the team-mate gaps are by and large consistent with what we know of the drivers - but are displays of peak one-lap bravado a thing of the past with these lift-and-coast, wait-and-see, harvest-and-deploy regs?
For now, maybe. At least that's how Leclerc sees it.
"I felt like, in the past, one of my strengths was that come Q3 I was just taking massive risks to get something out more, and now when you do that - which I did yesterday [in sprint qualifying] - you start confusing the engine side of things and you start losing a lot more than what you gained," he mused.
"So, consistency pays off more. And today I felt like I just found my rhythm from Q1 to Q3, which is a little bit less exciting inside the car for Q3, because you cannot push as much as you would want. But at the end of the day it paid off, because I'm just closer to the guys in front.
"But it's not a crazy lap, unfortunately - you cannot really achieve that anymore, I feel."
Ollie Bearman - perhaps a future team-mate down the line and as vocal a critic of these rules as anyone - seemed to go for what Leclerc would describe as a "crazy" lap in Q3 and got nothing for it.
"In Q3, all of my corners were faster but I lost in the straight, which really-really hurts when you see the delta going away like that," Bearman said. - Valentin Khorounzhiy
Mercedes is further ahead than it looks
Mercedes’ rivals took some heart after qualifying - that the gap to the Silver Arrows was not as big as it had looked on Friday.
From the 0.55 seconds deficit against the top Mercedes in sprint qualifying, the margin had been trimmed to less than 0.4 seconds for the main event.
But the reality is that the reduced gaps might not be any sign of progress at all, because both Mercedes were hobbled in qualifying.
George Russell’s problems that left him in anti-stall and briefly stuck on track, before some ctrl-alt-delete resets in the garage finally got him going, meant he was never at full potential.
But The Race has learned that even poleman Kimi Antonelli left some laptime on the table after encountering a front wing problem.
Just as Russell had suffered himself in Q2 before a replacement was put on, Antonelli’s front wing flap was backing off at high speed when in cornering mode – robbing him of downforce and aero balance through the turns.
It made life more difficult for him with excessive understeer, and pointed to him having the potential to go even quicker than he did in taking pole comfortably.
The clear positive for Red Bull
You wouldn’t know it from his comments after qualifying but Hadjar continues to be the main bright spot for Red Bull in its difficult start to 2026.
For the second weekend in a row, Hadjar has qualified at the upper limit of the car’s potential. In Australia that was good enough for third on the grid as others underperformed, in China it is a measly ninth - but within a tenth of Verstappen.
That will buoy Red Bull, albeit with the caveat that the RB22 clearly has a lower performance ceiling than the team would like - so the unanswerable question at the moment is will Hadjar be able to make the progress that Verstappen surely will when the car gets faster?
As that is, indeed, unanswerable for now, all Hadjar can be judged on is what he is doing with the machinery at his disposal. And the evidence continues to be a lot more convincing than his 2025 predecessors.
Remember, this was the weekend 12 months ago Red Bull decided to give up on Liam Lawson after just two events. Hadjar is miles from that, which means the team at least has one major recent problem it need not worry about for now. - SMM
Albon’s damning Williams verdict
Both Williamses went out in Q1, and for Alex Albon in particular this session was a damning indictment of the car’s current limitations.
His personal misery is of course exacerbated by the fact he qualified more than six tenths away from the Q2 cut-off, and almost half a second adrift of his own team-mate, but nevertheless he made some pointed remarks afterwards about where Williams stands right now in a season that promised a big leap forward.
We know the car is overweight, maybe by as much as 20kg, but Albon says Williams “cannot hide behind the weight because at the end of the day, there are other cars that are not on weight in the midfield”.
His more immediate concern is what he calls “some weird stuff” going on with the car: “balance issues, we aren’t seeing some downforce as well” and “the biggest issue at the minute is the car free-wheeling” [ie: not utilising engine braking correctly].
Albon says Williams is “going into areas we’ve never been before” to try to discover the root cause of the problems, but “nothing seems to fix the car”.
“I’m sure the Cadillac is quicker than us in quite a few corners, at least quicker than me, so I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
For a driver who was the standout among F1’s midfielders this time last year, this must feel like an almighty rude awakening, considering the great potential Williams promised for 2026. - Ben Anderson
Gasly’s feeling bullish
“Come back to Melbourne right now, I'll be in Q3”, was Pierre Gasly’s instant response before an interviewer had even finished asking whether what Alpine’s learned this weekend would have saved its disappointing season opener.
Gasly was rightly feeling bullish, having just outqualified both Red Bulls in grand prix qualifying, seventh for the second consecutive day.
Even though tyre woes in the sprint meant Gasly slipped out of the points, the Alpine can make a decent case for being F1’s fourth fastest car in Shanghai, in Gasly's hands at least.
That’s “not going to lie, a bit better” than Gasly’s pre-season expectations of the leap forward Alpine could take from its Mercedes engine switch and early switch to 2026 car development last year.
He feels “more alive again” after a brutal 2025 season and is most impressed with the “good progression” the team is making from session to session.
He’s set the ambitious target of “creating a bit of a gap with the guys behind and come knock at the heels of the guys in front and hopefully join the battle”.
“Whether it will be achievable, I don't know, but all I know is that guys working really hard and there is more coming. Just this in itself is enough to bring some excitement to me.” - JS
Leclerc makes peace with Shanghai weakness
Charles Leclerc is one of modern F1's great qualifiers and was widely touted to have an edge over team-mate Lewis Hamilton coming out of pre-season - but over a single lap that edge has been absent, with the head-to-head 2-1 in favour of Hamilton and this being consistent with their performances across practice sessions and Q1s/Q2s.
But Leclerc won't be losing too much sleep yet. While he does find qualifying a lot less natural with these cars - as explained above - he is also mindful that Shanghai is one of his weaker tracks in F1, something that's left him "the most satisfied I can be with a P4" after qualifying.
Leclerc versus team-mates in China qualifying
2018: 0.460s faster than Ericsson in Q1
2019: 0.017s slower than Vettel in Q3
2024: 0.352s slower than Sainz in SQ3
2024: 0.008s faster than Sainz in Q3
2025: 0.208s slower than Hamilton in SQ3
2025: 0.094s slower than Hamilton in Q3
2026: 0.367s slower than Hamilton in SQ3
2026: 0.013s slower than Hamilton in Q3
Already before the season he'd described the one-two punch of Melbourne and Shanghai as "the most difficult tracks for me and my driving style" - although previously he's also said that of the Hungaroring, so there's a bit of recency bias.
"I'm just struggling so much on this track, I don't know why, I've tried everything, I've tried different set-ups, I've tried different driving," he said today.
"Honestly I'm not too unhappy with the lap. I think Lewis was just faster, and has been more at ease since the beginning of the weekend. Honestly, being 0.01s behind Lewis on a track like this is, kind of satisfied with it, even though it hurts to say that because you always want to be the fastest - he just did a better job and deserves that."
However, Leclerc also sounds very confident - probably buoyed by the sprint - that he will have something extra up his sleeve on race pace. - VK
