Who were the real winners and losers from Formula 1’s very entertaining first sprint race of its new era?
Here’s our judgement on the stars and flops of the Saturday morning action at the Chinese Grand Prix.
Loser – Red Bull (9th & 15th)
Max Verstappen quickly found out that things could still get worse after Red Bull’s painful Friday as he went nowhere off the line and was fending off Cadillacs to narrowly avoid being last out of the first corner.
His rate of progress back through the field wouldn’t have improved his mood, with a long spell spent staring at the rear of Gabriel Bortoleto’s 12th-placed Audi as he struggled with what Verstappen reckoned was “probably the highest degradation of everyone out there”.
Even after pitting for fresh tyres during the safety car, he didn’t have enough time or pace to make it into the points.
And Isack Hadjar and his soft tyres already looked like they were heading out of the points even before losing ground in the pits, though he felt damage from the first lap Kimi Antonelli hit was his biggest issue. – Matt Beer
Winner – Formula 1
Conversations about the artificiality of the racing, many drivers’ general disdain for the formula and that deflating sensation of seeing cars positively limp to the end of the straight while ostensibly being ‘pushed’ – they aren’t going away.
Today, F1 will counter those by pointing out that in actual racing terms the 2026 formula is two-for-two. Yes, the Australian Grand Prix was not a sustained thriller, and today was spiced up by a late safety car – but ultimately the racing was far better than you would have expected given the advantage Mercedes and George Russell possess at this early stage.
Call it yo-yo racing, call it fake, you might not necessarily be wrong – but right now F1 is delivering sustained multi-lap, attack-and-counter-attack battles that were an enormous rarity under the previous regs. Let’s see if that holds up. – Valentin Khorounzhiy
Loser – Kimi Antonelli (5th)
Given the up-and-down nature of Antonelli’s sprint race, the eventual fifth place might not look too bad on paper.
However, it was a race littered with errors that can only be attributed to Antonelli himself.
The 19-year-old admitted “there was an issue…on my side” that caused him to have no turbo and hit anti-stall on the race start, which proved to be the start of his problems.
After losing six places, he found himself under unwanted pressure to make up ground in by far the fastest car on the grid. Perhaps it was the pressure, or the knowledge that he still had the chance of a podium, that snowballed into the lock-up in which he made contact with Hadjar and eventually led to a 10-second time penalty. Regardless, it was unnecessary and costly.
Although he made up three places on the safety car restart, it was still a disappointing outing for Antonelli. With a Mercedes package that should have been third at worst, it were admittedly his own errors that stopped him from reaching that target. – Eden Hannigan
Winner – George Russell (1st)
He’s having to work for it, but in every competitive session and race of F1 2026 so far it still always feels like Russell is going to come out on top at the end with a bit of margin over everyone else.
That makes it very hard to imagine anyone else as 2026 world champion. Though we have seen some massive championship leads disappear in recent F1 seasons, and year one of totally new regulations has more potential for huge swings than the average campaign.
Right now though, you can only imagine Russell’s already-11-point championship lead just growing and growing. – MB
Loser – McLaren (4th & 6th)
‘Loser’ status is very borderline for McLaren here, as realistically it actually probably got a point more than it was supposed to – in a ‘normal’ race this would have been fifth and sixth.
But that’s also the problem. The car did better in qualifying trim, and certainly it’s left Red Bull in the dust this weekend, but as a package it still clearly can’t give Ferrari – much less Mercedes – anything to worry about.
Oscar Piastri was tracking to drop outside of Antonelli’s 10-second penalty window without the safety car. Lando Norris was probably borderline on that, but realistically could’ve fallen just short, too – and that’s with Antonelli coming through from ninth place on lap one.
Then the safety car and Ferrari double-stack gave Norris track position over Lewis Hamilton and he was absolutely powerless to make that stick.
“Especially when it’s so cold, it’s difficult to get the tyres working quickly, and the Ferrari could do that in a better way than we could. Simply because they just have a little bit more grip at the minute,” Norris conceded. – VK
Winner – Ferrari (2nd & 3rd)
If not for Charles Leclerc “nearly losing it in the restart”, we could have been talking about a Ferrari sprint victory.
Nonetheless, it was a strong showing from both cars, and with both drivers mildly disappointed with top-three finishes, it just shows that Ferrari believes it can take the fight to Mercedes in race trim.
Leclerc suggested the late safety car robbed him of the chance to show what he’d saved while watching Lewis Hamilton fight Russell in the early stages. Although there was a slight error that ultimately held no bearing on the final results, the way he closed the gap over the final two laps should worry some at Mercedes.
Hamilton himself was open about wanting more than third place. However, in stark contrast to last season, the differences between Mercedes and Ferrari allow them to edge “a little bit closer” in the races and make it “so much fun” for him to drive.
Although there are still some issues for Ferrari to navigate, the sprint further cemented its status as the closest challenger to the Mercedes reign at the top. – EH
Loser – Audi (13th & DNF)
At best, it was a largely anonymous race on one side of the Audi garage. At its worst, it was a mechanical DNF and a lot of work to get done before qualifying on the other.
Nico Hulkenberg is yet to see the chequered flag in race trim in 2026 and said Audi still “need to investigate” the hydraulics issue he reported over the radio that ended his sprint prematurely.
Although he was delighted with “a really good getaway off the line” and his first taste of the 2026 cars after failing to start at all in Australia, the frustration lingers around the Audi set-up after its reliability has been tested in the early phases of its project.
Team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto was unable to benefit from Hulkenberg’s misfortunes. He went under the radar in the sprint before reaching the chequered flag in 13th, gaining just one position throughout.
He summed up his sprint as “it is what it is”, and that honestly might be the fairest reflection of Audi’s weekend so far. – EH
Loser – Arvid Lindblad (DNF)
In the context of only having a handful of laps to learn the Shanghai circuit in real life before his car failed in practice, Arvid Lindblad did extremely well to qualify within three and a half tenths of a second of Racing Bulls team-mate Liam Lawson on Friday.
But spinning to the back on lap one all by himself (which left him completely baffled) and later retiring in what seemed like a ‘you may as well give up on this’ mileage-saving decision as he trailed the Cadillacs mid-race was quite a comedown from his F1 rookie season heroics so far. – MB
Winner – Liam Lawson (7th)
It won’t get as much attention as he did for being a dramatic startline roadblock in Melbourne, but this was a very effective performance from Lawson.
He was making his unique choice of hard tyres work very well to progress comfortably into the points before the safety car. Staying out to gain track position felt like the least worst call in the circumstances and there was no shame in being unable to hold off a Mercedes and a McLaren that had new tyres.
Keeping Ollie Bearman at bay as both stayed just clear of the charging Verstappen completed a drive that was the very definition of achieving the maximum result possible from your situation. – MB
Loser – Pierre Gasly (11th)
After an encouraging Friday, this was a gently – maybe not-so-gently – discouraging sprint for Alpine and lead driver Pierre Gasly.
Up to sixth off the line, he was never going to stay there but tumbled dishearteningly out of the battle to lead the midfield, blitzed by two Haas cars and a harder-tyred Racing Bulls at various stages of the sprint.
“I think ultimately we were just too slow and a lot of graining, struggling with the clipping, especially down the main straight so I got passed by two cars, just quite a few things to improve,” Gasly summed up.
“We’re clipping in different places to other people, which made it more difficult,” corroborated team-mate Franco Colapinto, largely anonymous. “The graining, the tyres open up really early on and that made us lose some places, too.”
One or two points probably wouldn’t have changed Alpine’s season, but you’d want better early returns from a car for which 2025 was so swiftly given up on. – VK
