Lando Norris

Oscar Piastri secured victory at the Chinese Grand Prix as he benefited from putting his McLaren on pole position to avoid the tyre issues of the chasing Formula 1 pack.

With tyre management the order of the day throughout the field, Piastri was able to control his race and took the third win of his career, leading home team-mate Lando Norris, who was forced to manage a worsening brake issue in the closing stages.

George Russell was too far adrift to pass Norris despite the tumbling pace of his compatriot but sealed consecutive third place finishes to start the 2025 season.

A half-century of 1-2 finishes in the history of McLaren showed it is again the team to beat at present.

Max Verstappen put in a strong performance to finish fourth for Red Bull, leading home the Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton.

Having been the worst team on the grid in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Haas secured a double points finish with Esteban Ocon seventh and a feisty Oliver Bearman 10th.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli held onto his eighth place starting position to score points in back-to-back races with Alex Albon ninth for Williams.

Piastri squeezed Russell off the line, allowing Norris to make a move to grab second, before the McLaren team-mates then worked together to lead the field.

It was the opposite story at Ferrari, however, as Leclerc clipped Hamilton and suffered wing damage, although the duo did both pass Verstappen’s Red Bull off the line.

Meanwhile, Norris was complaining of graining on the troublesome left-front tyre with just eight laps on the board, while Piastri took advantage of running in clean air.

The pitstop window opened on lap 11 as Leclerc disagreed with his team over which plan to implement with the Monegasque running close behind his team-mate.

Both Hamilton and Verstappen stopped on lap 14, with Piastri boxing a lap later and having a slower stop than he would have wanted as he was stationary for 3.8 seconds.

Norris was in a lap later and lost out to Russell, who came in a lap earlier to regain his net second place in the grand prix, but it was just one lap before the McLaren retook the position into Turn 1.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Albon, on his 29th birthday, inherited the lead having not stopped but soon fell into the clutches of the overall frontrunners.

Elsewhere, Hamilton was resisting requests from Ferrari to swap places with Leclerc as they homed in on Russell, but begrudgingly ceded to the team call at the start of lap 21.

McLaren was managing its two lead drivers well, Piastri pushing the pace to allow Norris to follow suit and pull further clear of Russell without entering the dirty air of the race leader.

As those two-stopping started to pit again, the leaders were quick enough to stay out on the hard compound, with Verstappen coming alive and chasing the pack.

Hamilton opted to pit on lap 38 for fresh hard tyres in the aim of catching the top five towards the end of the race although it did not pan out for the winner of Saturday’s sprint race.

The Racing Bulls of Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar also both opted for a second stop and were cutting through the field towards the top 10 until Tsunoda suffered a front wing issue and Hadjar was ran wide by Jack Doohan’s Alpine, who was hit with a 10s penalty as a result.

Out front, Norris reported a brake issue as the pitwall urged caution rather than pushing to close in on Piastri in the closing stages.

There was no such warning for Verstappen, who attacked Leclerc and got through with three laps left.

Piastri took the chequered flag and Norris nursed the second McLaren over the line despite losing over three seconds to the chasing Russell on the last lap.

Fernando Alonso was the sole retirement on lap four as the brakes on his Aston Martin gave up the ghost.

Chinese Grand Prix results

Oscar Piastri secured victory at the Chinese Grand Prix as he benefited from putting his McLaren on pole position to avoid the tyre issues of the chasing Formula 1 pack.

With tyre management the order of the day throughout the field, Piastri was able to control his race and took the third win of his career, leading home team-mate Lando Norris, who was forced to manage a worsening brake issue in the closing stages.

George Russell was too far adrift to pass Norris despite the tumbling pace of his compatriot but sealed consecutive third place finishes to start the 2025 season.

A half-century of 1-2 finishes in the history of McLaren showed it is again the team to beat at present.

Max Verstappen put in a strong performance to finish fourth for Red Bull, leading home the Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton.

Having been the worst team on the grid in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Haas secured a double points finish with Esteban Ocon seventh and a feisty Oliver Bearman 10th.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli held onto his eighth place starting position to score points in back-to-back races with Alex Albon ninth for Williams.

Piastri squeezed Russell off the line, allowing Norris to make a move to grab second, before the McLaren team-mates then worked together to lead the field.

It was the opposite story at Ferrari, however, as Leclerc clipped Hamilton and suffered wing damage, although the duo did both pass Verstappen’s Red Bull off the line.

Meanwhile, Norris was complaining of graining on the troublesome left-front tyre with just eight laps on the board, while Piastri took advantage of running in clean air.

The pitstop window opened on lap 11 as Leclerc disagreed with his team over which plan to implement with the Monegasque running close behind his team-mate.

Both Hamilton and Verstappen stopped on lap 14, with Piastri boxing a lap later and having a slower stop than he would have wanted as he was stationary for 3.8 seconds.

Norris was in a lap later and lost out to Russell, who came in a lap earlier to regain his net second place in the grand prix, but it was just one lap before the McLaren retook the position into Turn 1.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Albon, on his 29th birthday, inherited the lead having not stopped but soon fell into the clutches of the overall frontrunners.

Elsewhere, Hamilton was resisting requests from Ferrari to swap places with Leclerc as they homed in on Russell, but begrudgingly ceded to the team call at the start of lap 21.

McLaren was managing its two lead drivers well, Piastri pushing the pace to allow Norris to follow suit and pull further clear of Russell without entering the dirty air of the race leader.

As those two-stopping started to pit again, the leaders were quick enough to stay out on the hard compound, with Verstappen coming alive and chasing the pack.

Hamilton opted to pit on lap 38 for fresh hard tyres in the aim of catching the top five towards the end of the race although it did not pan out for the winner of Saturday’s sprint race.

The Racing Bulls of Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar also both opted for a second stop and were cutting through the field towards the top 10 until Tsunoda suffered a front wing issue and Hadjar was ran wide by Jack Doohan’s Alpine, who was hit with a 10s penalty as a result.

Out front, Norris reported a brake issue as the pitwall urged caution rather than pushing to close in on Piastri in the closing stages.

There was no such warning for Verstappen, who attacked Leclerc and got through with three laps left.

Piastri took the chequered flag and Norris nursed the second McLaren over the line despite losing over three seconds to the chasing Russell on the last lap.

Fernando Alonso was the sole retirement on lap four as the brakes on his Aston Martin gave up the ghost.

Chinese Grand Prix results

A car that’s quick but difficult to drive: this has become a familiar refrain up and down the grid in the final season of Formula 1’s current ground-effect ruleset.

Lando Norris struggled with graining in the sprint race in China, labouring to eighth place after dropping three positions on the opening lap, and then had a messy qualifying en route to fourth on the grid. By contrast, team-mate Oscar Piastri picked the right moment in the sprint to relieve Max Verstappen’s Red Bull of second place, then qualified his MCL39 on pole position for Sunday’s grand prix.

Norris is already on record as saying that he has had to modify his preferred attacking style to get the best out of the new McLaren, which doesn’t have a robust enough front end to reward a late-braking style. But that was after winning the Australian Grand Prix in a seemingly effortless style; in China, by contrast, he has looked scrappy at times.

After qualifying, Norris spoke about the difficulties in managing the front tyres, of knowing when to push and when not to push. The Shanghai circuit is something of an outlier in F1 since the layout punishes the front wheels more than the rears: the tightening radius of the first two corners, and the fast entry to the back straight, load up the front-left.

Norris was one of several drivers to have difficulties carrying speed through Turns 1 and 2, and he experienced several lock-ups going into the hairpin at the end of the back straight.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“There’s a couple of things – one mainly related to the behaviour of the tyres on this surface, and the other one I think is more related to the behaviour of the car – that make exploiting the car at the limit a bit difficult,” said team principal Andrea Stella.

“This is the same for both drivers, but I think it’s more of a penalty for Lando, given his driving style and the way he wants to generate lap time. On both things, the one related to the tyres and the one related to the car, there’s not much we can do – we just have to adapt.

“We definitely have some improvements to do in the long runs, because with Lando we had quite a lot of graining and he couldn’t make much progress during the sprint, while Oscar coped with the tyres a bit more comfortably. But it’s also true that he had less dirty air.”

Stella would not go into specifics about what the limitations of the car are, but he admitted they were not factors that could be “changed from one day to the other” – it is a fundamental car characteristic rather than something which can be dialled out through set-up. The sensitivity of the Pirelli tyres, of course, is the same for everyone.

If Norris suffered more than Piastri from graining in the sprint race because he had more ‘dirty air’ by dint of being caught in a DRS train with Yuki Tsunoda, Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Lance Stroll ahead, arguably his bigger problem was in extracting one-lap performance in qualifying on new soft-compound tyres. Having set respectable times in the second phase of both the sprint qualifying and main qualifying sessions, he lost time to snaps and lock-ups in the final phases.

“Somehow when he tried to find the last one or two tenths that you normally would find when you put a couple of new sets, then I think he hits this sort of behaviours that I refer to without being specific,” explained Stella.

“And this means that actually for him, it works better when he’s at 99% of his potential. When he tries to extract the 100, actually things trip over a little bit.” 

A car that’s quick but difficult to drive: this has become a familiar refrain up and down the grid in the final season of Formula 1’s current ground-effect ruleset.

Lando Norris struggled with graining in the sprint race in China, labouring to eighth place after dropping three positions on the opening lap, and then had a messy qualifying en route to fourth on the grid. By contrast, team-mate Oscar Piastri picked the right moment in the sprint to relieve Max Verstappen’s Red Bull of second place, then qualified his MCL39 on pole position for Sunday’s grand prix.

Norris is already on record as saying that he has had to modify his preferred attacking style to get the best out of the new McLaren, which doesn’t have a robust enough front end to reward a late-braking style. But that was after winning the Australian Grand Prix in a seemingly effortless style; in China, by contrast, he has looked scrappy at times.

After qualifying, Norris spoke about the difficulties in managing the front tyres, of knowing when to push and when not to push. The Shanghai circuit is something of an outlier in F1 since the layout punishes the front wheels more than the rears: the tightening radius of the first two corners, and the fast entry to the back straight, load up the front-left.

Norris was one of several drivers to have difficulties carrying speed through Turns 1 and 2, and he experienced several lock-ups going into the hairpin at the end of the back straight.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“There’s a couple of things – one mainly related to the behaviour of the tyres on this surface, and the other one I think is more related to the behaviour of the car – that make exploiting the car at the limit a bit difficult,” said team principal Andrea Stella.

“This is the same for both drivers, but I think it’s more of a penalty for Lando, given his driving style and the way he wants to generate lap time. On both things, the one related to the tyres and the one related to the car, there’s not much we can do – we just have to adapt.

“We definitely have some improvements to do in the long runs, because with Lando we had quite a lot of graining and he couldn’t make much progress during the sprint, while Oscar coped with the tyres a bit more comfortably. But it’s also true that he had less dirty air.”

Stella would not go into specifics about what the limitations of the car are, but he admitted they were not factors which could be “changed from one day to the other” – it is a fundamental car characteristic rather than something which can be dialled out through set-up. The sensitivity of the Pirelli tyres, of course, is the same for everyone.

If Norris suffered more than Piastri from graining in the sprint race because he had more ‘dirty air’ by dint of being caught in a DRS train with Yuki Tsunoda, Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Lance Stroll ahead, arguably his bigger problem was in extracting one-lap performance in qualifying on new soft-compound tyres. Having set respectable times in the second phase of both the sprint qualifying and main qualifying sessions, he lost time to snaps and lock-ups in the final phases.

“Somehow when he tried to find the last one or two tenths that you normally would find when you put a couple of new sets, then I think he hits this sort of behaviours that I refer to without being specific,” explained Stella.

“And this means that actually for him, it works better when he’s at 99% of his potential. When he tries to extract the 100, actually things trip over a little bit.”