Dominant Verstappen takes pole for Chinese GP after sprint win

SHANGHAI:

Triple world champion Max Verstappen took pole position on Saturday for the Chinese Grand Prix, 0.322 seconds ahead of Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez with Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso third.

Verstappen set a fastest lap of 1min 33.660sec to cap a perfect day after earlier cruising to a sprint race win at the Shanghai International Circuit.

“The car worked even better in qualifying,” said Verstappen, who recorded the Red Bull team’s 100th pole position and his first in China.

“That last lap felt pretty decent and really happy to be driving here in the dry, it was a lot of fun.”

Lando Norris will start from the second row in his McLaren alongside Alonso for Sunday’s race, the first grand prix to be held in China since 2019 due to restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Oscar Piastri was fifth fastest in the second McLaren ahead of Ferrari pair Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, with George Russell’s Mercedes eighth.

Perez only made it into Q2 on his final flying lap and was relieved to be on the front row.

“Very intense, I almost got knocked out in Q1,” said the Mexican.

“Unfortunately in the end it wasn’t enough to take Max, but it was a terrific team result.”

It was a dominant day for the Dutchman who overcame electrical gremlins to claim fourth on the grid in an emphatic victory in the morning sprint, 13 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton.

The win extended Perez’s championship lead over teammate Perez to 25 points.

But Hamilton’s joy at coming second in the sprint turned to despair at the first qualifying stop when the Englishman locked up near the end of his final flying lap, relegating him to only 18th fastest.

It was the first time since the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix that the seven-time world champion was eliminated in Q1.

“I made huge changes in qualifying,” said Hamilton, who won the last Chinese Grand Prix five years ago.

“It wasn’t too bad in some places. I couldn’t stop at turn 14. It is what it is.

“This morning George (Russell) and I had very similar cars, but this afternoon we were still trying to experiment with the car, so I went one way and he went the other.”

Sainz is the only driver to win a grand prix apart from Verstappen in 2024 and survived a huge scare in Q2.

The Spaniard ran wide in the final corner and spun on the start-finish straight to lose his nose cone in the barriers.

It raised the red flags, but Sainz was able to return to the pits for repairs before emerging when the session restarted to set the third fastest time and reach the top 10 shootout.

In the first weekend of the Chinese grand prix since 2019, huge crowds saw Zhou Guanyu, China’s first Formula 1 driver from Shanghai, make his home debut in his third season in the top flight.

Tickets for Sunday’s main event sold out in minutes and fans had plenty to cheer about on Friday when Zhou pushed his Sauber into the top 10 in a sprint qualifying session.

However, he narrowly missed out on scoring a point after finishing ninth in Saturday morning’s sprint.

And in the afternoon, as in the previous four grands prix this season, Zhou failed to get out of Q1, finishing 16th by just four hundredths of a second.