After Verstappen's smooth success in the morning sprint race, the question in the "actual" qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix was whether the Dutchman would repeat it all?
The sprint race ended with the success of Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez, but qualifying was not so bright, especially not for Hamilton. The Briton was eliminated in Q1 quite smoothly, followed by Guanyu Zhou, Kevin Magnussen, Yuki Tsunoda and Logan Sargeant. However, there were no surprises at the top, as Max Verstappen took the lead on a continuously improving track, ahead of Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris to win the first stage.
Q2 started with a big mistake right away, Carlos Sainz crashed the Ferrari, causing a red flag phase. The Spaniard was lucky, he barely scraped his car, which was easily fixed by the maintenance team, so he could continue his performance. And how! He managed to advance in third place behind the two Red Bulls, who were not surprising and easily finished in the lead. What was even more shocking was the fact that Nico Hülkenberg and Valtteri Bottas made it to Q3, but we didn't get our heads around the eliminations, we could note the two Alpines, Daniel Ricciardo, Alexander Albon, and Lance Stroll.
Q3 was here, where after the first shots we could see the Verstappen – Alonso – Perez order. In the end, not much changed, as after squeezing out the last few thousandths, the only change in the line-up was that Sergio Perez came in behind Max Verstappen, overtaking the sensationally driving Fernando Alonso. Interestingly, the Scuderia Ferrari cars, which had excelled in the previous weekends, were only good for 6-7 positions, both McLarens managed to overtake Carlos Sainz. Continued tomorrow morning, with the Chinese Grand Prix!
