The Chinese GP summary! Ft. Sprint Shenanigans, RB and Alpine suffering, Zhou Guanyu (πππ), Nico being Lewis's number one fan and Max Verstappen doing his thing
Took my sweet time with this one but its done. As always, click to see it better and enjoy! :]
Accidental Renaissance
Starting lap and we have:
A yellow flag (Sainz puncture after contact w Piastri - NOT a dnf)
A red flag (Perez's tyres all gone after an incident with both haas)
Ocon DNF after lunging at his teammate and causing damage to both cars
Update: ALL DRIVERS OK
Missed the qualifying session for Jeddah? Can't watch it? Here's a summary of what happened:
Q1 + Pre-Quali
Zhou Guanyu will start P20 after a crash in FP3. Although the car was fixed with a minute to go in Q3, he didn't manage to pass the checkered flag and set a lap-time.
Carlos Sainz gets appendicitis, manages to get P7 in FP2 but takes a break for FP3 and Quali (and the GP too).
Ollie Bearman, who takes pole in F2 after qualifying P19 in Bahrain, gets called in as his replacement for the weekend and manages to get into Q2!
Verstappen sets fastest sector 1 in Q1, Stroll sets fastest middle sector and Bearman sets fastest sector 3.
Eliminated: Bottas, Ocon, Gasly, Sargent, Zhou (a repeat of Bahrain, basically)
Q2
Alex Albon, the only driver in Q2 without a teammate, on used softs
Hulkenberg loses power and stops by the track, a yellow flag is called
Alonso Fastest sector 1 and 2, Verstappen fastest sector 3 (both on new, soft tires)
Tsunoda outqualifies Ricciardo by half a second
Bearman, Albon, Magnussen, Ricciardo and Hulkenberg are eliminated, setting P11-15 for the GP in that order
Q3
Tsunoda and Leclerc without teammates in Q3
Verstappen fastest sector 1, 2 AND 3
Leclerc says the car "feels weird on new tires...difficult to drive"
Max Verstappen takes pole position again, his first ever pole at Jeddah but not likely to be his last. It's also his 34th pole ever.
Leclerc three-tenths behind him gets to start the race in P2. They share pole-P2 in qualifying for the fifth race in a row.
Perez comes in third fastest, Alonso fourth
5-10th fastest is set by Piastri, Norriss, Russell, Hamilton, Tsunoda and Stroll (in that order)
Former Haas Performance Engineer Laura Muller is all set to become Esteban Ocon's race engineer from the 2025 F1 season onwards. Muller graduated from the Technical University of Munich in 2015 where she majored in Automotive Engineering. She completed her Masters from the same university two years later in the same discipline.
Laura has been with the Haas organization for years, at least since the 2022 regulations. However, sheβs known as a WEC veteran for her work across multiple disciplines and cars: Muller joined the Endurance Racing series in 2019. She moved to DKR Engineering and worked in both LMP2, LMP3, DTM, and GT3 segments until 2021. In 2022, she joined Manthey Racing GmbH and GT2 European Series team under Porsche SE.
Laura MΓΌller is 1 of the most experienced operatives in Motorsport. While completing her master's in Automative Engineering, Muller joined Phoenix Racing as an intern in 2014. She then worked as an Engineer Formula Renault 2.0 at Josef Kaufmann Racing in 2016. After spending two years in the role, Muller moved to Hero Motocorp in Brazil to work as a data engineer.
In 2024, Laura Muller marked 10 years in her motorsport career, starting as an intern with Audi's LMS team and now in F1, she will be a a Esteban Oconβs engineer at the pinnacle of motorsport, the first woman to ever take the helm of race engineering through radio since Formula 1 became a sport.
"Keep flying the flag you good thing. To many more wins :)"
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.β- Oscar Wilde.
Another chaotic race, another race summary! Usually I'd make these digitally but I got a new set of pens and really wanted to use them,, anyways I love this circuit and GP a lot so I'm glad it was at a normal time for us Aussies :'))