Lewis Hamilton secured his first win for Ferrari by masterfully controlling the Shanghai sprint race from pole position. The British driver got off to a perfect start and maintained his lead throughout the race, ultimately finishing with a comfortable 6.8-second margin to claim both his and Ferrari’s first-ever sprint victory.

“I woke up feeling great today,” Hamilton said after the race. “From lap 1 here this weekend I was really feeling on it. We’ve done a great job. The engineers have done a great job. The mechanics have done a great job to really finetune the car. It felt great today.”

The race began with Hamilton making a flawless getaway that prevented any challenges into the first turn. Max Verstappen followed in second, while Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc battled for third position. Piastri managed to hold his place with better traction coming out of Turn 3.

Further back, Lando Norris attempted to move up from his sixth-place starting position by challenging George Russell for fifth, but his effort ended poorly when he ran off track, allowing Russell to advance and subsequently pass Leclerc for fourth place.

Tire management proved crucial in the race as Pirelli had raised minimum tire pressures overnight to cope with the grippy new track surface, which reached nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the sprint. Piastri demonstrated exceptional skill in managing his tires and began pressuring Verstappen by lap 10.

After an unsuccessful attempt at the beginning of lap 14, Piastri successfully overtook Verstappen on lap 15 of 19, moving into second place. By then, Hamilton had built a 2.7-second lead, which he extended by another second in the following lap.

Verstappen, who admitted his front tires were “dead,” described his race as a battle for survival and expressed relief at securing third place. “In general I think we just lack a bit of overall pace. You push a bit harder, you kill your tires a bit more, so that makes it difficult,” the Dutchman explained.

George Russell held off Leclerc to finish fourth, while Yuki Tsunoda impressed by jumping two places on the first lap and maintaining sixth position ahead of Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Norris recovered to claim the final point in eighth place after a late pass on Lance Stroll.

The result bodes well for McLaren heading into Sunday’s grand prix, with Piastri noting: “As much as the result is a nice thing, the way I got the result was an encouraging thing. We didn’t quite have enough pace for Lewis out front, but I think we’ve got some good ideas for qualifying this afternoon and tomorrow, and we’ll see if we can go one spot better.”

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