SHANGHAI, China: Due to a jumbled grid following a rainy sprint shootout session in China, Lando Norris will start the opening sprint race of the 2024 season from the lead, Race management restored Norris’ best time shortly after it had been initially removed for going above the track restrictions at the last corner of his previous lap, briefly moving Lewis Hamilton to the lead.
On the rearranged grid, Hamilton will start ahead of Fernando Alonso of Aston Martin in second position for Mercedes, Leader of the championship Max Verstappen was only able to record the fourth quickest time in the rainy final session after two of his three efforts were removed due to violations of track limits.
Points are awarded from first to eighth in the 19-lap sprint race, which is scheduled for Saturday morning in China. It comes before the full-length grand prix qualifying round, The outcome represents the first time a McLaren has started from the front of an F1 grid this year and the first since Norris earned pole in the sprint shootout in Brazil last year, however it is still more significant than full grand prix qualifying.
“That was extremely wild. I am overjoyed; I want to thank the entire crew. It was difficult,” Norris remarked later. “I had a strong last lap. Though it’s not for a genuine qualification, I’m delighted that it’s still excellent enough.
“There were situations where you had to push yourself, take a lot of risks, raise your tire temperature, and so on. Although I started to aquaplane quite a bit and made a few mistakes, I was a little anxious, it was still enjoyable, “It makes your heart race, and winning is precisely what we desired. Thus, it was a pleasant surprise and a wise move for tomorrow,” he continued.
Hamilton, meanwhile, remarked: “As you could see, not much grip was present in the extremely difficult and challenging circumstances. But yes, I’m quite thrilled. I started feeling excited as soon as I noticed it was going to rain.
We can’t move quickly enough in dry conditions, of course, so when the rain arrived, I believed I would have a somewhat better chance, and that’s when everything kind of came to life.”
By the end of SQ2, rain was falling, and by the beginning of SQ3, it had forced all drivers to convert from slick to intermediate tires.
On the first lap out of the pits, Charles Leclerc, who qualified seventh, drove off the track at Turn 3, and several other drivers had their lap timings wiped for going above the track limit.
On his first effort, Verstappen ran off the road in Turn Six, and on his second attempt, he did it at the last corner. Before the checkered flag, he managed to finish a single clean lap, but it was not quick enough to guarantee a spot in the front row this year.
Verstappen remarked, “It was extremely slippery.” “It was incredibly hard to keep the car on course, I had a lot of trouble getting the temperature in the tires, and the car never really turned on for me.
“It resembled driving on ice.” Since it’s not really working for me in the rain, even though I think we look really well in the dry, I believe our qualifying position was well deserved.
“So of course I’m quite happy with that.”
Although it is common to interpret Norris’s fastest lap as gaining an advantage for the subsequent lap, he ran off the track at the last corner before of it. However, the FIA promptly reinstated his best effort in accordance with the race director’s notes for the weekend, Carlos Sainz will start fifth for Ferrari, followed by Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, Leclerc’s Ferrari in seventh, and Oscar Piastri, Norris’s McLaren teammate, in eighth.
In front of a delighted home crowd, Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu produced the tenth quickest time, while Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas qualified ninth on the grid.
A grass fire that started at the side of the track next to Turn Five caused a delay in the start of the second qualifying session. A similar occurrence occurred at Turn Seven during the morning practice session. According to the video evidence, sparks from the titanium skid plates on the cars’ undercarriages caused the flames.
Although all drivers managed to finish a flying lap on slick tires prior to the advent of heavier rain towards the conclusion of the session, the brief delay to Q2 coincided with the arrival of light rain. After the rain at the end of the second qualifying round, Zhou secured a place in the third round by eclipsing George Russell by 0.038s, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg, drivers for Haas, will start 12th and 13th, respectively, ahead of Daniel Ricciardo’s RB in 14th and Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin in 15th.
Despite qualifying 0.088 seconds quicker than his Alpine colleague Esteban Ocon, whose car was equipped with the team’s most recent modifications, Pierre Gasly missed the cut for the second round by less than a tenth of a second. The struggling French team should see an improvement in performance with the new parts and lighter chassis on Ocon’s car, but they could not be produced in time to be installed on both cars this weekend.
For Williams, Alex Albon was the 18th fastest, ahead of Yuki Tsunoda of RB in 19th and Logan Sargeant, the second Williams driver, in last.