As Liam Lawson noted before the season began, starting the season on two tracks he hasn’t previously raced at was always going to make things difficult for him.
Sure enough after the first two qualifying sessions of 2025 – one grand prix, one sprint race – he has been further away from his team mate than anyone else on the grid both times.
However Carlos Sainz Jnr, another driver in a new team, was almost as far behind Alexander Albon at Williams. Lawson wasn’t the only driver who had a hard time keeping his tyre temperatures under control.
Teams’ improvement from practice to qualifying
Red Bull again revealed little of their true pace during practice. Max Verstappen peeled off into the pits before completing his flying lap on the soft tyres. Lawson was still getting to grips with his car, so when they finished the session in the bottom five their times looked wholly unrepresentative.
For the second weekend in a row, Nico Hulkenberg showed some promising pace in practice, but couldn’t replicate it when it mattered. Indeed, Sauber was the only team at which neither of its drivers managed to lap quicker in qualifying than they had in practice.
Like Sauber, Alpine saw both their drivers drop out before SQ3. This exaggerates their lack of improvement between the two sessions as they only ran the medium tyre in sprint race qualifying.
That makes McLaren’s low lap time gain between the two sessions all the more striking as both their drivers reached SQ3 and ran on softs. Their tactics of attempting to do two laps on the soft tyres clearly did not pay off. Lewis Hamilton and Verstappen did a single lap on softs, and claimed the front row of the grid.
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Gaps between team mates
The fact Verstappen had much more pace in his car than he showed in practice became clear when he knocked nearly a second off his fastest lap with his first run on the medium rubber in qualifying.
Lawson’s first lap in SQ1 was not miles off Verstappen’s pace: he lapped exactly four-tenths of a second slower. But he couldn’t get his tyre temperatures back down enough before his final run, and suffered a snap of oversteer which ruined his lap. He only needed to find two tenths of a second to progress, but instead he went out last.
As in Melbourne, Gabriel Bortoleto out-qualified his more experienced team mate Hulkenberg. He wasn’t the only rookie to do so, as Jack Doohan beat Pierre Gasly, though both Alpine drivers said they encountered traffic.
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Teams’ progress vs 2024
On the resurfaced Shanghai International Circuit, every team has already lapped at least two seconds faster than they did last year. After failing to deliver on their practice pace in Melbourne, Ferrari posted the second-largest improvement so far.
Lando Norris said on Thursday he expected to see a stronger showing from them this weekend.
“The gap in qualifying [in Australia] surprised us a bit. Our goal was to be on pole, and we expected to be quickest, but we also expected Ferrari to be a good chunk quicker than they were.
“In the end, they were seven, eight tenths off? They’re not that far off by any means. If you looked at FP1, FP2, FP3, their pace never looked that far behind.”
Having missed a clear chance for another front-row lock-out on Saturday, McLaren will be hoping the strong performance their car showed later in the stint in Melbourne will come into play in a sprint race which is likely to see high tyre degradation and lots of management.
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2025 Chinese Grand Prix
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