If you were to ask the teams how they’d prefer to start a season featuring all-new regulations, you can be sure they’d have two key requests.
One: don’t start the year with back-to-back races that will prevent them from digesting the lessons from the opening round.
Two: don’t make the second round a sprint weekend featuring just one practice session.
Ironically — deliberately? — that’s exactly what they’ve got.
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Melbourne has rolled directly into Shanghai for this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, the first sprint round of the year.
That means just one hour of practice before sprint qualifying on Friday. It’s great for the fans, who’ll undoubtedly be treated to chaos dialled up to 11, but for teams with shallow pools of spare parts and for engineers not yet confident they’ve got their heads wrapped around the new rules, it must be a nightmare.
Mercedes starts the weekend as the overwhelming favourite after George Russell led Andrea Kimi Antonelli home for a one-two finish in Melbourne, but Shanghai is a completely different type of circuit that makes totally different demands of the cars and engines. Whether the team’s advantage translates — and whether the form guide holds — is up for debate.
Luckily for us — and unluckily for them — we won’t have to wait long to find out.
PIT TALK PODCAST: The 2026 Formula 1 season is underway, with George Russell leading a Mercedes one-two to victory in Melbourne. But not every driver was thrilled with their first experience of the new rules.
OSCAR PIASTRI’S SEASON STARTS HERE
Oscar Piastri’s season starts in China this weekend. As far as he’s concerned, there was no Australian Grand Prix.
Sure, he’ll take the good memories of his hero welcome at Albert Park, but consider all scenes after Saturday qualifying missing from the tape.
With no points on the board, Shanghai is his round 1.
“It was relatively quick to put [Melbourne] behind me,” he said. “Obviously I’m trying to forget it. Having a race this weekend is always nice.”
The process might be made easier by Piastri having been here before.
Though the context was different last season, his score was almost identical, having taken home just two points after spinning out in the wet. It put him 23 points behind then leader Lando Norris.
But he bossed the Chinese Grand Prix weekend, with only a wet and wild sprint qualifying leaving him second in the short race, ruling him out of the full sweep. There was no doubting his supremacy come grand prix qualifying, with pole position converted easily to victory at a track at which he’d previously been relatively weak.
He took the championship lead three rounds after that and controlled the title table for 15 weekends.
He’s done it before. Can he do it again?
Don’t doubt the man, but do doubt the car.
“I’m not expecting it to be dramatically different to Melbourne,” he said. Piastri qualified more than 0.8 seconds off pole last week, and Norris finished more than 50 seconds behind winner Russell.
“We’ve identified quite a lot of areas where we can improve and where we could have done better, but I think most people will have those opportunities.
“I think it’ll be a similar picture, but hopefully we can get a bit closer.”
An important takeaway from McLaren’s first race was that it felt it lack the requisite understanding of how to operate its Mercedes power unit to get the most from it. The Mercedes works team was reliably faster down all the straights, where it clearly appeared to have a battery advantage.
“I think we kind of learned after qualifying especially and in the days since we didn’t necessarily optimise what we had in Melbourne,” Piastri said. “Though practice the picture looked a lot more optimistic — overly optimistic at points — it was a surprise for us to lose so much competitiveness from Friday to Saturday.
“I think we’ve got a pretty good understanding of why now. I think we can get closer. We still think we’re going to have a deficit to certainly Mercedes, but I think we identified a lot of things we can do better.”
Big points will help Piastri move on from Melbourne. The season is long, and his starts now.
Is McLaren the right place for Piastri? | 02:24
NEW RULES SET FOR COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TEST
Fallout from the rule changes has dominated debate on this side of the Australian Grand Prix, with most drivers — though certainly not all of them — expressing grave reservations about the direction Formula 1 has taken with the new regulations.
The basis of their objections is the near 50-50 split between the petrol engine and the hybrid motor in delivering the power unit’s total 750 kilowatts.
Of that total power output, 350 kilowatts comes via the electric motor. To discharge that much energy, the car needs to regenerate a lot of energy, but at Albert Park there were not enough big braking zones to do so without some extreme driving techniques, like lifting off the throttle way before the corners and travelling slowly through some of the track’s signature high-speed bends.
It made qualifying a particularly lamentable experience for drivers and anyone who watched their on-board video.
The race was more polarising. There was action aplenty, especially in the opening laps before the virtual safety car, but some drivers felt the overtaking was artificial because it was based on drivers executing battery strategy rather than late braking or superior racecraft in the traditional sense of the word.
The fundamental element of these complaints — the engine formula — isn’t going to change from week to week, but the power balance is so sensitive that we could see material changes to the form guide from track to track.
Shanghai this weekend could be a great example of how much of an effect circuit layout could have on performance.
Albert Park is ranked as one of the four most difficult tracks to regenerate electrical energy, necessitating all those bizarre driving techniques the drivers hated.
Shanghai, however, is among the best — so much so that the FIA has loosened the reins on the battery, allowing teams to charge it to a higher threshold confident that it won’t require any of those management tactics to top it up.
It could mean the sort of spectacle we’re in for this weekend will look much more familiar — much more like a normal grand prix, particularly when you consider every team will have learned a lot last week and adapted accordingly.
Whatever the case, it explains why the sport has been reticent to make changes too early. If the power units pass the test this weekend, many — though not all — of last week’s criticisms will be immediately answered, and suddenly we’re more likely to be talking about minor tweaks rather than wholesale changes.
‘Tweaks’ to be made on new regulations? | 02:13
FERRARI SET TO TRIAL ROTATING REAR WING
Every so often, someone in the Formula 1 universe gets to coin a phrase that becomes part of the common lexicon.
As just one example, someone had to be the first to use the phrase ‘super clipping’ — when the combustion engine redirects power to the electric motor to charge the battery. It’s not in the regulations, so clearly people in the paddock thought it was catchy enough to use daily — if you can believe it.
Another gifted wordsmith has their chance this weekend, when Ferrari reintroduces its renowned rotating rear wing to the Chinese Grand Prix.
You might remember it from testing. Rather than popping upon like a letterbox, the Ferrari rear wing rotates backwards by around 220 degrees.
Some have attempted to call it the ‘flip-flop’ wing. Others have gone for the simpler ‘upside-down’ wing.
Someone particularly ambitious has lunged for the ‘Macarena’ wing, presumably in homage to Latin pop group Los del Río’s legendary low-drag characteristics.
Whatever it’s called, Ferrari is set to use it during practice before deciding whether to keep it for the rest of the weekend.
Though unlikely to be decisive in terms of performance, if the race ends up as close as the opening stages of last week’s Australian Grand Prix was, every percentage gain could make the difference.
The timing is good too. Lewis Hamilton doesn’t have too many happy memories of the 2025 season, but sprint pole and victory in Shanghai is the best among them.
Though Hamilton downplayed the prospects of victory, he confirmed that Ferrari felt it was in range despite last weekend’s defeat to Mercedes.
“We were 0.8 seconds behind in qualifying at the last race. We haven’t added 0.8 seconds of performance to the car in four days,” he said. “I think it’ll still be very tough to beat Mercedes this weekend.
“We’ll just focus on doing the best job we can and extracting the most from the car.
“We expect Mercedes to be still ahead and very quick, but we learned a huge mount in the last race, as everyone probably has, but I definitely think we can extract more from the package we have.
“It’s not 0.8 seconds, but we could hopefully extract a bit more from the car this weekend. I’m really excited for the weekend.”
One of those lessons was that Ferrari’s chassis could be the strongest in the field. If engine differences play less of a role this weekend, that strength could play a greater role.
“The chassis is obviously still a huge part of it. In that respect I think we’re very strong,” he said. “We’re very quick through the corners — we’re as quick if not in some places quicker than others.
“Downforce-wise, through-corner efficiency, balance — our car is in a really good place.”
Mercedes will be tough to beat, but Ferrari has its tail up.
Was OP’s crash a car or driver error? | 02:47
ASTON MARTIN STILL IN DIRE STRAITS AFTER MELBOURNE NIGHTMARE
Aston Martin, Formula 1’s crisis team in a delicate phase.
Its Honda power unit was so unreliable during testing that it had to end its pre-season early to conserve parts.
Then, in Australia, both cars immediately burned through one hybrid battery apiece, leaving Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso with one each.
There would be no additional parts flown in from Japan because none existed.
Mileage was therefore extremely limited in Melbourne, though the two drivers between them accumulated 64 laps during the race, albeit with a lengthy spell back in the garage to verify reliability.
The same situation appears to be prevailing in Shanghai. Reinforcements from Sakura aren’t yet ready. The Chinese Grand Prix, therefore, is effectively an extension of the opening round, with Aston Martin having to tread gently just to ensure its cars can make it to Sunday with enough parts to compete.
Chief trackside officer Mike Krack attempted to deflect questions about the team’s battery stockpile.
“What is the point if we go on about the number of batteries?” he said, per The Race.
“I don’t think that this is something that we should try to insist on, insist on, and insist on.
“We have a situation that was disclosed in Melbourne, and I don’t think that we should continue on this battery number discussion.”
The Race further reported, though, that Honda was attempting to repair the batteries damaged in Melbourne to replenish its spare parts pool.
But even if the parts situation improves, Aston Martin is still in dire straits. The engine is underpowered and the car itself remains unproven, and solutions won’t come fast.
“We’re still lacking a lot of pace,” Stroll said. “We know the areas we need to improve in. It’s not going to happen overnight.
“Probably nothing’s really going to change this weekend because it’s such a short time between Australia and coming here, but we’ll just keep trying to bring as much as we can every weekend.”
But seeing some signs of life, of optimism, is crucial. After China the team will regroup ahead of Honda’s home race in Japan, where a better showing is essential.
No-one is expecting miracles, but improvement is critical.
‘Oscar are you OK?’ Aussie in pure shock | 00:28
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
The Chinese Grand Prix is live and ad-break free during racing on Fox Sports and Kayo.
Friday, 13 March
Practice: 2:30pm (all times AEDT)
Sprint qualifying: 6:30pm
Saturday, 14 March
Sprint race: 2:00pm
Qualifying: 6:00pm
Sunday, 15 March
Pre-race coverage: 4:30pm
Chinese Grand Prix: 6:00pm