{"id":538634,"date":"2026-03-13T22:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538634\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T22:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:07:10","slug":"f1-2026-chinese-gp-sprint-race-grid-after-antonelli-avoids-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538634\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 2026 Chinese GP sprint race grid after Antonelli avoids penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>George Russell and Mercedes Formula 1 team-mate Kimi Antonelli will line-up on the front row of the grid for the first sprint race of 2026, after Antonelli escaped sanction in a post-session investigation for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-race.com\/formula-1\/mclaren-explanation-saves-antonelli-from-china-grid-drop\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">alleged impeding<\/a> of McLaren&#8217;s Lando Norris.<\/p>\n<p>Mercedes will head into Saturday&#8217;s sprint as favourite for victory considering the large pace gap between pole-sitter Russell and the third-placed car of Norris, but McLaren&#8217;s improved form in Shanghai suggests its drivers could at least challenge the Ferrari&#8217;s of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton for a place on the podium.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese GP sprint starting grid<\/p>\n<p>1 George Russell (Mercedes)<br \/>2 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes)<br \/>3 Lando Norris (McLaren)<br \/>4 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari)<br \/>5 Oscar Piastri (McLaren)<br \/>6 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)<br \/>7 Pierre Gasly (Alpine)<br \/>8 Max Verstappen (Red Bull)<br \/>9 Ollie Bearman (Haas)<br \/>10 Isack Hadjar (Red Bull)<br \/>11 Nico Hulkenberg (Audi)<br \/>12 Esteban Ocon (Haas)<br \/>13 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls)<br \/>14 Gabriel Bortoleto (Audi)<br \/>15 Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls)<br \/>16 Franco Colapinto (Alpine)<br \/>17 Carlos Sainz (Williams)<br \/>18 Alex Albon (Williams)<br \/>19 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)<br \/>20 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin)<br \/>21 Valtteri Bottas (Cadillac)<br \/>22 Sergio Perez (Cadillac)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell and Mercedes Formula 1 team-mate Kimi Antonelli will line-up on the front row of the grid&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-538634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}