![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a5cde86509af554942b4eb66932c195b603ae283.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n\u201cNobody\u2019s going to compromise on anything that would put teams into an uncomfortable situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was no immediate comment from Liberty Media-owned Formula One or the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA).<\/p>\n
The World Endurance Championship (WEC) has already postponed what would have been its season-opener in Qatar on March 26-28, with the first race now scheduled for Italy\u2019s Imola circuit on
April 19.<\/p>\n
The Qatar round at the Lusail circuit outside Doha, which also hosts Formula 1 in November, has been rescheduled for October 24 as the penultimate round before the finale in Bahrain on November 7.<\/p>\n
MotoGP is due to race in Qatar on April 12 with that round also likely to be cancelled.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n
George Russell earns first career sprint pole<\/p>\n
After winning the season-opening Australian Grand Prix last week in Melbourne, Mercedes driver George Russell qualified for the pole of Saturday\u2019s Chinese Grand Prix sprint race in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
Russell, atop the F1 driver standings with 25 points, finished the final qualifying lap in 1:31.520, edging teammate Kimi Antonelli, who finished second in sprint qualifying at 1:31.809.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first career sprint pole for Russell, 28, who has six career F1 wins and finished fourth in the driver standings last season.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
George Russell salutes the crowd.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Lando Norris qualified in third place for McLaren after opening his 2025 title defense with a fifth-place finish in the Australian Grand Prix. His McLaren teammate, Oscar Piastri, qualified in fifth, flanked by Ferrari teammates Lewis Hamilton (fourth) and Charles Leclerc (sixth).<\/p>\n
The sprint race kicks off Saturday\u2019s day of competition before qualifying for the Grand Prix is held later in the day ahead of Sunday\u2019s Grand Prix race.<\/p>\n
Points for this season\u2019s six sprint races are awarded to the top eight finishers, from eight points down to one.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNobody\u2019s going to compromise on anything that would put teams into an uncomfortable situation.\u201d There was no immediate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-538964","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\/538964","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=538964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}