{"id":541080,"date":"2026-03-16T23:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T23:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/541080\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T23:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T23:03:15","slug":"f1-in-china-ive-never-seen-so-many-people-in-those-grandstands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/541080\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 in China: I’ve never seen so many people in those grandstands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1 raced in China this past weekend, just a week after the sport kicked off its 2026 season<\/a> in Australia. Most of the teams had a better handle on the sport\u2019s complicated new cars in China, and the more traditional racetrack environment played better to the strengths of their hybrid power units, with enough hard braking zones to recharge batteries without having to sap engine power instead.<\/p>\n

We have a better idea of the grid\u2019s current pecking order, at least for now. There\u2019s some daylight between each of the top three teams and a close battle for midfield honors. Meanwhile, the specter of unreliability is well and truly with us; four cars failed to even take the start, and seven (of 22) were not classified as finishing. For fans of those teams and drivers, it wasn\u2019t a great weekend, especially if you woke up at 3 am to watch the race. But F1 generally put on an entertaining show in Shanghai.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of fans<\/p>\n

The sport has been visiting the city since 2004. The setting is a classic turn-of-the-century facility designed and built by Herman Tilke. It\u2019s a captivating-looking place, with a pond-filled paddock, a vast grandstand that spans the start-finish straight, and a layout that resembles the character for \u201cshang,\u201d which creates some rather tricky corners, like the spiraling decreasing radii of turns 1 and 2.<\/p>\n


\n \"A
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

The grandstands at the start-finish straight are like little else in F1.<\/p>\n

\n Credit:
\n Jakub Porzycki\/NurPhoto via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

\n The grandstands at the start-finish straight are like little else in F1.<\/p>\n

Credit:<\/p>\n

Jakub Porzycki\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Over the years, the city of Shanghai\u2014once visible on the distant horizon\u2014has grown closer and closer to the race track. And for most of those years, I\u2019ve noticed that the grandstands just before the back straight were never in use until this year.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 This is the biggest crowd I\u2019ve ever seen here in Shanghai,\u201d said Lewis Hamilton in the post-race press conference. \u201cWhen we were doing the drivers\u2019 parade, we went up to Turn 11, 12, and that grandstand has been closed for, I think, almost 20 years, and it was amazing. I was so shocked to see it completely full.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1 raced in China this past weekend, just a week after the sport kicked off its 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-541080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}