{"id":54223,"date":"2025-08-09T04:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T04:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/54223\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T04:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T04:19:11","slug":"chinese-f1-gp-hamilton-takes-stunning-first-sprint-pole-in-a-ferrari-motorsports-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/54223\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese F1 GP: Hamilton takes stunning first sprint pole in a Ferrari | Motorsports News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article__subhead\">Late charge at China Grand Prix sees Lewis Hamilton secure his first Formula One sprint pole since joining Ferrari.<\/p>\n<p>Lewis Hamilton has astonished the crowd and himself by securing his maiden sprint pole position for Ferrari in the final moments of qualifying at the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton arrived in China after a disappointing season-opening race <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/sports\/2025\/3\/16\/lando-norris-beats-max-verstappen-to-win-f1-australian-gp-in-melbourne\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">last weekend in Australia<\/a>, where he finished 10th. He only managed fourth fastest in opening practice on Friday for a modest improvement in Shanghai.<\/p>\n<p>He topped the first section of sprint qualifying, before the dominant McLaren of Lando Norris took over in SQ2. An aborted lap from the McLaren driver, following a mistake on his final lap, handed Hamilton his chance \u2013 and the seven-time world champion took it in stunning style with less than a minute remaining.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-arc-image-770 wp-image-3594037\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/AFP__20250321__37DE8FC__v1__HighRes__AutoPrixF1ChnPractice-1742547922.jpg\" alt=\"Ferrari's British driver Lewis Hamilton drives during the first practice session of the Formula One Chinese Grand Prix at the Shanghai International Circuit in Shanghai on March 21, 2025. (Photo by Jade Gao \/ AFP)\" fetchpriority=\"low\"\/>Ferrari\u2019s British driver Lewis Hamilton drives during the first practice session of the Formula One Chinese Grand Prix at the Shanghai International Circuit [Jade Gao\/AFP]<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton\u2019s time was just 18 one-thousandths of a second ahead of Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen, with Norris\u2019s McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri third. Ferrari\u2019s Charles Leclerc was fourth, with Mercedes\u2019 George Russell closing out the top five.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t expect that result, but so, so happy and so proud,\u201d Hamilton said. \u201cI think obviously the last race was a disaster. Clearly we knew that there was more performance in the car but we just weren\u2019t able to extract it,\u201d in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo to come here to a track that I love \u2014 and the car really came alive. The team did a fantastic job to get the car ready and yeah, I\u2019m a bit in shock.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late charge at China Grand Prix sees Lewis Hamilton secure his first Formula One sprint pole since joining&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1296,891,591,1687,372,6537,18733,50,217,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-54223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-asia-pacific","tag-china","tag-europe","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-motorsports","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}