With McLaren looking strong but Red Bull hot on their heels in Melbourne, and a second and third chance for the non-finishers last time out, what will the Chinese Grand Prix hold?

Where are we racing?

The Shanghai International Circuit will play host to round two of the 2025 season, as F1 returns to China for only the second time since 2019. The Chinese Grand Prix fell off the calendar as a result of the pandemic but made its return last year after a five year break. 

Prior to this, the Chinese race was a staple of the calendar for almost twenty years, with F1 racing in Shanghai every year since 2004-19. Originally the race was held in the latter stages of the season, first in September then October, but in 2009 it moved to be held in April and has been up until this year. With a race date of March 23rd, this will be the earliest the Chinese Grand Prix has ever been held.

The Shanghai International Circuit itself was designed by Hermann Tilke, a renowned circuit designer behind many favourites on the F1 calendar including Yas Marina Circuit, Bahrain International Circuit, Circuit of the Americas and most recently the Las Vegas Strip Circuit.

Tilke modelled the circuit loosely on the Chinese “shang” character, meaning ‘upwards’ or ‘up above’ and it’s a technical combination of high and low speed. Turns 1-2 are long right handers, unique in their slow speed, ever tightening nature that places high stress on the front left tyre as the drivers turn over 270 degrees. The faster esses of turns 7-8 are taken almost flat out and are a driver favourite, but the very long straights combined with hairpins make for some good overtaking opportunities.

Michael Schumacher holds the race lap record in Shanghai but only won the grand prix once in his career. The award for the most wins is held by his co-drivers’ championship record holder – Lewis Hamilton – who has stood on the top step six times. 

A lap of 1:31.095s is the all time record for Formula 1 in China, set by Sebastian Vettel in Q3 of the 2018 running. Though Max Verstappen claimed pole on the circuit’s return last year, he did so with a lap over two and a half seconds off Vettel’s record.

Tyres on offer

The layout of the Shanghai circuit presents a challenge for the tyres due to it being ‘front limited’, meaning the front tyres are exposed to high levels of stress over a lap. Pirelli have to consider this, but also the unknowns presented by a new track surface in making their compound selection. The entire track and pitlane were resurfaced last summer and have only been used a handful of times since, and not at all since late-2024. As such, Pirelli are anticipating a high level of track evolution as F1 and its support races run with grip likely to be low, at least initially.

Despite this, the compounds on offer have remained consistent with last year which will help the teams overcome the restrictions the Sprint weekend format places on their opportunity for data gathering. Even so, they have just one year of running to go on making the single practice hour all the more crucial.

The C2 will be the hard tyre, C3 as the medium, and C4 as the soft, and while the compound names are the same as last year, the compound constructions have changed. The C2 has moved to be softer and closer to the C3 than it had been in the past, while the C4 has been subject to modifications to reduce its surface graining and make it a more feasible race tyre.

Teams ran the C3 and C4 in Melbourne last week but also ran the C2 extensively in Bahrain in temperatures that are likely to be similar to what’s expected in China, though the track itself is of course different.

A Sprint format weekend not only impacts practice time on track but also the allocation of dry tyres to the teams from Pirelli. It drops from the usual 13 sets to 12, of two hard, four medium and six soft. 

The forecast

The grand prix being held earlier in the year is not looking to have much impact on the weather, with the forecast set to be similar to what was seen in April last year.

Unlike Melbourne, the risk of rain is low over the weekend, but not zero for Sunday’s grand prix with a 43% likelihood of precipitation in the afternoon but rain not likely to hit until after the chequered flag. Temperatures will be between 26°C and 28°C, exceeding the typical March temperatures for Shanghai of around 18°C.

As things stand, this will make for a much more stable, predictable weekend than Melbourne in terms of strategy and tyre usage with the mix-ups coming from the Sprint format instead. 

Strategy corner

In 2024, the majority of drivers ran a two stop strategy but the timing of their stops was influenced by the VSC and safety car periods. These also allowed a one-stop to be run, though Pirelli commented that this strategy option would have been borderline without the safety cars given the higher levels of degradation. 

Nevertheless it was a strategy run by Norris to P2 and Leclerc to P4, starting on the medium and moving to the hard under the virtual safety car.  Sainz seemed to switch mid-race from the two stop to a one stop in light of the tyre saving the safety car periods allowed. Stopping on lap 17 to move from the medium to hard tyre meant Sainz couldn’t benefit from the reduced pit loss under the VSC in the same way the other one-stoppers could.

The cost of running the one stop without the help from the safety car periods was well demonstrated by Fernando Alonso who capitalised on the age of the tyres of those around him by boxing for a third time on lap 43 and running to the end on a set of new mediums. Doing so allowed him to claim all five places he’d lost during the pit stop by the end of the race, though it was a decision almost forced on the team by their lack of hard tyres left for his third stint – almost guaranteeing the need for a third stop before the end.

This year, we can expect the medium and hard tyres to play a role in the grand prix again with the medium likely to also be run for the entirety of the Sprint race’s 19 laps, though Russell proved last year that the soft tyres cannot be discounted if the temperatures allow.

How things stand

We head into the second round of 2025 with McLaren’s suspected advantage from testing confirmed in competitive conditions in Melbourne, with Lando Norris claiming the victory and a 1-2 for the team on the grid too. But Red Bull, and specifically Max Verstappen, made considerable progress over the weekend to finish P2 meaning they cannot be counted out from contention for the win this weekend.

Ferrari’s season got off to a trickier start, mostly due to an incorrect strategy call as the rain got heavier in the late stages of the grand prix that saw the drivers drop down the order. They converted a fourth row lockout to a haul of just five points by the chequered flag. However their pace was also further off the leaders than they would have liked, a decline that seemed to begin in qualifying as they’d been more evenly matched with McLaren over FP2’s race simulations and single laps in FP3.

Suggestions for why included that they’d had to raise the car to prevent excessive plank wear, costing them downforce, or that they were struggling to adapt to the warmer track conditions on Saturday. Though no cause was confirmed by the team, whatever it was appeared to result in overuse of their tyres that made them tough to manage over a single lap and also over a race stint, regardless of compound.

Hamilton’s pace over green flag racing laps was slower than that of some midfield teams including the Williams of Albon and Racing Bull of Tsunoda, in Hamilton’s case. Though Australia was not very representative for what could be expected pace-wise this week, this will have sent Ferrari off to do their homework between then and now to unlock the performance Vasseur, Leclerc and Hamilton believe the car actually has.

Mercedes were the third fastest team in Australia, with their rookie Kimi Antonelli finishing P4 on debut and Russell on the podium in P3. Toto Wolff believes “it’s clear we have taken a good step forward over the winter” but the Chinese Grand Prix could be crucial in proving that, particularly if Ferrari bounce back.

In the mid-field Williams will arrive in China buoyed by their P5 finish on Albon’s side, even despite the DNF for Sainz, which actually meant he was able to play a role in Albon’s race-making strategy. Though it’s still early days, the team were there when it mattered and kept it clean and consistent over a difficult grand prix with the P5 result being a stark contrast to where they were this time last year.

China will also represent a new chance for many of the rookies in the field who succumbed to the tricky conditions in Melbourne. Isack Hadjar suffered a second-turn incident on the formation lap that ended his debut weekend early, meaning he’ll be looking at this weekend as an opportunity to bounce back, prove what he can do, and run a racing lap in F1 for the first time. For others like Gabriel Bortoleto, Jack Doohan and even drivers with more experience who are running with new teams this year like Lawson and Sainz, they’ll want to maximise track time and secure a solid result in the absence of one last week, with the Sprint format offering two chances to do so.

New Technical Directive

Aside from pace and on track action, there’ll be a technical aspect to watch this weekend too as the FIA are set to implement a new technical directive to address the issue of flexi-wings once again.

As part of their over-winter work on implementing first-round regulation changes for the rear and beam wings, and ninth-round changes for the front wing, the FIA placed cameras on the cars to monitor real-time, on track deflection over free practice in Australia.

While the FIA emphasised that all cars in the field were legal, they are introducing this technical directive in light of what they observed from their monitoring. Though there’ll be no concrete change to the rulebook itself, a technical directive allows the FIA to alter how the technical regulations are applied in real time, as a result what they see on track, to shut down grey areas and introduce new monitoring as the season progresses.

This one will alter how Article 3.15.17 of the Technical Regulations is applied from this weekend. It currently states that the slot gap, or the distance between the mainplane and the flap of the rear wing, must not vary by more than 2mm when 75kg (750N) of vertical load is applied at either extremity of the mainplane.

Under this new technical directive, this allowed variation in slot gap width will be reduced from 2mm to 0.5mm, with a tolerance of 0.25mm for the Shanghai race weekend only due to the short notice for the change. This, theoretically, means that the limit will be 0.75mm for the next race only.

Aside from their monitoring in Australia, it is unclear why the FIA are acting now and making this change. Though teams came under fire for using so-called ‘mini-DRS’ systems last season, changes were introduced at the time and over the winter to shut this possibility down. Even so, it seems these previous attempts at a resolution have not satisfied the FIA, and the teams’ comments around this and possible performance impacts will be a key area to watch this weekend.

Fast facts

Pole position has historically played a role in predicting the winner in the past, with 10 of the last 17 grands prix (58.8%) being won by the polesitter.

To win the Chinese Grand Prix from P6 on the grid in 2018, Daniel Ricciardo completed more overtakes than the entire field had at the season-opening Australian race in the same year.

The back straight between turns 13 and 14 in Shanghai is one of the longest in Formula 1 at 1.2km, seeing drivers hit speeds over 340km/h with DRS active.