Motoring News

Lando Norris’s hopes of scoring his first F1 win in any format disappeared in the Shanghai Sprint, with the McLaren driver dropping from pole position to P7 by the end of the first lap.

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen returned to the top of the pecking order during Saturday’s Sprint race at the Shanghai International Circuit as he turned his low-key P4 starting position into a commanding victory.

The Auckland-born driver took the lead after the first of two pit cycles on a wet 3.3km Taupo International Motorsport Park.Heimgartner took advantage of Brad Jones Racing's ace pitcrew, the nearly perennial winner of Supercars’ teams pitstop ratings, to jump past early leader Will Brown (Triple Eight Chevrolet), and held off Chaz Mostert for most of the first half of the race.When Mostert fell ...Keep reading

Norris had started from the front after a brilliant showing in Friday’s wet qualifying session, but it all went wrong at Turn 1 of the sprint race after he came off worse in a side-by-side tussle with Lewis Hamilton.Having lost ground away from the grid, he found himself on the dirt on the outside of the long right- hand first corner. And, after instantly losing grip, he ran wide and dropped ...Keep reading

Norris had started Saturday’s sprint event in Shanghai from pole position but did not get away at the lights as well as fellow front-row starter Hamilton, who got inside him on the entry to the first corner.Hamilton hugged the inside line throughout the long right-hander, while Norris tried to hang it around the outside before he lost grip off-line and ran off the circuit, dropping down the ...Keep reading

In a DRS train behind Fernando Alonso, the battle erupted when Sainz attacked the Aston Martin driver around the outside of Turn 7 which invited both Serigo Perez and Charles Leclerc into the fight.After Alonso picked up a puncture in contact with Sainz, as the pair touched in Turn 7 before both going wide at Turn 9 to allow Perez to fly past, there was an all-Ferrari incident at the Turn 14 ...Keep reading

Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton grabbed the lead at the start, when pole-winner Lando Norris (McLaren) was slow away from the startline. After battling with Hamilton through Turn 1, Norris slid wide and off the track, tumbling a further five places.Promoted to third, Verstappen bided his time early on and then cruised past Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) and Hamilton to notch yet another F1 victory.F1 ...Keep reading

In dry conditions – compared to the squall that appeared in the final part of Sprint Qualifying on Friday afternoon – Lando Norris led the field away from pole position for the Shanghai Sprint… but his lead wouldn’t last long.

Live coverage of Saturday's F1 Sprint ahead of the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.

Max Verstappen fights past Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso to win the Chinese Grand Prix sprint race.

Max Verstappen fights past Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso to win the Chinese Grand Prix sprint race.

The championship leader appeared out of sorts in the opening flurry of laps as he struggled to charge his battery with the selected hybrid settings, but a series of changes on his steering wheel appeared to rectify the issue.With greater forward momentum, Verstappen pulled himself out of third with a simple DRS overtake on the second-placed Fernando Alonso, and then pounced on a Turn 14 lock-up ...Keep reading

The FIA began a detailed probe on Friday night after two separate fires on the same area of grass inside Turn 7 disrupted running on the opening day of track action.First practice for the Chinese Grand Prix on Friday morning had to be red-flagged after a blaze erupted on the grass before the same section later caught fire at the end of the first session of sprint qualifying.While there was no red ...Keep reading

With so little practice running before parc ferme conditions beginning for sprint qualifying and the sprint itself, it is all too easy to get lost with the impact of any developments.This is why, for example, Aston Martin elected to fast-track its recent upgrade package to Japan because it did not want it rolled out in China nor Miami.But Haas elected to buck that trend this weekend in Shanghai ...Keep reading

Derani lapped his #31 Action Express-run Cadillac V-Series.R in 1m11.388s around the 1.9-mile temporary circuit.The GTP class is using Michelin’s soft-compound tire at Long Beach for the first time outside of Daytona night running, but times were way off last year's qualifying session on harder rubber – pole being a 1m09.909s by Filipe Albuquerque’s Acura.Derani laid down an early marker of ...Keep reading

The Mexican delivered a quick run of 1m06.6874s in Group 1 running on a set of softer alternate tires to set the day’s best time.Team Penske’s Will Power, who was best in the second group, delivered a mighty effort of his own with the lap of 1m06.7811s that led the group and ultimately put him second overall.The rest of the top five in overall times between all segments featured Scott ...Keep reading

Bourdais lapped his #01 Chip Ganassi-run V-Series.R in 1m11.637s around the 1.9-mile temporary circuit in the 90-minute session.Nick Tandy set the earlier pace in the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963, lapping in 1m12.579s, a quarter of a second clear of Connor De Phillippi’s RLL BMW M Hybrid.FP1 pacesetter Pipo Derani began chipping away in his #31 AXR Cadillac V-Series.R, getting within 0.237s ...Keep reading

Hyundai’s Neuville and Toyota driver Evans incredibly clocked identical overall times to sit tied for the lead on Friday night after 119.74 competitive stage kilometres.Neuville claimed three of the four morning stages on the way to opening up a 10.1-second lead over Evans until a puncture on stage six cost the Belgian valuable time.Evans moved into a 1.6s lead before Neuville responded on the ...Keep reading

The 49th edition of the Grand Prix of Long Beach will see drivers from both series take to the 1.968-mile, 11-turn temporary street circuit that has undergone some slight improvements.Among the notable changes are improvements to the curbing in Turn 5. Significant work was done to allow the longer bolts that are attached to the curbs to withstand the pounding from the sports cars.There was also ...Keep reading

Online ticket sales for the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix launched at 8 p.m. China Standard Time on January 9th of this year, and by 8:01 the operation was in trouble. Overloaded servers wreaked havoc on a system designed to link pre-ordered tickets with either a national ID or an international passport, blocking buyers who thought they had already, in some ways, won the lottery. Chaos and frustration ...Keep reading