Hamilton on sprint pole — Lawson is last: what happened in Chinese GP sprint qualifying

Lewis Hamilton will start alongside Max Verstappen in the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix sprint after a brilliant lap secured him pole for the Saturday morning race.

Two late laps by Hamilton and Verstappen — split by less than two-hundredths of a second — pushed McLaren‘s Oscar Piastri back to the second row of the grid, ahead of Charles Leclerc.

“It’s amazing to see the number 1 when you stop — and [to] be in the red car,” said Hamilton. “I’m a bit gobsmacked, a bit taken aback by it. I didn’t know when we’d get to this position.”

Lando Norris had topped the timesheet in the second SQ2 segment of sprint qualifying but failed to make an impact in the final stage: a slide on his fastest lap left him sixth.

Liam Lawson would have gladly taken that result: he continued his steep learning curve at Red Bull, qualifying dead last after struggling to reduce his tyre temperature ahead of his flying lap, and making an error.

Tyre cooling was the order of the day in Shanghai: minimum tyre pressures are set high to cope with the long straights and long corners that generate high lateral loads. Cooling the tyres reduces that pressure and improves grip, and drivers who struggled to do that were visibly working harder.

Both Alpines were knocked out in the first SQ1 stage, Jack Doohan qualifying ahead of team-mate Pierre Gasly.

Isack Hadjar followed them out in SQ2 having failed to set a time after a wobble on his fast lap. Carlos Sainz exited before the final shootout too, complaining of seat problems while Fernando Alonso and Oliver Bearman were out too — knocked out in the final moments by both Mercedes which had previously been in the drop zone.

Norris had topped SQ2 by 0.2sec, but his first run was affected by an error at Turn 13, where his car wiggled as he put the power down, affecting his run onto the back straight and putting him more than three-tenths of a second behind Piastri.

With reduced time in sprint qualifying, compared with the grand prix qualifying sessions, there was no time to pit and change tyres, so the McLarens had a cooldown lap and then attempted to improve their times. Piastri couldn’t go quicker and Norris abandoned the lap by pitting.

That left the door open for the rest of the frontrunners and Hamilton took full advantage, with a sensational lap. “To come here, to a track I love, the car really came alive from the first lap,” he said. “I’m a bit in shock. I can’t believe we got a pole in the sprint. This puts us in good stead for the race.”

Hamilton sounded surprised on the radio when his race engineer Riccardo Adami told him he was either Santiago or San Diego — seemingly code for pole.

But the place was almost snatched by Verstappen who ended with a lap just 0.018sec short of the Ferrari, declaring himself happy with the result. Piastri was less than a tenth of a second slower than Hamilton.

2025 Chinese Grand Prix sprint qualifying results