After months of waiting for the start of the new season, Formula 1 fans have barely had time to process the somewhat insane Australian Grand Prix before the circus moves on again. The first double-header of the year takes the grid to Shanghai, where the sprint weekend raises the stakes even further. Here are five storylines to watch as the Chinese Grand Prix unfolds.
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Can Kimi handle the fight with George?
On paper, 18-year-old Kimi Antonelli’s performance is exactly what Mercedes wanted – he finished second to team-mate George Russell in both qualifying and the main race. But his path to second was rocky both days, with an early crash on Saturday that forced his team to race against time to rebuild his car and a botched start in the main event that saw him finish seventh at the end of the first lap.
Mercedes would no doubt want their prodigy to have a cleaner weekend in China, but it also raises a fascinating question for fans – how close would Antonelli’s faultless performance be to Russell’s peak? Fans would welcome an intra-team battle in a season where Mercedes seem unlikely to have any real challengers – even if Toto Wolff still has nightmares about the Hamilton-Rosberg rivalry. Either way – now that he has a title-challenging car – Antonelli needs to step up if he intends to live up to his lofty streak. Will it happen this weekend?
Hamilton’s Happy Hunting Ground
Kimi hoped Shanghai would prove to him what the racetrack was to the man he replaced at Mercedes. In 2025, the Chinese GP was probably the only bright spot for Lewis Hamilton in an otherwise dismal first year at Ferrari – the sprint victory his only visit to the top step in red.
This year’s Chinese GP comes on the heels of an encouraging start to the season for the seven-time world champion – who was arguably faster than team-mate Charles Leclerc in the latter part of the race and was less than a second behind Ferrari’s podium finisher at the finish. With Ferrari still optimistic about their 2026 challenger, look out for Lewis to potentially put together a perfect weekend and prove his Ferrari dream is still far from over.
Will the challengers of 2025 finally join the party?
The Australian Grand Prix was a race to forget for the 3 drivers who dominated the 2025 season. But while defending champion Norris undoubtedly needs to step up from Melbourne, it is likely that we are yet to see the true form of Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri in race conditions.
A rare qualifying error from Verstappen ensured he started from the back of the grid on Sunday, and while the four-time world champion had a tight fight to finish 6th, the prospect of starting from the front and battling with Mercedes and Ferrari is an exciting one. Piastri, meanwhile, will be desperate to turn around his miserable fortunes from the end of the season, which culminated in last weekend’s DNS at his home race. Well, the Aussie jokingly refers to himself as ‘1/16th Chinese’, so perhaps a home race could be on the cards.
A truer test of the new regulations
As this column has covered, much of the talk coming and going from the Australian GP has been about the new policies, which emphasize the strategic acquisition and deployment of battery power per bike. The Australian GP was clearly an exciting start to the season, but much of the manic overtaking in the opening stages could be attributed to the unique challenges of the Albert Park circuit and the fact that it was the first time that it had raced with new cars for all 22 drivers.
A relatively conventional racetrack like Shanghai is likely to give us a clearer picture of the pecking order early on, as well as whether the new regulations will really spice up the lap-to-lap racing. Bear in mind that the drivers will now be much more tactically experienced in dealing with the complexities of the new cars, so this race should in theory be less of a roulette wheel.
Let’s sprint!
But with one important caveat. The Chinese GP is the first sprint weekend of the new season, meaning more races and less practice for teams to get their cars set up perfectly. The added spice brought by the new regulations could just be a shot in the arm for the Sprint format, which has seen a cooling off in the last few years.
Keep a close eye on the Sprint race in particular, where the lack of tire strategies and emphasis on full-on racing makes it even more important for teams to start quickly and hold onto the lead at the end of lap 1. Can Ferrari repeat their blistering start from Melbourne in Shanghai and keep their challengers at bay (without the risk of the strategy team getting it wrong again)?
With plenty of questions yet to be answered and the grid still finding its footing, the Chinese GP has all the makings of another fascinating spectacle. Fast corners, long straights and a sprint thrown into the mix – it should be quite the ride.
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Issued by:
Kingshuk Kusari
Published on:
13 March 2026 16:13 IST
