The 18th running of the Chinese Grand Prix, the second round of the season, immediately throws up some special challenges, not just for the teams and drivers, but also for Pirelli, starting with a completely resurfaced track and just one hour of free practice to see how much it has changed compared to past years. Last summer, a new surface was laid down on the track and the pit lane at the Shanghai International Circuit. It has only been used a few times towards the end of 2024 and should be smoother than before and, as this is the first event of the year to be held at SIC, it’s logical to expect the track to evolve very quickly.

Furthermore, as was the case in 2024, this will also be the first Sprint format event of the year, with just one free practice session on Friday. That means only 60 minutes to find the right car set-up and evaluate the performance of the various compounds over a long run, even if Saturday’s short race is a great test bed to fully assess at least one of them.

The compounds
The trio of compounds is the same as last year: C2 as Hard, C3 as Medium and C4 as Soft. The last two were in use in Melbourne last weekend, while the first was run extensively in the three day test in Bahrain at the end of February. However, one must remember that all the compounds are different to those from last year. The C2 in particular is softer and therefore closer to the C3 than in the past.

An important factor to consider this weekend will be the temperatures. It’s the first time that Shanghai hosts the Grand Prix in March when average temperatures rarely exceed 18 °C. Although in fact, the forecast for the weekend is to seem them climb above 20 °C as from Friday, reaching a high of 26 °C on Saturday. While this is therefore considerably warmer than usual at this time, it is actually pretty similar to conditions seen last year for example, when the race was held in the third week of April.

In 2024
There were three interruptions last year – one VSC and two Safety Cars – which significantly influenced the outcome of the race, both in terms of the number of stops and the sequence in which the compounds were used. In the case of the former, three of the drivers who finished in the top ten made just one stop, six pitted twice and one even three time. As for the latter, the majority of drivers opted to line up on the grid on the Medium, with the C3 also completing the most stints (46%). However, when it came to the highest mileage, that went to the C2 (57%). The C4 also played its part, with four drivers choosing it for the start, while Fernando Alonso drove his longest stint on this the softest tyre.

Keyword: Sprint weekend
While the standard weekend format features two hour-long free practice sessions on Friday and a further hour on Saturday followed by qualifying, the current Sprint format features just one free practice session to start the track action on Friday, followed by a qualifying session later that day. This decides the grid for a 100 kilometre race, approximately one third distance of the normal race, held on Saturday morning, which is followed by qualifying for Sunday’s actual Grand Prix.

Qualifying for the Sprint is split into three segments that are shorter than those for the Grand Prix 12 minutes for SQ1, ten for SQ2 and eight for SQ3. The number of drivers eliminated at the end of each section is the same as in normal qualifying, five at the end of each of the first two sessions. For the first two parts, all drivers must use only the Medium compound, before switching to the Soft for the final session. As for the short race itself, tyre choice is free and there is no need to make a pit stop.

There is also a different slick tyre allocation per driver compared to a standard weekend: they each still have two sets of Hard, but now they get an extra set of Medium, going from three to four and two fewer sets of Soft, from eight to six, for a total of 12 instead of the usual 13.

Introduced for the first time at Silverstone in 2021 (https://www.pirelli.com/global/en-ww/race/legacy-of-speed-episode-3-158941/) there have been 18 Sprint races to date and Max Verstappen has been the master of this discipline with 11 wins so far. This will be the second year running that Shanghai has hosted an event run to this format and just for a change, the aforementioned Verstappen was the winner. As for the tyres in 2024, 19 runners used a set of Mediums with only Russell gambling on the Soft, which paid off as he made up three places from eleventh on the grid to eighth at the flag.

Statistics corner
This race first appeared on the World Championship calendar in 2004, always at this circuit, held every year since then with the exception of three years from 2020 to 2023. The inaugural event was won by Rubens Barrichello driving a Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton heads the list of winners here with six and he also has paid the most visits to the podium with nine. It’s worth noting that only two of the current field, Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen have been first past the flag in China: the Spaniard did it twice (2005 and 2013) the Dutchman last year. Mercedes heads the teams list on six wins, two more than Ferrari, which as the most podium finishes to its name (13), one more than Mercedes..