All the action from the Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai International Circuit.
Qualifying report by Alex Powell
Liam Lawson has endured a mixed day at Formula One’s Chinese Grand Prix, and will start Sunday’s race 14th on the grid.
While the Kiwi driver was exceptional to take seventh in the 19-lap sprint race earlier on Saturday, a yellow flag in qualifying robbed Lawson of any chance to better his time, and saw him eliminated by 0.413s in the second session (Q2).
“F*** me,” Lawson was heard telling race engineer Alexandre Iliopoulos, after he was forced to settle for an early exit a week after qualifying eighth for the Australian Grand Prix.
“It would have been very close to Q3,” Lawson said of his abandoned lap.
“It’s a shame, we were on quite a nice lap. We had a messy session stringing it together, and then at the end, the last lap was really nice. It’s a shame.”
At the very least, Lawson outqualified Racing Bulls rookie teammate Arvid Lindblad for the third time out of three attempts this season, with the 19-year-old to start 15th in his second full-length race.
However, by his own admission, Lawson does face a tough task in the grand prix, after using a set of hard tyres in the sprint, and therefore leaving himself short on Sunday.
Lawson, though, can take solace from his performance in the sprint, with no driver making more overtakes over the course of the 19 laps than the Kiwi’s six.
At the front of the grid, Mercedes continued their dominance - albeit with a role reversal for their drivers.
Kimi Antonelli, 18, took pole position to become the youngest polesitter in history, with a lap of 1m 32.064s.
Teammate and sprint winner George Russell was 0.222s back in second, having only been able to post one lap in Q3 after suffering issues on his first lap.
Sir Lewis Hamilton starts third, 0.351s back from Antonelli, while Ferrari locked out the second row with Charles Leclerc in fourth.
World champion Lando Norris starts sixth, outqualified by teammate Oscar Piastri in fifth, while four-time champion Max Verstappen could only manage eighth.
Starting on a set of medium tyres, Lawson’s first effort of 1m 34.731s saw him shoot to the top of the leaderboard, albeit with just a handful of drivers having completed their opening laps.
As he headed back to the garage, Lawson had fallen to ninth, but with a 1.607s buffer between elimination. By the time he returned to the track in Q1, Lawson had dropped to 12th, with just 0.621s up his sleeve.
And while Lawson improved his time again to 1m 34.139s, the Kiwi still had a nervous wait to get into Q2, sneaking in as the 16th fastest, with 0.178s to spare.
Into the second session of qualifying for the second time this weekend, Lawson was the final driver on track, and put in a first effort of 1m 33.765s, only enough for 14th and 0.841s short of reaching Q3.
With one chance and just over three minutes remaining in the session, Lawson emerged from the Racing Bulls garage.
And while the Kiwi was on course to at the very least improve, Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto left the track at turn 16, and left himself in the gravel to end the day of more than one driver, including both Racing Bulls.
The Chinese Grand Prix begins at 8pm on Sunday (NZT).
Alex Powell is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.