Similar to Japan two weeks ago, this race is expected to be dominated by a two-stop strategy. Tire wear is intense, and China used to be a circuit that put the most stress on the front tires, but with the introduction of wider tires in 2017, this has changed to the rear tires. There’s a lot of tire management involved in the race, with drivers running laps well off their theoretical maximum pace.
Tire selection is unusually free. The medium and hard compounds were expected to be the main focus of the race, but George Russell’s strong sprint performance on the soft tires delivered that as well.
Red Bull and Ferrari have better tires than McLaren and Aston Martin, with Mercedes somewhere in between. The drivers of these teams therefore believe that Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will move up from sixth and seventh place in the race. In the battle from the grid to the podium, Fernando Alonso in particular performed well again in qualifying, but Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri also fell back.
The pit stop time loss was around 24 seconds, and 17 seconds under the safety car, which is historically common in China.
