Chinese GP: Dominant Lewis Hamilton claims the first Ferrari victory in Sprint Race

Lewis Hamilton won his first victory as a Ferrari driver after winning a light-to-flag victory at the Sprint race at the Chinese Grand Prix.

In just his second race weekend in Red, Hamilton qualified for pole position and won the 19-round race, which took place in Shanghai on Saturday morning before qualifying for the Grand Prix in full length.

The victory is not only Hamilton’s first victory as a Ferrari driver, but was also the first victory of the seven-time champions in the F1 sprint format since its introduction in 2021.

Hamilton said afterwards: “From round 1 here this weekend I felt like it. The engineers did a great job, the mechanics did a great job to really optimize the car-I felt great today, I have a good start, there is so much grip on this new asphalt that it is difficult to take care of these new tires, and I think everyone has to do it right outside.”

He added: “The first race was difficult and obviously I believe that many people underestimated the steep climb to get to a new team to have acclimatized in the team and to understand communication and all kinds of things.

“The number of critics and people I made on the way on the way just not to understand clearly, maybe they have never had the experience or just didn’t know, so it felt great to come here and feel comfortable in the car, because in Melbourne I didn’t feel comfortable in the car.”

Hamilton stopped the old rival Max Verstappen for the first 10 rounds of the race before the Red Bull driver had to struggle with Front -tire problems and focused on keeping Oscar Piatri behind.

Piatri gave Verstappen second place in round 15 of the race in round of the race, but had the time against Hamilton and landed 6.8 seconds behind the Ferrari driver on the checkered flag.

Hamilton’s victory offers a new hope for a championship fight after Ferrari struggled at the opening round in Australia and McLaren looked dominant.

He secured eight points for the victory to add to the only point in Australia, but will take the rest of the weekend with a new hope for a challenge for a Grand Prix victory with Ferrari in just his second attempt.

Lando Norris, who won the first race of the season in Melbourne, ended the sprint in eighth place on Saturday and only scored one point after he had dropped three places with an error in curve at the beginning.

The McLaren driver said about his performance: “I just feel terrible in the minute in the race.”

He added that qualifying at the meeting on Friday did not help. “I just had a bad first round and had to go into the grass a bit in curve 6, and then it was difficult to do a lot. Qualifying didn’t help, but I wasn’t good today either.”

George Russell secured fourth place for Mercedes after he had given Charles Leclercs Ferrari for the position in curve 14 in the opening round.

Leclerc ended the race fifth in front of an impressive performance by the racing bull driver Yuki Tsunoda, who thought the second Mercedes by Andrea Kimi Antonelli for sixth place.