2024 Chinese Grand Prix – Sprint and Qualifying Report “We're in a good place to fight for points"

Shanghai International Circuit, Saturday, 20 April

Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, as well as Team Principal Andrea Stella, after the F1 Sprint and Grand Prix Qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix.

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Started 1st  
Finished 6th  
Fastest lap  1m40.951s on lap 4 (+0.620s, 4th)  
Q1 1m34.842s (Soft) 3rd
Q2 1m34.460s (Soft) 5th
Q3 1m34.165s (Soft) 4th

“I think it was a good Qualifying for us. Maybe P3 was on the cards – but I think we have to be satisfied. Sometimes you win it, sometimes you lose it in these very close sessions. Another good starting position and a good qualifying so I’m happy with today. The real challenge is tomorrow. We need to get our heads down and do our best tonight and prepare the best we can for the main race and get some good points for the team.” 

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Started 8th  
Finished 7th  
Fastest lap 1m41.107s on lap 3 (+0.776s, 8th)  
Q1 1m35.014s (Soft) 5th
Q2 1m34.659s (Soft) 8th
Q3 1m34.273s (Soft) 5th

“P5, I’m happy with that. I think the last lap in Q3 was pretty solid. A couple of corners were a bit scrappy but that’s just the nature of the beast around here. We’re in a good place to fight for points tomorrow so we’ll see what we can do. We’ll do our best to stay there, which may be tricky as our race pace isn’t quite there as we saw in the Sprint this morning, but we’ll give it our all.” 

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The official collection

Andrea Stella

“Qualifying in Shanghai confirmed our car is competitive with new tyres, in Qualifying trim. P4 and P5 is a strong position from which to start the race tomorrow, hopefully to score important points. At the same time, we saw in the Sprint that the challenge becomes more difficult across a race stint. We have to improve this, and have already made some set-up tweaks between Sprint and Qualifying today. We’ll see tomorrow exactly how helpful those are, but for the moment, well done to the team and drivers for maximising the potential of the car this afternoon.”