Lando Norris will start from pole position in Saturday\u2019s F1 Sprint in Shanghai after having his fastest lap removed and then reinstated in a thrilling rain-affected qualifying session. Norris\u2019 best time of 1:57.940 was a full 1.3 seconds ahead of Mercedes\u2019 Lewis Hamilton and came after the McLaren driver\u2019s time was initially deleted for exceeding track limits at Turn 16 before quickly being reinstated.<\/p>\n
With the Shanghai International Circuit having recently been resurfaced with a layer of bitumen, the track proved extremely slippery as rain intensified in the closing stages of the session. Several drivers slid and ran wide in the damp conditions, and Charles Leclerc was lucky to avoid damage as his Ferrari tapped the wall following a high-speed spin, reports Xinhua. Behind the front two, Fernando Alonso ended the session third for Aston Martin, with championship leader Max Verstappen only fourth in his Red Bull after having run wide at the end of his first push lap.<\/p>\n
Carlos Sainz took fifth for Ferrari, ahead of Verstappen\u2019s teammate Perez in sixth. Leclerc recovered from his mishap to finish seventh, with Norris\u2019 teammate Oscar Piastri in eighth. Valtteri Bottas will start the Sprint ninth for Sauber, with teammate Zhou Guanyu delighting the partisan crowd by ending the session tenth at his home circuit. George Russell was a notable casualty of the rain that began to intensify towards the end of Q2, failing to get a banker lap in early and finishing up 11th.<\/p>\n
The Haas twins of Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg ended up 12th and 13th, with RB\u2019s Daniel Ricciardo 14th and Alonso\u2019s teammate Lance Stroll 15th. Further down the field, the five drivers condemned to start 16th to 20th after having fallen in the first segment were the Alpines of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, Williams\u2019 Alex Albon, Yuki Tsunoda in the second RB, and Albon\u2019s teammate Logan Sargeant.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on the achievement post-session, Norris said: \u201cI\u2019m extremely happy, first of all. A big thanks to the whole team. It was tricky, you\u2019re always nervous going into a session like this, especially for quali when you almost know it\u2019s going to rain. Just as had happened in the morning\u2019s practice session, a dry patch of grass on the infield of Turn 5 appeared to have been set alight by sparks from passing cars, forcing the start of Q2 to be delayed while marshals extinguished the flames. The Chinese Grand Prix weekend is the first of six in 2024 to feature a Sprint event, with Saturday morning\u2019s 19-lap race to be followed by the qualifying session for Sunday\u2019s Grand Prix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lando Norris will start from pole position in Saturday\u2019s F1 Sprint in Shanghai after having his fastest lap removed and\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":40343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13199,7206,13226,7210,11570,3863,13227],"class_list":["post-40342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-chinese-grand-prix","tag-f1","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-pole-position","tag-rain","tag-shanghai-international-circuit"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}