F1 Chinese GP live commentary and updates - sprint qualifying

Verstappen is going for it. Purple in sector one, personal best in sector two, purple in sector three. Fastest of all 1m32.329s - on the medium tyre.

Curious to see the two Mercedes circulating in close proximity. Suggests two prep laps - and indeed Antonelli's first sector time reflects that.

Doohan’s car failure with 13 minutes remaining of practice not only robbed him of an opportunity to do a performance lap in that final segment, the red flag cost everyone else six minutes of track time. That might sound like not very much but it’s significant at that point in the session – it meant everybody on track at once trying more or less to do the same thing. Max Verstappen was one of several drivers not to set a representative time because he aborted his push lap; ditto Oscar Piastri, who overcooked it at the final corner. Meanwhile Doohan has another mountain to climb through no fault of his own this time.

Jack Doohan, Alpine

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Key takeaways from FP1: despite being new and yet to 'rubber in', the new track surface is delivering more grip. Last year the circuit owners bizarrely decided to paint the track surface for cosmetic reasons and it resembled an ice rink. Max Verstappen's pole position time was 1m34.742s. In FP1 today Jack Doohan was slowest on 1m33.923s - and that was without running on the soft tyres because his car broke down.

In case you missed it, our recap of this weekend's sole free practice session is here. Spoilers: Lando Norris was fastest.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

This is a shorter and more frenetic session than a standard F1 qualifying. SQ1 will be 12 minutes, SQ2 10 minutes, and SQ3 8 minutes. Traffic will therefore likely be more of a factor.

China will be the first of six sprint weekends this year. “The venues chosen for Sprint events are all tracks with great overtaking potential, picked to try and ensure the Sprint is a flat-out, aggressive melee from start to finish” says F1's official website. Not sure this gels with the presence of Miami on the sprint schedule – a track which is notably slippery off the racing line, militating against overtaking. And as for Qatar...

Hello, good morning/evening and welcome to our live coverage of the first sprint qualifying of the 2025 F1 season.