9 things we learned on day one of F1’s Chinese GP

Formula 1’s teams and drivers have only had a few days to pick through the massive data load that was the first race of 2026 in Australia, and work out how different things will be this weekend in China.

Here is what we have learned from day one in the Shanghai paddock.

Where Russell’s impressed rivals already

The Mercedes power unit and the works team’s mastery of exploiting it are currently driving the narrative about the nascent George Russell-led title race – to the point where Russell says the actual chassis “isn’t being given the credit it deserves”.

And what about the credit to Russell himself in Melbourne? It was by all observable evidence not the hardest weekend he’s ever had in F1 – but there were suggestions here and there ahead of China that he’s displaying an early adeptness for getting the most of out of 2026-spec F1 racing.

One such suggestion indirectly came from Russell himself. “My view is a lot of teams didn’t optimise qualifying,” he mused. “I think we did a really great job of qualifying. When I looked at the data, we were the quickest on the outlaps. It was really cold. We got the tyres in a really good place. We were the quickest in all corners. We got the energy management right.

“Even myself versus [team-mate] Kimi [Antonelli], there was a big difference in terms of the straightline speed. We have a few little driving style differences.”

But a lot of rival drivers took note, too, and were happy enough to give Russell his flowers.

“You look between George and Kimi in qualifying and there’s like three tenths in between the cars – so there’s a lot in the driving style,” said Charles Leclerc.

“The difference you can make by optimising the power unit is an order of magnitude bigger than anything you can do with the set-up of the car. Yes, you can help, but I think probably a large element of George’s competitiveness, even compared to Kimi in the qualifying laps – you look at the straightline speed of the two Mercedes cars to each other, it’s very different. There’s at least a few tenths, probably closer to half a second if you get that right or wrong,” said Oscar Piastri.

It was about exploiting the skill that team-mate Lando Norris repeatedly described as “driving the power unit”.

“That’s not what any of us have grown up doing. Probably not something any of us grew up wanting to do either,” Norris quipped. “But that’s the way it is now.

“So, George has also done a very good job at understanding all of these things, and he still deserves credit for optimising the package that he has and understanding these things potentially better than others.”

Weird formation lap issue explained

One of the big oddities from Australia was how many drivers complained about having minimal battery at the end of their formation lap.

This had an impact on the quality of the starts because once the MGU-K could kick in after 50km/h, drivers had different states of charge to play with in terms of deploying the electric power available.

Russell revealed on Thursday in China that teams had been caught out by just how the rules around battery deployment and recharging function even at the start, as completing the lap from the grid back round again still counts as a lap that is covered by the maximum recharging allowance.

One factor is that drivers at the front of the grid are accelerating more after crossing the line, whereas further down the grid drivers are already at speed so therefore use less battery after crossing the line. They have to recharge the battery less in this moment, and preserve more of their harvesting limit for later around the lap.

That wasn’t the whole story, though. Red Bull found that in doing the normal burnouts and heavy braking to prepare the tyres and brakes it triggered enough harvesting and deployment to hit the ceiling.

Then, with the rules demanding the battery gets triggered above a certain throttle usage, Verstappen was powerless to stop his state of charge depleting over the final part of the lap – leaving him bereft of power on the run to Turn 1.

Like Mercedes, Red Bull is eager for changes to be made to the formation lap limit – as the 8MJ limit there is probably not ideal.

But there’s arguing over how to address it

Ferrari is against the FIA adjusting the rules for the formation lap.

A concession was already granted in extending the start procedure by five seconds to give drivers more time to spin their turbos and get a more predictable start.

Ferrari was against this already because it had raised the issue in the past, got rebuffed, then designed its engine with a smaller turbo to mitigate the problem.

Its stance is now that no further changes should be made to further accommodate teams whose car designs are not optimised for the current rules, which have been set in stone for a while – and so teams should just get on with making the best of it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, its customer team Haas takes a similar view – at least insofar as arguing that no knee-jerk decision should be made after just one race.

“On the formation lap, we didn’t do a very good job actually [in Melbourne],” said team boss Ayao Komatsu. “We actually drained the battery lot more than we should have done because we weren’t aware of certain things.

“The understanding we got from that one formation lap, I’m sure if we did it again, we’d do a much better job.

“But imagine then if we change the regulation formation lap now, moving the goalpost, what are we doing?

“I’m sure if you make those knee-jerk reactions, you’ll have unintended consequences. So that’s exactly what we need to avoid.”

Drivers fear big crash without change

Several drivers shared some very serious concerns about the consequences of unpredictable, varied launches, if nothing is done to help matters.

It follows F1’s much publicised near-miss in Australia – when only some outstanding work from Franco Colapinto prevented him from ploughing into the back of Liam Lawson’s barely-moving Racing Bulls.

Sergio Perez had a direct view of that. And he says “it’s just a matter of time before a massive shunt happens”.

And when you consider Perez’s Cadillac has a Ferrari engine, which have been the best and most consistent with the starts, his words carry a bit more weight. As do Max Verstappen’s as a four-time world champion.

Like Perez, Verstappen described it as “dangerous” and said what happened in Australia could have been a “massive shunt”, while Carlos Sainz said “we were extremely lucky and my feeling is that there’s going to be one of those big crashes if nothing changes”.

Colapinto’s team-mate Pierre Gasly said it was “scary” and touched on another issue – as he believes it is not particularly fair on drivers if the quality of their start is defined by such a big variable.

The underlying opinion among many being that drivers can’t really control the outcome of their launch that much – even Esteban Ocon, another Ferrari engine user, said F1 shouldn’t end up with “Formula 2 starts” where the performance seems quite random.

Ferrari fast-tracked upside-down wing

The most eye-catching technical innovation of 2026 is back…for FP1 in Shanghai at the very least.

Ferrari will trial its radical rear wing on a grand prix weekend for the very first time, having debuted it during Bahrain testing.

The team will run it during the sole practice session in China, and all eyes will be on whether it remains on the car for sprint qualifying later on Friday.

Lewis Hamilton revealed Ferrari had fast-tracked the development of the rear wing so it could be brought to Shanghai.

The bigger picture for Ferrari is how it stacks up versus Mercedes on a circuit very different to Melbourne. But the performance of the radical rear wing will no doubt be its most visible success/failure from FP1.

And as for the name of the wing? Some have called it the Macarena. We’ve been calling it the upside-down wing. For Hamilton? “It’s the flip-flop wing!”

Honda doesn’t have any spare batteries

It wasn’t explicitly confirmed last weekend, and Honda definitely doesn’t want to confirm it officially, but Aston Martin has no spare batteries in China.

As the team was down to just the two batteries in each of its cars in Australia it didn’t seem likely that more parts would materialise in time to help out this weekend.

Honda declined to say how many batteries are in China and Aston Martin’s chief trackside officer Mike Krack cut off a line of questioning about whether there are any more here – so this is clearly a very sensitive topic.

It’s understood that the situation remains as it was in Australia. The good thing is that Honda’s countermeasures seemed quite effective so more reliable running is possible and the objective is to complete a race distance for the first time.

Any battery failure, though, and that car will be out of the rest of the weekend. No wonder Lance Stroll described it as a “very fragile” situation.

How different China will be on energy

Whereas Melbourne was an energy-poor track, Shanghai is an energy-rich one. So the first two race weekends of F1’s new era are at the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the challenges of the energy-management regime.

It doesn’t take advanced simulations to tell you it’s essential to have the maximum charge in the battery pack for the long straight to the Turn 14 hairpin.

That’s because there are more slow corners, which means a greater proportion of the permitted energy can be harvested under braking, reducing the reliance on super clipping and lift-and-coast. Haas driver Ollie Bearman suggests that this will lead to most having similar deployment strategies.

“A bit of the frustration from us drivers is that actually there’s not really much flexibility from the software,” said Bearman. “You don’t actually have much space to innovate, much space to do anything different. Clearly the fastest way around this lap is to charge as much as you can and hopefully have the full pack and deploy it all into Turn 14 – because that’s the most laptime-sensitive part of the track and that’s the most efficient way of doing it.”

That said, his Haas team boss is wary that there could be a few surprises lurking in wait.

“The key is, once you realise ‘well, this is something I haven’t thought of’, how quickly you can react as a team,” says Komatsu.

While the overall challenge is reduced because harvesting the requisite energy will be far more straightforward, there could once again be significant gains or losses in tiny details of harvesting and deployment.

What it means for ‘yo-yo’ racing here

F1 2026 got off to a spectacular start with the frenetic opening laps of yo-yo racing between Russell and Leclerc in Australia.

However, despite being widely proclaimed as a success story of the new hybrid cars, it appears that such excitement is going to be the exception rather than the rule.

Russell, who found himself lacking answers to break free of his Ferrari rival, reckoned that Australia’s wall-to-wall action was a consequence of Albert Park being so energy-starved, drivers were varying where they were choosing to deploy their limited battery power.

He reckoned that venues like Shanghai, which only have one major straight where the power will run out, will see everyone converge on deployment – so limit the kind of pace variations we saw last weekend.

“I think tracks with multiple straights, like we saw in Melbourne, it will be more of a feature,” he said.

“From what I’ve experienced on the simulator before Melbourne, this track feels more normal in terms of not these massive super clips, not losing massive speed at the end of the straights. I think for the die-hard fans it will look more like what they are used to.”

Verstappen has some hope for these rules after all

Timing is everything – and while Verstappen announcing his Nurburgring 24 Hours debut immediately after a grumpy first weekend for him with the new F1 rules need not have been intended as a message, it certainly was taken as such.

And he had certainly done little to extinguish the idea that F1’s priorities with its 2026 package may end up costing it its consensus best driver and an era-defining talent.

That is, until now – with Verstappen notably admitting on Thursday that he was still taking some enjoyment out of the current competition even if the actual driving part left a lot to be desired.

“So, no, I don’t want to leave,” he said. “But I also hope of course that it gets better.”

As part of that effort to make it better, Verstappen said he’s “had discussions” with the stakeholders and sounded hopeful that what’s being hashed out right now “will improve everything”.

It is a genuine change from the Verstappen of Melbourne, who sounded very resigned and pessimistic about this ruleset being shaped to anything anywhere near his liking.