Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli won his first Formula One race by taking pole position at the Chinese Grand Prix.
His teammate George Russell finished second, while Lewis Hamilton took his first podium finish for Ferrari.
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McLaren duo Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri did not take part in the race due to power unit issues.
BBC F1 reporter Andrew Benson answers your questions after the second race of the season.
Lewis Hamilton appears to be significantly faster this season than last season. Is there anything about the structure or balance of this year’s car that suits his driving style better than last year’s, or does the improvement come from elsewhere? – Arjun
Lewis Hamilton looks significantly better after two races this season than he has for much of 2025.
Last year was a horrific one for the 41-year-old Hamilton, who was comprehensively outclassed by team-mate Charles Leclerc in his debut season at Ferrari and seemed at times to be in very dark territory when he thought about his performance in public.
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The seven-time champion has impressed a new look this year, saying after Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix: “I definitely feel like I’m back to my best, mentally and physically, yes. I still think there’s room for improvement.”
“The training this winter has been the heaviest and most intense I’ve ever been through, which probably comes with age. It takes longer to recover.
“I just decided on Christmas Day how I’m going to start the season. I decided what I’m going to do mentally and I’m going to continue to fine-tune it. I do think there’s more to come. I think I can still get more performance out of this car. I’m still learning as I go.”
Hamilton clearly came away from the winter aware that he needed to reset. But there’s probably something else going on here.
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He had never been happy with the previous era of automobiles. They needed a different cornering style than the natural approach of Hamilton, who always brakes late and uses the car’s pitch changes to help his spin into corners.
For some reason, he was never able to adapt to the smoother, less aggressive style required of ground-effect cars.
In many ways this was a surprise, as Hamilton has always been known for his ability to adapt to the changing demands of the car, particularly grip levels.
Many former drivers believe age has something to do with it. He’s been driving the same way for so long that when he needs to change his style, and the synapses inevitably take longer to form new paths, he simply can’t do it as effectively as he did more than a decade ago.
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The new cars have very similar aerodynamics to the pre-2022 cars, allowing Hamilton to drive in a way that is more familiar and comfortable to him.
So he can rely on his past instincts and he’s back looking like the Hamilton of old.
Why did Ferrari get off to a better start than Mercedes? – Ozan
No one knows the answer to this question for sure, but it has to do with engine design.
The start-up was much more difficult this year, as it was more difficult to get the turbine to spin at optimal speed.
Last year, an MGU-H (motor-generator unit on the turbine shaft) was used to rev up the turbine, improving performance in a number of ways, including at start-up.
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This year, the MGU-H has been removed, and rules prohibit the MGU-K (motor-generator unit on the rear axle) from being used to assist starting until the car reaches a certain speed.
Therefore, the turbocharger must be manually accelerated by running the engine with the MGU-K on the grid, thus adding extra time before the lights are processed to allow the driver to rev up the engine.
Ferrari’s turbochargers are believed to be smaller than those of other manufacturers. Smaller turbos have less ultimate performance at high rpm. But it’s more responsive at lower speeds, giving it an advantage at the start when exiting a corner immediately (in this case).
In the debate over new rules, which is more important, entertainment spectacle or driver satisfaction? What kinds of things might change as considerations change? -Kevin and Tim
For this answer I combined two separate questions. I hope Kevin and Tim don’t mind.
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F1 is sport first and entertainment second. We hope it should be entertaining and we work hard to ensure that, but sports can’t be entertaining all the time. There are as many 0-0 draws in football as there are 5-4 thrills. Not all rugby matches are as high-profile as Saturday night’s clash between France and England.
Most stakeholders in F1 believe this to be self-evident.
The new rules were not written from a fun-first perspective, at least not initially. Changes to the engine rules were made to attract new manufacturers, and were successful, but it was later realized that there would be problems with the chassis rules.
The main problem is that with the electrical system being so powerful, the nominal 50-50 ratio between combustion engine and electric power, the current size of the battery and not allowing the front axle to recover, the car is energy starved.
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To be fair, many in F1 recognize that chassis regulations are a hodgepodge of compromises struck as a sticking plaster for engine regulations while trying to reconcile a range of competing political positions.
It’s not surprising that the rules are less than perfect in this case, to say the least.
The fundamentals of the rules will not change, but it is recognized that adjustments can be made in some areas to reduce some of the larger compromises.
It’s clear from some of Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff’s comments after the China Grand Prix that some of the changes brought about by the new rules are to be welcomed.
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“From an entertainment point of view, the race we saw today between Ferrari and Mercedes was fantastic,” Wolff said.
“A lot of overtaking. We’re all part of Formula 1 and there’s literally no overtaking. Sometimes we miss the good old days too much. But I think the product itself is good. We’ve seen some midfield racing as well. That’s the positive, I think.
“It’s great to have an all-out qualifying session. But when you see the fans out there and the excitement, the cheers when overtaking and the cheers on social media, the younger fans are the overwhelming majority and all demographics love the sport at the moment.
“We can always see how we can improve it. But at the moment, all the indicators and data say people like it. I spoke to Stefano (F1 president Domenicali). He said the same. So, for some people, it’s not the most enjoyable car to drive.”
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It sounds a bit like Wolff saying that if riders don’t like it, they can ditch it.
That being said, there is a general disquiet that the need for energy management compromises not only the purity of the driving experience, but the very nature of the sport – particularly in qualifying and especially in fast corners, many of which are now used for energy recovery, no longer taking the limits of grip into consideration.
Currently, there are two levels of energy recovery. At full throttle, maximum power is 250kW, known in F1 terminology as “super clipping”. But once the driver lifts and/or brakes, the power is 350kw.
One obvious change is to allow the car to super-clip at 350 kilowatts, which is the most efficient way to recover. It feels like this could happen soon, maybe even at the Miami Grand Prix in early May.
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Another quick solution might be to reduce the power of the electrical components from the current 350 kW to 300 kW or 250 kW. Then power will last longer and the need to restore events will be reduced.
Wider changes, such as changing the distribution between combustion and electric power to be more favorable to the engine, or increasing fuel energy limits, would require significant changes to the powerplant. Therefore, this is unlikely to happen before next year at the earliest.
Whether there will be interest in this remains to be seen – especially as people are already wondering what the next engine regulations will be and when they will come into effect.
For some engine manufacturers, this month’s break has been a blessing in disguise to fix some of these very glaring issues (Honda and Red Bull Ford in particular), and for teams like McLaren and Williams, can they fix their car issues? Will this ultimately make the next 20 games better? – David
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella answered the question in China over the weekend.
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“When it comes to car development,” he said, “I don’t think it’s changed much because we’re trying to develop cars as quickly as possible in every area.
“After testing and then at the start of the season we knew more about what we needed to improve based on our own data and we really gained inspiration by looking at other cars.
“So we’re now merging a lot of the important information that we’re getting, and we’re designing new parts. That’s relatively independent of the fact that you’re going to race four and five because you’re trying to go as fast as possible no matter what.
“To be fair, we don’t have big projects targeting Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In fact, we are targeting later than those two events. So our development path has not been affected too much.”
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Every team will have different plans, but Stella’s sentiment is fundamentally everyone’s – teams plan upgrades months in advance, so canceling one race or another won’t change that.
This means that, early in the season, struggling teams have two fewer games to lose to their opponents. Of course, whether this will make a difference depends on whether either team is able to improve relative to their opponents.
