Lewis Hamilton placed second in the sprint and tenth in the race in Shanghai, and the team has shared their thoughts on his performance.
Given the team’s car disadvantage, James Allison of Mercedes has acknowledged that he did not anticipate Lewis Hamilton to hang onto second place in the Chinese Grand Prix sprint.
For the first time since taking pole in Hungary last season, Hamilton qualified in second place for the shorter race on Saturday in Shanghai. He led into Turn 1 after shoving Lando Norris wide.
He and Fernando Alonso broke away, but Max Verstappen finally caught up to them and won both the race and the grand prix the following day.
However, Hamilton managed to hold onto second place, which was his best finish in a sprint race since the first one at the 2021 British Grand Prix and his best performance in any F1 event since finishing in second place 11 events prior in Mexico City.
Mercedes had not anticipated him doing it.
“If I’m honest, no, I didn’t expect that we would hang on to P2 because I don’t think the car’s quick enough to merit that at the moment,” Allison said.
“Everyone found sprint qualifying to be challenging due to the weather. In my opinion, Lewis deserves a lot of credit for his remarkable poise under extremely trying conditions during the sprint qualifying, where cars were crashing all over the circuit.
