The 2023 World Champion Verstappen will be focusing on registering his first win in Shanghai
\nSHANGHAI
\nFormula One returns to China for the first time since 2019 with even world champion Max Verstappen facing a new challenge at a circuit that provided his Red Bull team\u2019s first grand prix victory 15 years ago.
\nThe weekend will host the first sprint of the season, with only one hour of free practice on Friday to fine tune the cars and do tyre assessments, and the teams have only simulator data to go on.
\nThe last time they raced at the Shanghai International Circuit, the cars had 13-inch tyres and a flat floor instead of the current 18-inch Pirelli rubber and ground-effect aerodynamics.
\nThe track has also seen little use since 2019 and could be bumpier than before.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s going to be quite hectic anyway with the Sprint weekend,\u201d said Verstappen after winning in Japan for his third victory in four races. \u201cSo, yeah, only one practice session to really get into it again. So I think it will be quite interesting.\u201d
\nThe 26-year-old has been critical, with some others, of the decision to have a 100km Saturday sprint in China when there are so many unknowns.
\n\u201cIt would have been better to have a normal race weekend there. But on the other hand, it probably spices things up a bit more, and that\u2019s maybe what they would like to see,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ll see what we get there. I mean, I always loved driving there. So yeah, hopefully, we can hit the ground running as well as we can, and hopefully, we don\u2019t need to fine-tune too many things on the car.\u201d
\nVerstappen has won three championships since he last raced in China and such is his domination that another victory on Sunday would mean the Dutch driver has won half of all the F1 races held since Shanghai\u2019s last appearance on the calendar.
\nIt would also be his first win in China, which was Lewis Hamilton territory until the COVID-19 pandemic brought down the shutters.
\nMercedes\u2019 seven-time world champion has won a record six times in Shanghai but arrives this time on the brink of 50 successive races without standing on the top step of the podium.
\nFerrari are likely to be Red Bull\u2019s closest rivals, with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc third and fourth behind Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez in Japan, and Mercedes was beaten by McLaren and Aston Martin. Verstappen is 13 points clear of Perez in the standings and 18 ahead of Leclerc with George Russell the highest-placed Mercedes driver in seventh.
\nHamilton is ninth.
\n\u201cThe headline results didn\u2019t necessarily show it, but we made solid progress with our car in Japan,\u201d said Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.
\n\u201cWe are looking forward to building on that this weekend.\u201d Zhou Guanyu will give the Chinese crowd a first chance to cheer one of their own with China\u2019s first and only Formula One driver making his home debut with Sauber.
\nThe race is sold out, previously a rarity, and the excitement is mounting.
\n\u201cF1 is definitely more popular than before. In the past, tickets may have been discounted towards race day, but this year, it was actually hard to get a ticket,\u201d said local chemistry teacher and F1 fan Li Qixiang. \u201cEveryone told me there were no tickets available, so it\u2019s definitely more popular than in the years prior to the pandemic. The main reason for this must have something to do with the fact that Zhou Guanyu is driving this year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 2023 World Champion Verstappen will be focusing on registering his first win in Shanghai SHANGHAI Formula One returns to China for the first time since 2019 with even world champion Max Verstappen facing a new challenge at a circuit that provided his Red Bull team\u2019s first grand prix victory 15 years ago. The weekend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-401130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n