Winners and losers from F1’s spectacular Chinese Grand Prix

Winner – Kimi Antonelli (and his boss)

Split screening the broadcast to cut to significant others is somewhat of a pet peeve, but we’ll make a happy exception for Kimi Antonelli‘s dad Marco, who has devoted a significant part of his life to his son’s career.

Marco Antonelli must have died a thousand deaths during the closing laps, and thankfully made it through his son’s late off at the hairpin in one piece. The reward for his poise was an emotional embrace with a grand prix winner.

On the second weekend of Mercedes supplying him with a championship calibre car, Kimi Antonelli has made it happen, vindicating the faith Toto Wolff showed in him by promoting him to a race seat at least one year ahead of schedule as he rode out an up and down debut season. Wolff was keen to rub that in afterwards, and fair enough.

Antonelli’s teenage tears were a sight for sore eyes, with his predecessor Lewis Hamilton joining him on the podium to pass over the proverbial baton.

Kimi Antonelli repaid Toto Wolff’s faith as Mercedes’ long-term heir to Lewis Hamilton.

Photo by: Dom Gibbons / Formula 1 via Getty Images

Loser – McLaren suffers catastrophic start to title defence

McLaren has now managed to get just one car to the start of 2026’s first two grands prix, which is simply catastrophic. Across its three issues – first Oscar Piastri‘s recon lap off in Melbourne and now two separate electrical issues in the power unit both for Piastri and Lando Norris – the one constant is it grappling with its supply of Mercedes power units.

Against the backdrop of customer teams struggling to get the same energy deployment as the works outfit, that is a bit of a problem, and an inquest at Mercedes HPP in Brixworth will now have to reveal whether there is an issue with its engines or with the way the team has operated them.

In any case, the double DNS is a huge setback for McLaren just as it looked to have found more performance from the deployment side in Shanghai, on a circuit that is less dramatic for energy harvesting.

McLaren showed signs of improvement, only to be nixed by reliability issues.

Photo by: Dom Gibbons / Formula 1 via Getty Images

Winner – Oliver Bearman and Haas make rocket start

From an honourable mention last week, Ollie Bearman now has to get full credits for another excellently managed grand prix, coming out on top of a fraught midfield battle with team-mate Esteban Ocon, the two Haas cars and a rotating cast of drivers from the Red Bull stable.

Bearman was lucky to avoid what he called a “monster” shunt as Isack Hadjar performed a pirouette in front of him, before clearing traffic and pumping in 40 rapid laps to take a well deserved fifth.

That means Haas is now fourth in the standings, one point behind McLaren and five points ahead of Red Bull – a golden start to F1 2026’s intense midfield battle.

Loser – Red Bull needs big upgrades

Red Bull had quite a few awful weekends in recent years – last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix comes to mind. But a Red Bull car has rarely looked this openly hostile to its occupant, as Max Verstappen was desperately hustling the car to eighth in qualifying, just ahead of Hadjar.

It was all for nothing, as yet another terrible start dropped Verstappen to the rear, after which he was embarking on a strong recovery drive given the circumstances, and despite the poor tyre management of the RB22. A cooling problem on the energy recovery system then curtailed his afternoon.

When Hadjar, who escaped being torpedoed by Bearman after the aforementioned spin, was asked what the effect of April’s cancelled races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia would be, his reply was: “Less points lost to everyone else.”

Of all four top teams, Red Bull is most desperately in need of a big upgrade package, and ideally as soon as Miami.

Lewis Hamilton is finally getting to enjoy his Ferrari move.

Photo by: Dom Gibbons / Formula 1 via Getty Images

Winner – Lewis Hamilton looks rejuvenated

Today is Mother’s Day in the UK, and what better occasion for Hamilton to finally snag a long overdue grand prix podium with Ferrari with his mum in attendance. Hamilton is firing on all cylinders, and that’s visible in everything he does, from the way he interacts with the team, the media and the way he attacked Antonelli at the start and then raced team-mate Charles Leclerc.

Hamilton is breathing a sigh of relief that this new generation of cars is suiting him so much better, and you would have to be pretty ill-willed not to be pleased for a seven-time world champion to find his mojo again. There is life in the old dog yet, to quote his former race engineer Pete Bonnington, and that can only be a good thing both for Ferrari and for F1.

Loser – Aston Martin shows little sign of improvement

When Cadillac joined F1, its initial goal was to be respectable even if it meant racing by itself during its debut campaign. With the greatest respect, F1’s 11th outfit probably wasn’t expecting to be racing F1’s would-be superteam Aston Martin from the get-go, which is an indictment of how deep Aston’s woes are running.

One week was never going to change the world for Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll after a tough Melbourne weekend, but there were very few signs of progress in China as Stroll retired early and Alonso had to stop driving before being shaken apart by the engine’s crippling vibrations.

Aston Martin and Honda will be scrambling to get more robust fixes in place to avoid a national embarrassment on the latter’s home soil in Japan, in two weeks from now. And as much as its Saudi title partner Aramco might be reeling, perhaps the cancellation of the Bahrain and Jeddah rounds is for the best so the team has more time to dig into its problems. Let’s get real, recent events show there are much more important things in life than a vibrating power unit.

It was an all-action display for Franco Colapinto as he grabbed his first point for Alpine.

Photo by: James Sutton / Formula 1 / Formula Motorsport Ltd via Getty Images

Winner – Alpine shows its potential

By all accounts Alpine did a poor job in Melbourne getting the most out of its Mercedes power units, but there were mitigating circumstances at race one of these tricky regulations as it wasn’t the only customer team in that situation. On a less difficult circuit for energy management, the Enstone squad was able to show its true potential a lot more, and with it demonstrate why the decision to write off 2025 was not made in vain.

Pierre Gasly had to yield to Bearman for fifth, but was otherwise unchallenged for sixth after an intense opening battle. Meanwhile team-mate Franco Colapinto delivered his first point for Alpine despite being compromised by starting on hards, which left him vulnerable after the early safety car. But the Argentine delivered his best performance in blue and pink with some robust defensive driving to collect his first point in more than a year.

Loser – Williams is behind on all fronts

A medium-to-hard stop right before the early safety car gave Carlos Sainz an avenue to beat the likes of Colapinto, Nico Hulkenberg and Arvid Lindblad to ninth, but other than that this China weekend offered little to write home about for Williams.

Alex Albon didn’t even make the start of the race with a hydraulics issue after the team’s highest qualifier across both qualifying sessions was 17th. Yes, the FW48 is overweight, but it is also lacking aerodynamic load and is proving tough to balance and set up correctly. If Aston Martin hadn’t been so catastrophic, Williams would have been the clear disappointment of the season at this stage and it will have to pull out all the stops to develop mid-season, something which it hasn’t done for a while (by choice).