Championship leader George Russell extended his advantage by earning the first Sprint Race win of F1 2026 at the Chinese GP . It’s only his second ever Sprint Race win of his career, following the 2022 Brazilian racing weekend, during which the Mercedes driver had won both the Sprint event and the actual Grand Prix for the first time.
A battled F1 Chinese Sprint Race win for Russell
The eventual Sprint Winner was involved throughout the F1 Chinese Sprint race in a well-fought battle with Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton for the lead in the first five laps. In fact, the former teammates completed several overtakes on each other.
Ultimately, the Brit was able to build a consistent gap over the Ferrari duo, with Leclerc passing Hamilton. A Safety Car brought everyone back together, but the Mercedes driver managed things well.
Russell summed up his rather successful participation in the 2026 F1 Sprint Race at the Chinese GP, highlighting the interesting moves and plenty of on-track racing and moves compared to some of the previous instances over the last few years.
“It was pretty funny at the end. A lot of strategy at play and how you do the overtakes is not easy. I hope it was a fun race to watch, usually the sprint race is pretty boring, and then I got everything under control, safety car. But yeah, really happy to get the win.”
Wind and managing tyres
The winner of the inaugural round of the 2026 F1 season additionally elaborated on his main concerns during the 19 laps in Shanghai, which mainly focused on the weather conditions.
“I feel a lot of wind here as well, for example. Yeah, I mean, it’s really windy at the moment. It’s not easy because this first corner is so long, and it only takes one lap of pushing too much, and you can destroy your front left tyre.”
Another factor to watch out for, especially for the upcoming full-length race, will definitely be tyre management and tyre consumption, Russell added, as he praised Hamilton for his Sprint performance, which definitely proved his competence and wheel knowledge according to him.
“So it was just sort of managing, and especially when we were battling, you know, Lewis did an amazing job in the early laps.He caught me off guard, but, you know, 20 years experience. So that’s, yeah, I still got a little bit to learn there.”
Looking at qualifying and tomorrow, Russell ultimately believes that Ferrari will be again Mercedes’ main rival in securing pole position and, even more so, the actual race win, with the majority of the rest of the grid a bit further down the order.
“I hope we can bring more, but, you know, yesterday was a really great day. Ferrari, again, seemed to be offset in qualifying, but really close to us in race pace. So ultimately, we probably need to find a bit of improvement for the race.”
