Will Ferrari be fastest on 'quirky' Shanghai circuit? 2026 Chinese GP Preview

0:00Jolyon Palmer:Mercedes will have less of an advantage here, which will bring the likes of Red Bull closer. I think Ferrari particularly will be closer. I mean, Lewis is quick in Melbourne, generally. This is one of his great circuits.

0:10Tom Clarkson:I think there's some magic in the air this weekend for Ferrari. Oscar Piastri has had, it's been a long week.

0:15Jolyon Palmer:He is going to pay the price for not racing, I think, in Melbourne.

0:21Tom Clarkson:Welcome everyone to the Shanghai International Circuit for F1 Nation's preview of the Chinese Grand Prix. with me Tom Clarkson and Jolian Palmer, former F1 driver turned F1 TV expert. JP, good to see you again. You had a good trip up from Melbourne?

0:39Jolyon Palmer:I had a reasonable trip up from Melbourne. It's a long way, isn't it? Deceptively far. But we made it and I'm ready for round two.

0:45Tom Clarkson:I came via Hong Kong and Valtteri Bottas was on my flight. And wherever Valtteri Bottas is, his bicycle is with him, right? Him and that bike box go everywhere together. that he must be best mates, first name terms with all of the excess baggage people around the world, right?

1:03Jolyon Palmer:But that's quite a hassle. Packing up a bike box usually means dismantling the bike as well. I'm sure he's a good mechanic. That's a great effort from Valtteri.

1:14Tom Clarkson:Keep going, Valtteri. Keep pushing. Now it's race two of the 2026 season. JP, just how different is the challenge of the Shanghai circuit compared to Albert Park last week?

1:26Jolyon Palmer:It's a very different challenge. I mean, to be honest, I think the cars are going to be more suited to this circuit. We spoke last week of the level of energy recharging, harvesting that was right on the upper level of what we're going to see this year. And I think the first thing is this weekend is not going to be like that. There's still going to be a level of it. But in terms of the biggest thing for the drivers, hopefully they're back towards more similar driving styles than they're used to. it's a sprint weekend so that's going to add a lot more drama to it as well uh one one hour of practice and then into meaningful sessions so you've got to get that hour of practice in now and the circuit itself is is a quirky one those long corners is what is what defines it i think turn one into two into three 270 degrees of cornering and it feels like it goes on forever it's a pain for that left front tire uh it's massively front limited circuit and the driving

2:21Tom Clarkson:style is going to be very different here look you say um it's going to be much more like a normal track right compared to albert park do you think we're still going to get that wheel to wheel action that we saw last week you know we had what 120 overtakes in 58 laps seven overtakes for the lead in the opening 10 laps do you think this will be something similar

2:40Jolyon Palmer:i'm expecting a chaotic start still i still think the fundamentally the teams are getting used to how to start the race with with energy in the battery how to negotiate formation lap and then how to get the cars off the line as soon as you've got disparity at the start you're bound to get some overtaking as well and that was the i mean that was amazing wasn't it in the start of of the australian grand prix and i still think we're going to get overtaking in the race because you've got that great chance into the hairpin on the on the back straight where energy management will be a thing i mean the straight is 1.2 kilometers so you're still going to be harvesting energy as the speed builds and and that means your overtake will become more important and if you're within a second you'll get a chance a little bit like we had with with drs in the past i'm not expecting it to be quite as cat and mousey as we had in melbourne because the reason that melbourne was so entertaining out front was because of energy deployment and charging between russell and leclerc but there's so many chances to deploy your energy on the straights here there's way better chances to recharge so you've got two things you've got the cars probably looking less like they're harvesting into corners i think if you if you just tune into especially to qualifying i'm expecting them to look like they're accelerating a long way into the corner rather than having the big harvests but that'll mean the racing isn't quite as manic as it was in

3:56Tom Clarkson:melbourne as well what because drivers will all be doing more of the same thing at the same time

4:01Jolyon Palmer:they'll all have more energy to use so fundamentally they're not going to have to be backing off on the straights anywhere near as much as they were having to across sort of four different straits in in melbourne there used to be four drs zones so they were all overtaking chances in in uh in melbourne but with with very little in terms of braking or cornering in between here you've got still like a couple of a couple of drs zones it was three but in between that you've got big braking zones you've got massive time of being off throttle through turns one and two you've got great chances to recharge the battery which means you can then deploy it on the next straight so effectively they're just not as energy limited here so it'll be a different race and i don't

4:42Tom Clarkson:quite know how it's going to pan out it's something new for everyone look segue to my next question which is let's talk about the pecking order you you just said you don't know how it's going to pan out but mercedes arrive as the favorites right any condition any kind of racetrack they are

4:58Jolyon Palmer:they're the ones to beat still right you would have to say when they've just blitzed the field and qualifying a week ago yeah if anyone's turned that around I know the track's different but they they are going to be the favorites I think my question is really how close Ferrari can get and qualifying and then if they can have a good job in the race again I think the others will

5:19Tom Clarkson:still be playing catch-up well I mean let's not forget that Lewis Hamilton loves this place he's got six wins six poles he he actually won the sprint here last year in a red car as well

5:29Jolyon Palmer:do you think he'll fancy his chances yeah i do i do i think this would be a good shot for ferrari generally and you're completely right i mean lewis is quick in melbourne generally but he this is one

5:42Tom Clarkson:of his one of his great circuits why is he so good to you know you talk about that long what is it opening three corners or something like that does he find a lot of time there i think he's he's just

5:54Jolyon Palmer:got a great feel and rhythm for the circuit and at that first corner entry it's just so you have to be so at one with the car you have to be so dialed in to just perfecting your line into into turn two feeling a balance getting the front end sharp enough that you're not washing wide with understeer and hurting the tires he just seems to be precise he's dialed in and it's always worked for him around him.

6:17Tom Clarkson:JP you know the extra torque that we have with these engines this year and and the straight line speeds we're seeing as well i mean is turn one going to feel like a like almost like a different corner compared to last year but so particularly in qualifying when they're you know really on it and going a lot faster in a straight line i think turn one is

6:37Jolyon Palmer:going to be it's always one of the trickiest i think it's going to be really tricky still you're going to be arriving really quick potentially quicker than than previously because you've got of course active aero now so you've got minimal drag on the straights and it's not that massive of a straight into the first corner that you're going to be into this sort of big super clips so you're going to be arriving very fast you've then got to get your downforce back on the car so close your wings turn into the first corner and i think that's the sort of corner where it's bumpy really fast approach you're not really on the brakes as you turn in or just as you're as you're turning in and we've now got shorter wheelbase so the cars will be snappier they're livelier and we've got a good chunk less downforce than last year so that first approach I think into turn one is going to be a bit of a killer I reckon early on it's going to be you'll see a lot of

7:29Tom Clarkson:people having big old hairy moments then recipe for excitement I'm liking that what about Red Bull Max Verstappen in the press conference on Thursday said that even if he'd started higher up on the grid in Melbourne p5 was all he had as in just one place further ahead than he actually finished you know having come from the back I was a little bit disappointed to hear him say that I thought he might figure they were closer in in race trim than that do you think they'll be faster here

7:58Jolyon Palmer:yeah I think they will I think I think basically Mercedes will have less of an advantage here which will bring the likes of Red Bull close I think Ferrari particularly will be closer I was also surprised that Max kind of had that sentiment I know Red Bull were very hard on the tires he was coming through traffic for a lot of the race didn't have a huge amount of time in in free air he was actually very quick in the first stint of the race i was looking through and and i mean he was basically quicker than isaac for the last six laps they did before isaac then stopped and max was still clearing i think he cleared three cars bortoletto behrman and uh i've gone for this now one other in that midfield in that midfield uh midfield scrap pierre gasly so he's clearing three three midfield cars and he's still got better pace than than Hadjar in that moment so I was interested just to get a comparison because obviously we didn't really get that from qualifying and then obviously Isaac was struggling to keep up with the top four he was he was dropping back but I did think maybe Max could especially with a bit of scrapping stay closer but I'm sure he knows that he's looked through and I thought actually there's a there's

9:06Tom Clarkson:a pretty big gap there yeah he's a he's a realist isn't he as are McLaren right let's let's move on to them now I mean Oscar Piastri has had it's been a long week I would imagine for him after the disappointment of Melbourne he took his first ever pole position here last year he won the Grand Prix he goes well here he was quick actually all last weekend as well what kind of mindset do you think that guy's in now just put your racing driver head on I think he was doing he was doing a good

9:36Jolyon Palmer:job wasn't he last week and as you say he'll have confidence when you've because this circuit is such a niche drive with those you know quirky corners if you've got a good result you've got form here especially i think front limited circuits he's he's generally more competitive than than lando in that in it favors him more than lando um that'll give him confidence but he is going to pay the price for not racing i think in in melbourne as well because they're all still so new with the cars remember he's not done a race start he didn't even do a formation lap to work out exactly how you how you're dealing with the battery getting the tires up to temp they'll learn from from Lando but in terms of having that first-hand feel of dropping the dropping the clutch at the start how how do you race into turn one with varying battery levels you've got Arvid Lindblad flying through you've got Hamilton flying through but you've got Hadjar and Antonelli going nowhere you know he's got to learn all of that bring on the sprint weekend at least he's going to get two starts this week yeah it will it will it's a good point it will be uh it'll be good for him to get a view of that before the Grand Prix where it counts more but I still think he's driving at a at a high level so he's got to dust himself off and get something on the board.

10:54Tom Clarkson:JP one of the sort of headlines to come out of Melbourne was the Mercedes customer teams saying that they really are at a disadvantage this year being customers much more so than than in the previous reg set. I'd love to get your thoughts on that and how quickly you think they can close the gap in terms of optimization to the works team. I was really surprised.

11:19Jolyon Palmer:I mean, was it just sour grapes? No. There's more to it. There's more to it. So Mercedes ran the latest spec of power unit in testing in Bahrain. The customer teams didn't get that. They then had that for Melbourne and they were trying to work out how on earth to get the most out of it whilst Mercedes have been using that and figuring it all out in pre-season testing. And it seems like the information flow from the Mercedes Works team to the customers of Mercedes, including sort of Mercedes HPP power unit personnel that have gone there, there's not the workflow that there used to be. So the sharing of information so that the Mercedes customer teams are competitive, it's basically not there at the moment.

12:04Jolyon Palmer:so i'm sure this is a kind of a fallout of mercedes thinking they've got a great power unit they obviously do they've learned a lot and they've been beaten by mclaren for the last couple of years including mclaren being being the world constructors champions so i think it seems to be a more brutal approach by mercedes to just yes we'll supply you some some engines but no we're not going to tell you how to get the absolute most out of it is effectively what their customers are saying and it rings true when you look at the data the straight line speed difference of McLaren and Mercedes bearing in mind they've got the same hardware they have to have the same software and hardware by rule yeah the straight line speed differences are huge.

12:50Tom Clarkson:If the Mercedes works team had been the fastest of the Mercedes powered cars for the last couple of years and not McLaren I

12:57Jolyon Palmer:wonder if that attitude would have been different if you're mclaren this is the problem this is why being a customer in a new uh set of regulations especially on the power unit is is a hindrance so does it justify aston martin going to honda maybe if honda one day can be really competitive but then you think if you're williams and you're alpine you're thinking guys come on come on please give me a chance here we won't beat you i promise but just let us try and get into Q3 and and they're carrying the cost of that as well I was speaking to the guys at Alpine over the winter and they kept alluding to the fact that the switch to Mercedes hasn't been all it's cracked up to be and and they thought it would be better and and we're all saying that Mercedes seems to have the best engine and they're like oh yeah but the the ways of working is tricky now it seems exactly what what they've been alluding to the whole time they're not getting kind of the grade A treatment but what do they do about it I don't know they're they're a little bit a little bit stuck i mean they will get closer with every race that passes won't they yeah they will as they learn more andrea stella was saying this after after the race in melbourne every time they put the car on the ground their rate of learning is going to be so much higher than than the rivals because they're basically starting from a lower point and you know what i said before is true melbourne suits mercedes down to the ground getting energy from the battery harvesting it and using it is so crucial there and it's less crucial here so again then the whole field, I think, will condense.

14:24Tom Clarkson:Final team to discuss, Aston Martin. Torrid times in Melbourne for them. Fernando Alonso was in the press conference today saying that he's going to be limited on mileage during practice because they're lacking spare parts. Good job they've only got one hour then, isn't it? Now you've got to go and do something. It's spring quality on a Friday. Where's the low-hanging fruit for Aston Martin?

14:49Jolyon Palmer:I think that there's various areas where they can find performance. I mean, Adrian Newey, in terms of a car design, is going to be already mapping out a plan to add downforce to the car. I think the car's a little bit overweight, so trimming that down, although it's nowhere near as drastic as some of the other numbers that I've heard around the paddock. So you've got Adrian anyway in a ground zero new aero rules as well, working on that. and so i think they'll fine-tune the car even if they're barely running it to to figure stuff out then it's up to honda and you think they've had the concern is they've had years of working on this so are they going to fix anything in in a few months it's a long-term plan to turn this around for honda i'm sure now they've got the car running on the circuit if they they did a few laps in there i think they did 60 combined on sunday which is better than anyone thought so that the information now is coming through way quicker than just simulation data but these things are not the work of a moment so on the power unit side the straight line speeds of aston martin were were woeful i was looking at max coming through the field some of his moves were really good at the start of the race and he was having to kind of lunge people on the brakes uh it was it was good to see because a lot of it was was obviously uh energy deployment and then he comes up behind fernando and it's like he's fernando is in the old i don't want to say it but a formula two engine yeah yeah we'll move it forward yeah he didn't have a lot of power i'll tell you that so i've you sort of blink and you missed the the green aston martin gone for max and it just showed that he fernando literally can't fight with other cars now fernando was being much more what's the

16:28Tom Clarkson:word cohesive in the press conference there was no finger pointing we're in this together and he said it's not as mentally tough for him this situation as you might think i was surprised

16:40Jolyon Palmer:Do you think there's an element of him being resigned to the fact that he's in a testing session now, testing a few months? And age.

16:48Tom Clarkson:I mean, I just think back to when he was in a similar situation with Honda in the McLaren days 10 years ago and how he just looked like an angry man everywhere he went, whereas he seems much more chilled about this.

17:00Jolyon Palmer:I wonder if he's at peace with it he's he's 44 45 in the summer he's in the worst team right now with all the potential of the the megastars around him but like you say he doesn't have age on his side so I wonder if he's just thinking you know unlike 2015 when this was still sort of peak Fernando time he'd almost just had some amazing years with Ferrari and he's thinking what am I doing driving this this heap he's thinking I've actually I haven't now got a chance to go anywhere else I've played all my cards I've landed in an Adrian Newey team with Honda supplying the power units I have to stay here galvanize the team because you know

17:46Tom Clarkson:what are we doing otherwise JP maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel maybe because of Adrian he can see it you know and let's not forget the name Andy Cowell as well Andy is a a PU master and he's spending a lot of time in Japan at the moment trying to sort the situation out well good luck to them good luck to everybody on the grid this weekend JP last thing for our short preview I want a top three in the Grand Prix should we go punchy oh go on

18:15Jolyon Palmer:it's it's it's a hamilton podium as a minimum the first ferrari podium from homer wow are they gonna win are they gonna win probably not but i'm gonna go punchy and say this is a this is a lewis hamilton victory this weekend they'll get off the line and they're gonna be way more competitive uh it's gonna be still ferraris and mercedes so put them in any order but i think there's i think there's some magic in the air this weekend for ferrari what do you

18:41Tom Clarkson:reckon well i'd love to see that just quick message to the engineers raise the car all right

18:46Jolyon Palmer:look out for those skips after last year we're out of ground effect hopefully they'll be all right