Racing Bulls had a complicated Friday (13) at the Shanghai International Circuit, the stage for the first sprint race weekend of the 2026 Formula 1 season. Both cars advanced to SQ2, but still lacked the pace to compete for SQ3 in China.
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Track engineering director Mattia Spini highlighted the differences of the Chinese track compared to Melbourne: “The Shanghai circuit is quite different from Melbourne, with much more time spent in low-speed corners. Being the first sprint race weekend, we expected a challenging day, and that was basically what we saw.”
Rookie Arvid Lindblad faced technical problems in FP1, which limited his track time and affected qualifying. “I’m not particularly happy with today. There was little grip and I suffered from instability on corner entry and understeer,” he said.
Liam Lawson, on the other hand, had a smoother session and praised the car’s evolution: “I was quite satisfied with my lap. We took a good step from FP1 to qualifying with the setup changes. We will need to work on this overnight.”
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Even outside the scoring positions, the team is focusing on the sprint race and Saturday’s qualifying. Spini reinforced: “We will continue working to improve the car and the power unit, as there is still pace to be found compared to our competitors.”
The sprint race in Shanghai is scheduled for 00:00. F1MANIA.NET follows the entire stage in real time.
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