Kimi Antonelli stepped up Saturday when his Mercedes teammate George Russell hit trouble in qualifying to become the youngest-ever driver on pole position for a Formula 1 Grand Prix.
After holding off a challenge from Ferrari to win the sprint race earlier in the day, Russell seemed near-unbeatable. Then he stopped on track in qualifying and limped back to the pits with technical problems.
Russell's team got the car going again with seconds to spare for him to set a time. It was only good enough for second on the grid, 0.222 of a second off Antonelli, who kept up Mercedes’ run of qualifying dominance after F1’s sweeping changes to the cars for 2026.
Kiwi driver Liam Lawson qualified 14th after his final quick lap was interrupted by a yellow flag when Audi's Gabriel Bortoleto left the track near the end of Q2.
“F*** me,” Lawson could be heard telling his race engineer.
“It would have been very close to Q3,” Lawson said of the session.
“It’s a shame, we were on quite a nice lap. We had a messy session stringing it together, and then at the end, the last lap was really nice. It’s a shame.”
Lawson, who managed to score points in the sprint, charging through the field to finish seventh from 13th, said: "We had a good race car today.
"Tomorrow we'll find out."
The Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc will start third and fourth. Their fast starts could threaten Mercedes off the line, as they did last week in Australia and in Saturday's sprint race.
The 19-year-old Antonelli becomes the youngest driver to take pole position for a full Grand Prix race, though he was also on pole aged 18 for a sprint race last year in Miami.
“It’s just the beginning, so obviously there’s a lot more to come,” Antonelli said. “Really looking forward to tomorrow. Car is feeling really good, car is strong, so a lot to play for tomorrow. But just super happy with today.”
Russell said a damaged front wing and gear-change issues made for a “crazy” qualifying session. “As soon as I went out on the track, I could tell something wasn’t right,” he said. He then had to set a last-chance time with a depleted battery and cold tyres.
It's lights out for the Grand Prix in Shanghai at 8pm (NZT) today.
Adapting to F1's changes
Formula 1 has made massive engine and chassis changes for this season — the most radical in over a decade — that feature a 50-50 split between internal combustion and electric power.
Russell is one of the new era's biggest cheerleaders and said Saturday's sprint battle felt “like go-kart racing in the past... I don’t ever remember Formula 1 being like that, where you can have three or four cars all fighting for the same position truly on track."
Drivers have struggled to handle the trade-off between using power and conserving it, and some have struggled with extra power coming in unexpectedly.
Four-time world champion Max Verstappen is no fan of the changes and finished ninth in the sprint race.
“Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong,” Verstappen said. “We just need to get our stuff together.”
- Additional reporting by 1News
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