Lewis Hamilton surprised everyone, including himself, after he registered a mighty lap at the Shanghai International Circuit to secure pole position in the sprint shootout on Friday. The Briton registered a lap time of 1:30.849 and in the process registered a new lap record in China, beating Sebastian Vettel’s lap time of 1:31.095 from 2018.
The SF-25’s pace in Shanghai seemed a bit too good to be true for both Hamilton and Ferrari after the disastrous weekend they had in Australia last week. Hamilton only managed a P10 finish in his debut race for the Prancing Horse, two places behind his teammate Charles Leclerc.
With Hamilton’s sprint pole seemingly coming out of nowhere, Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur is also not ready to make too much of it. “It’s better than last week but difficult to read and understand from one session to the other one,” he said per Sky Sports.
“Sometimes McLaren had a huge gap, sometimes not so. Let’s analyze it. We have a lot of work to do,” he further explained. And Vasseur is spot on with his viewpoint as Ferrari would not want to have a topsy-turvy season with such occasional high points. While the Frenchman is happy for Hamilton, he wants sustainable success.
“For sure it’s a good feeling and gives a positive energy to the team and Lewis, but I always see the negative side [for improving further]”!
With his sprint pole today, Sir Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time on the Shanghai circuit, beating Michael Schumacher’s 1.32:238 set in 2004.
Every time he does something in this sport, he writes new history.
New circuit record: Lewis Hamilton, 1.30:849 pic.twitter.com/IowKqgXb6a
— sim (@simsgazette) March 21, 2025
Hamilton and Ferrari will just hope that this is not a false dawn, something the Briton would be very familiar with, having had several such moments in the past few seasons with Mercedes. In 2023 and 2024, Hamilton did fight for poles and wins but the Mercedes car never really allowed him to fight at the front consistently.
Even Ferrari witnessed such a slump in form last season during the European leg. So, Vasseur would want to sound the alarms at the team to not get carried away with his result.
Although Vasseur is looking to go forward step by step, Hamilton was naturally quite ecstatic about his maiden pole with Ferrari.
Hamilton believes his aggression paid off
Qualifying is all about pushing the limits and trying to extract every ounce of performance from a car. Hamilton did exactly that in his SF-25 after he set the fastest first sector en route to setting the fastest lap around the Shanghai International Circuit.
Speaking of what made the difference for him, he said per Sky Sports, “After last weekend, it was a difficult start to the week. We came here with aggression and wanting to go into the weekend and get the car into a great place”.
“I’m a bit in shock” #F1Sprint #ChineseGP pic.twitter.com/LfD3KJhg1g
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 21, 2025
That said, he did not expect to be ahead of the McLarens, who he believes have been quick “throughout winter testing, Australia and even today”.
With Leclerc qualifying fourth in the other Ferrari, the Maranello-based team seem to have had a strong start to the weekend and will hope to carry forward the momentum on both Saturday and Sunday to score as many points as they can after a tough outing at Albert Park last weekend.
