2024 F1 Round 5 Chinese GP FP1: Stroll fastest in 1:36.302, Piastri 0.327s behind, Zhou 11th at home

The 2024 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix opened with its only free practice session at the Shanghai International Circuit on the morning of 19 April, Beijing time. Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll topped the times with a 1:36.302, 0.327 seconds ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen third. Sauber’s home driver Zhou Guanyu finished 11th.

After cancellations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the public-health restrictions that followed, the Chinese Grand Prix returned to the F1 calendar for the first time since 2019. With only one practice session on this Sprint weekend, the teams took very different approaches to testing. Alpine used soft tyres throughout to focus on qualifying simulations, Red Bull mainly ran mediums, and RB concentrated on hards. Most drivers switched to softs for qualifying-style runs late in the session, but both Mercedes drivers, Fernando Alonso and Lando Norris still set their times on hards. The timing sheet therefore offered almost no reliable indication of the teams’ true competitive order.

Shanghai was overcast, but the rain feared before the session did not arrive. Practice began in dry conditions, with an air temperature of 22°C and a track temperature of 39°C. Pirelli brought its second-hardest range, the C2, C3 and C4 compounds. Several drivers complained that they could not get their tyres up to temperature. With the track at around 40°C, the temperature itself was not particularly low; the problem was a lack of grip from the surface. Lap times were nearly four seconds slower than in the first practice session five years earlier.

Fourteen minutes into practice, grass beside Turn 7 caught fire in unusual circumstances, bringing out the red flag. The interruption lasted only five minutes, but that was a significant loss from the weekend’s sole 60-minute practice session. Hamilton received a black-and-white warning flag for crossing the white line on entry to the pits. Running a new chassis, Daniel Ricciardo finished ninth, 0.768 seconds ahead of team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, who was 12th.