“Painful reading” for Ferrari despite “vintage” Lewis Hamilton win in China

F1 commentator Martin Brundle believes it will be “painful reading” for Ferrari in the Italian media this week despite Lewis Hamilton’s first victory in red during the Chinese Grand Prix weekend.

It was a mixed F1 weekend for Ferrari at the Shanghai International Circuit.

Hamilton dominated the sprint part of the weekend, having taken pole position on Friday.

The seven-time world champion won the 19-lap sprint race by over six seconds to take his first win for Ferrari.

The rest of the weekend didn’t go to plan for either Hamilton or Charles Leclerc.

Hamilton struggled for pace and finished sixth on track, whereas Leclerc only finished one place higher.

However, it was all in vain as both drivers were excluded from the race results due to technical infringements.

In his post-race F1 column for Sky, Brundle described Hamilton’s sprint race performance as “vintage”.

“The sprint was vintage Hamilton controlling the race from pole position, managing his tyre graining out front better than others, and tucking away very early doors his first victory for Ferrari,” Brundle wrote.

“After the previous weekend in Melbourne, which he called “disastrous”, this was the perfect antidote, and remarkably the first time either he or Ferrari had won a sprint.”

Ferrari DSQs “a miscalculation”

Hamilton, Leclerc and Pierre Gasly were all excluded from the final race results in China.

Hamilton was disqualified after the plank underneath his car was deemed too worn.

Leclerc and Gasly’s cars were found to be underweight.

“The sting in the tail was the post-race disqualification of both Ferraris and Pierre Gasly’s Alpine. Leclerc and Gasly were thrown out due to being marginally underweight,” Brundle added.

“Rather like we saw last year in Spa with George Russell, a long run on one set of tyres uses up a few kilos of tyre tread. Also the race pace was strong and there were no Safety Cars, and so fuel usage was high, consuming more mass.

“Leclerc’s broken front wing was allowed to be replaced but he was still underweight. Whichever way you cut it, that’s a miscalculation by the team to not leave enough margin for all circumstances.

“Hamilton’s car was thrown out for running too close to the ground and overly wearing away the legality skid block underneath by half a millimetre. This rule is in place to stop teams running these ground-effect aero cars too low to gain performance but then trashing super expensive floors every day.

“Especially in the Italian media, it will be painful reading for Ferrari this week despite the sprint victory.”