A Chinese weekend that presents many challenges as well as something new

The 18th running of the Chinese Grand Prix, the second round of the season, immediately throws up some special challenges, not just for the teams and drivers, but also for Pirelli, starting with a completely resurfaced track and just one hour of free practice to see how much it has changed compared to past years.

Last summer, a new surface was laid down on the track and the pit lane at the Shanghai International Circuit. It has only been used a few times towards the end of 2024 and should be smoother than before and, as this is the first event of the year to be held at SIC, it’s logical to expect the track to evolve very quickly.

Furthermore, as was the case in 2024, this will also be the first Sprint format event of the year, with just one free practice session on Friday. That means only 60 minutes to find the right car set-up and evaluate the performance of the various compounds over a long run, even if Saturday’s short race is a great test bed to fully assess at least one of them.

The trio of compounds is the same as last year: C2 as Hard, C3 as Medium and C4 as Soft. The last two were in use in Melbourne last weekend, while the first was run extensively in the three day test in Bahrain at the end of February. However, one must remember that all the compounds are different to those from last year. The C2 in particular is softer and therefore closer to the C3 than in the past.

An important factor to consider this weekend will be the temperatures. It’s the first time that Shanghai hosts the Grand Prix in March when average temperatures rarely exceed 18 °C. Although in fact, the forecast for the weekend is to seem them climb above 20 °C as from Friday, reaching a high of 26 °C on Saturday. While this is therefore considerably warmer than usual at this time, it is actually pretty similar to conditions seen last year for example, when the race was held in the third week of April.

There were three interruptions last year – one VSC and two Safety Cars – which significantly influenced the outcome of the race, both in terms of the number of stops and the sequence in which the compounds were used. In the case of the former, three of the drivers who finished in the top ten made just one stop, six pitted twice and one even three time.

As for the latter, the majority of drivers opted to line up on the grid on the Medium, with the C3 also completing the most stints (46%). However, when it came to the highest mileage, that went to the C2 (57%). The C4 also played its part, with four drivers choosing it for the start, while Fernando Alonso drove his longest stint on this the softest tyre.

The Shanghai track is 5.451 kilometres long and its layout is based on the Chinese character “shang” meaning “upwards” or “above”. The circuit features several slow corners, such as the first three, turn 6 and 14 and high speed corners like the combination from 7 to 8. There are two long straights, the one that crosses the start-finish line and another between turns 13 and 14, which is over a kilometre in length. There are two DRS zone, the first now being 75 metres longer than last year.