Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton seemed surprised to snag pole position for the sprint race preceding the Chinese Grand Prix, but he’s not the only driver who should should be surprised by their performance.
Former F1 racer turned pundit Karun Chandhok has revealed that Max Verstappen’s onboards show the reigning champion wrangling a challenging car — which makes his front-row start particularly impressive.
Lewis Hamilton secured the first sprint qualifying pole position of 2025 — his first as a driver for the Scuderia Ferrari. But hot on his heels was Max Verstappen.
The Red Bull Racing driver qualified alongside Hamilton on the front row, just 0.018 seconds behind the polesitter, while the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris will start third and sixth, respectively.
After a challenging start to the year in Australia, Hamilton sounded pleasantly surprised to find himself leading the field to the first corner on Saturday, but it may also be worth giving Verstappen a round of applause, too.
Pundit Karun Chandhok compared onboard footage of Hamilton and Verstappen’s qualifying laps during the Sky Sports F1 post-quali show, and from what he’s found, Verstappen has a beast on his hands.
Chandhok was blunt right from the start: “Max never looked like he was going to be in the hunt.”
As the former racer played Verstappen’s onboard, he said, “Look at him — the car is not hooked up.”
By contrast, Hamilton was “able to just get the car comfortably to that inside apex” while “Max is like hacking at the wheel and missing the apex.” Verstappen, he concluded, “is having to fight” his car.
“The only thing I could say, looking at the lap compared to Lewis Hamilton’s car or even Piastri’s, where it just looks trickier to drive the Red Bull,” Chandhok said.
“And we saw that in Melbourne as well. He really is having to work much harder to extract the lap time.
“He’s doing it, but it’s not comfortable for him to be doing.”
Chandhok was asked if he thought Verstappen and Hamilton were strong here because it’s a track they like, though this offered another opportunity for the former racer to provide some perspective on the differences between drivers.
“I think the likes of a Hamilton or a Verstappen or an Alonso, they don’t really have a bad track,” he said. “They don’t necessarily have a weak track.”
Speaking of Shanghai, he added, “I think it’s a complicated circuit. I think this is one where really one corner leads into another. Getting the line right, getting to a rhythm around here, is not easy to do.
“The drivers need to be on top of the car and comfortable with the car and confident with it to place it where they want.
“We saw Max there — he didn’t know he’s missing the apex and stuff. He’s got the confidence to kind of hang onto it until the lap time, and Lewis was the same.”
