F1 China, the report cards of the promoted
1. Kimi Antonelli. Long live dreams and those who chase them. Long live the kids who believe and are not afraid of anything, not even of exposing themselves and crying in front of the world. Long live Kimi Antonelli, then, who last year questioned himself after a series of lackluster races, up to the outburst at Spa and the error in free practice at Monza. From that moment on, Mercedes changed pace and Kimi with it. Now the car has the right engine and Antonelli has the wings to fly, to believe in it more and more. And us with him. Other sports, even recently, have made us dream. And so let’s dream.
2. Lewis Hamilton. It’s a completely different tune compared to the dullness of late 2025. But Hamilton has always been like this: he gets excited and depressed along with the context. If he has the car, he still knows how to be important and beat a champion like Leclerc at the peak of his maturity. And he battles indeed, both on track (the duel with Leclerc was beautiful, certainly less artificial than the one with Russell in Australia, but let’s avoid bringing up the battles of the past) and dialectically: “We need power“, “The Mercedes advantage is only the engine” are messages he sends to the team and also to the FIA.
3. Ollie Bearman and Pierre Gasly. In the car-results ratio, clearly the two best drivers of this start of the season. Ollie in F1 hasn’t missed a race, a corner, half a word, not even a hairstyle: Mr. Perfect can’t wait to study at the school of Charles. Gasly: last year he performed miracles, I didn’t expect anything different with a barely presentable car. He might not be a superstar, but he’s a great driver, and he doesn’t deserve to rot among the caryatids.
F1 China, the report cards of the failed
3. Qualifying. Not to mention the failure to permanently cancel Sakhir and Jeddah (I have a very $light $u$picion, but I’m probably being cynical) and a championship defined as spectacular when one car gives half a minute to all the others as soon as it has a clear track, the biggest failure of this new era is qualifying. Now the situation is exacerbated by wide gaps and defined hierarchies (same drivers between SQ1 and Q1, same drivers between SQ2 and Q2, same drivers between SQ3 and Q3), but objectively Saturday is a poor show. The drivers coast instead of pushing the braking point and – as our Federico Albano points out – follow preset plans in energy discharge. Plans that, however, go to ruin as soon as you seek the limit and try something different, because at that point the system adapts the scheme to the available energy and messes everything up for you. The courage that should reward you at least on a single lap risks being your condemnation: some might like it (I doubt it), but let’s not call it Formula 1.
2. McLaren. How the world changes in 100 days. That’s how many have passed since Abu Dhabi, where Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen were playing for the title and the papaya team returned to the top of the world. In China, Max didn’t see the finish line, McLaren didn’t even start. It has shown several times that it knows how to get back up and work (its dominance was born from the rubble of early 2023), but this time it might not be enough, because today’s troubles concern areas outside its direct control.
1. Aston Martin. Is it better not to start or to start and get slapped even by Bottas and Perez? Two jokers whose cheeks are a mattress with a system of arched slats in fine wood to allow the teammate’s hand the best possible comfort. Two who are now teammates and find it uncomfortable to prevail over each other, let alone over rivals. But Stroll is a man on a mission: he is ambitious, and if he has to fail, he wants to do it big. Aston Martin races (so to speak) and retires in the most humiliating way, with Fernando Alonso having to stop because – I quote – “I could no longer feel my hands and feet due to the vibrations of the power unit“. And this while Honda, through a lunar press release, exults because the engine has covered more km than in Melbourne. Now comes Suzuka, the home race, where Alonso already floored them 11 years ago. And where it will be difficult to drive without hands.
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