Mercedes flies in qualifying
Mercedes is clearly the team to beat in this very early part of 2026. But if in the race, between the start and the ‘battery’ overtakes, Ferrari seems able to hold its own in the first laps, in qualifying there seems to be no contest, as Russell and Antonelli don’t seem to struggle at all in securing the front row.
And so it also happened in Shanghai, where the two Silver Arrows put themselves ahead of everyone in both Friday’s Sprint Qualifying and Saturday’s Qualifying.
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Is there a Mercedes Party Mode?
Our Federico Albano had explained it from the pages of FormulaPassion.it after Australia: Mercedes in qualifying could exploit a sort of electric ‘Party Mode’, meaning a mapping particularly effective in terms of delivery over a single lap.
The intuition seems to have been correct, as it was confirmed by Lewis Hamilton after the China Sprint: “I was at Mercedes for a long time and I know how it works there. In qualifying they have another mode they can resort to, similar to the Party Mode of the past. Once they get to Q2 they activate it, while we don’t have it. In the race they don’t have that mode. But that they have something extra to exploit from Q2 is evident, because in Q1 we are not that far away and then they make a big jump. From one tenth behind they suddenly go to seven tenths ahead.”
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The theme of the more aggressive qualifying mode remained in Hamilton’s mind even after qualifying, where he finished third, three and a half tenths behind Antonelli: “Understanding the real gap is not easy, because maybe they didn’t activate that particular mode they have. I don’t know. We’ll take this gap with a grain of salt.”
McLaren’s Lando Norris was asked about the existence of this Party Mode and if his team can exploit it in qualifying: “No, we don’t have it. I don’t know if Mercedes has it.”
Read more Russell: “Without battery at the start of the lap and with cold tires I finished 2nd”
