Chinese Grand Prix 2025 LIVE updates: Oscar Piastri looks to bounce back from Albert Park heartbreak

Sky F1’s Karun Chandhok, a former F1 racer in his own right, says Piastri needs to get to the first corner first – or more specifically, to the sixth corner first, and hold the lead (navigating the opening sequence of tricky turns, before hitting the long straight).

If he can maintain that gap of about 1.7 seconds, he’ll be impacting the tyre life of the cars behind him, Chandhok says.

“When you follow another car, you slide [on the track], and when you slide you get this ripple effect across the top of the tyre, and that gets worse and worse.”

Martin Brundle’s grid walk on Sky Sports is one of the favourite parts of any viewer’s watching experience as he stops anyone from the drivers and team bosses, to random celebrities in their tracks to interview them.

Chinese influencer Xue Zhang, “Mr Unicorn” – complete with a unicorn mask – is obsessing over Lewis Hamilton on the grid. I’d say it’s unbelievable, but it’s not. This is Formula 1.

One for the rev-heads, though – Brundle made the point of saying that the F1 cars don’t arrive on the grid that they’ll start the race on. The reason for this is simple – they want to prolong the tyre life as much as possible, and can’t risk them picking up a puncture as they head out on their formation lap.

Brundle stopped McLaren boss Zak Brown on the grid for a quick word pre-race.

“I don’t know whether it’ll be a one-stop or two-stop race, or maybe one of each,” Brown said.

“[We’re] worried about George [Russell in the Mercedes], worried about Max [Verstappen in the Red Bull], and even though the Ferraris didn’t have a great qualifying, worried about them.”

The track workers in Shanghai have frantically been trying to mop up an oil line down the right-hand side of the track, ahead of the race start.

The culprit was a car in one of the support races, and this could be big… look for it to impact anyone and everyone on the right-hand side of the grid – George Russell, Max Verstappen, and Charles Leclerc to name just the first three who’ll have to navigate it.

The race is due to start in 20 minutes from now (6pm AEDT) and should run for almost exactly two hours.

It was only seven days ago when Oscar Piastri spun off his home Albert Park track on lap 44, his hopes of a fairytale Australian Grand Prix win disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Click here to read about just how it happened

Built in April 2003, the Shanghai circuit is one of the most state-of-the-art on today’s F1 calendar.

Known for its long, sweeping bends and eye-popping straights, the Shanghai Internatioanl Circuit cost around $US450 million to build. Ferrari’s Rubens Barrichello won the first grand prix at the track in 2004.

What makes the circuit so fascinating is how tight and technical the start of the lap is, before it opens right up in the latter stages. Its biggest straight – of 1.2 kilometres – is between turns 13 and 14, with the pit straight starting after the final turn, No.16. Turns seven and eight are known for their super high G-force (or gravitational force, which the drivers experience in F1 cars through their lightning-fast acceleration). In qualifying yesterday, Max Verstappen set a top speed of 339 km/h.

Oscar Piastri set the lap record yesterday in qualifying, and then beat it again. It now sits at 1m 30.641s. He was super strong in the sprint race this weekend, finishing second behind Ferrari superstar Lewis Hamilton, and continued that form right through qualifying.

In the lead-up to today’s big race, Sky F1 commentator Martin Brundle is paying tribute to his great mate Eddie Jordan, who passed away after a long battle with cancer.

He hit Formula 1 in 1991 as a team owner (with the team named after him), and had a huge impact straight away – through the mechanics, engineers, and drivers he mentored.

He gave Michael Schumacher his F1 debut in Spa, before the now-legend of the sport moved on to Benetton.

Brundle spoke about the time he drove for Jordan in 1996 and absolutely destroyed the car, only for Eddie to say he only cared about his welfare.

Jordan sold the final share of his team in 2005 and then spent the rest of his life as a family man, entrepreneur, and musician.

He died 10 days shy of his 77th birthday.

“He affected so many people with his joy of life,” former world champion Damon Hill said of his countryman.

“Thank you, with all of our hearts, Eddie – you were a rock star in every sense.”

G’day, and welcome to the Chinese Grand Prix from Shanghai.

My name is Russell, and I’ll be taking you through all of the action as bayside Melbourne’s own Oscar Piastri tries to turn around his horrific Albert Park luck within the space of just seven days.

For the first time in his career, he’s starting a Formula 1 grand prix from pole and, ominously, both of his fastest times from the final segment of qualifying yesterday would have been enough to cement the No.1 spot on the grid.

We’re just over an hour from lights out. Bring it on.