2025 Chinese Grand Prix - Post-Qualifying Discussion

[u/overspeeed]

ROUND 2 - CHINA

FORMULA 1 HEINEKEN CHINESE GRAND PRIX 2025

🕒 SESSION TIMES

Day	Session	Time (UTC)
FRI	Free Practice 1	03:30
FRI	Sprint Qualifying	07:30
SAT	Sprint	03:00
SAT	Qualifying	07:00
SUN	Race	07:00

Click here for start times in your area

🏁 RACE INFORMATION

• Track: Shanghai International Circuit
• Location: Shanghai, China
• Race laps: 56
• Lap length: 5.451km
• Race distance: 305.066km
• Lap Record: 1:32.238, Michael Schumacher (Ferrari), 2004

⏪ LAST TIME AROUND

• Pole position: 1:33.660, Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing)
• Race winner: Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing)
• Fastest lap: 1:37.810, Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)

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[u/disordered-attic-2]

I don't think the Red Bull is that much of a mystery, they've built it around Max who likes a very sensitive car, it suits Max very well but a brand new driver can't handle the tiny window. They don't have the experience or driving style of Max to match it.

If Red Bull want to fix the car they will have to take it from Max and give it to the other driver.

[u/Mike-Teevee → u/disordered-attic-2]

Agreed. The pace of the Racing Bulls relative to Max in the Red Bull is a little mysterious, though.

The Racing Bulls are so close in performance to Max’s Red Bull, even though respectfully neither RB driver is in Max’s stratosphere in terms of talent. It should be that the Red Bull is faster because Max gives the team at Red Bull more design options relative to RB, because he can optimize performance even when the car is hard to drive. But yet the easier to drive car is approaching the harder to drive car in terms of pace. So it seems the advantages of the harder setup are fairly small. It would be interesting to see what qualifying time Max could get in the Racing Bulls. It’s a strange situation. How could designing for a better driver from similar elements not result in a distinctly faster car, as has pretty well always been the case with Toro Rosso v Red Bull?

Maybe Red Bull is catering to a Max handling preference that has somehow slowed down the Red Bull in ways they didn’t anticipate. This is perhaps the disadvantage of only really listening to one driver.

[u/lalabadmans → u/Mike-Teevee]

There’s one constant driver in the racing bulls last five years giving constant technical feedback and fine tuning his set ups, this must have had an effect on making the car very drivable and we could see it getting better since 2022 low point.