2024 Chinese Grand Prix: Max Verstappen on pole position, Lewis Hamilton in 18th place

Max Verstappen was in commanding form as he took pole position at the Chinese Grand Prix, leading Sergio Perez into a one-two for Red Bull.

Verstappen, who had just won the first sprint race of the season, had a 0.322 second lead over Perez.

The Mexican beat Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin by 0.166 seconds, followed by McLaren's Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

Lewis Hamilton had a miserable day, qualifying 18th.

Mercedes teammate George Russell was eighth behind Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.

Hamilton, who made a mistake at the hairpin and lost time by running wide, said he had made “massive” changes to his Mercedes' set-up after finishing second behind Verstappen in the sprint race.

“I'll try my best, but 18th is pretty bad,” Hamilton said. “As I was changing the setup, I thought, 'It can't get any worse than this.' And it did!”

Red Bull looked in a world of their own all day, despite Perez getting caught in traffic and almost getting knocked out at the end of the first session.

The surprise was Alonso, whose Aston Martin has generally looked no match for Ferrari or McLaren this season, but third place was an impressive result for the veteran Spaniard.

Alonso ran in third place for much of the sprint before being forced to retire due to damage from a collision with Sainz, but made up for it with a strong performance in Grand Prix qualifying.

Alonso said: “There was a split second in Turns 1 and 2 and I thought about stopping, but we kept going and set a good lap time. The car has improved since this morning and we made some changes.” Told.

Sainz crashed at the end of the first lap in his second qualifying session, but managed to get his Ferrari back into the pits with the exception of the front wing, where he discovered that the Ferrari was otherwise undamaged.

He and Leclerc were Red Bull's closest challengers in the second session, although they were more than 0.3 seconds off the pace, but they were separated in the final session, with Alonso and McLaren starting ahead.

“We were setting up the car on our side for the race, but we didn't expect McLaren and Fernando to jump over us,” Leclerc said.

“We fell a little further back than we would have liked, but we have good race pace and tire management so we are confident we can get back to third place.”

Behind Russell, Haas's Nico Hulkenberg and Sauber's Valtteri Bottas completed the top ten.

At RB, Daniel Ricciardo showed his best performance of the season in 12th place, but the team made chassis changes to address the Australian's struggles so far this season.

Teammate Hiroki Tsunoda was puzzled in 19th place, unable to explain the sudden drop in pace.