Chinese GP: Dominant Lewis Hamilton claims first Ferrari win in sprint race - ESPN

Lewis Hamilton took his first win as a Ferrari driver after securing a lights-to-flag victory in the sprint race at the Chinese Grand Prix.

In just his second race weekend in red, Hamilton qualified on pole position and won the 19-lap race, which took place on Saturday morning in Shanghai ahead of qualifying for the full-length grand prix.

The win not only marks Hamilton's first win as a Ferrari driver but was also the seven-time champion's first victory in F1's sprint format since it was introduced in 2021.

Hamilton said afterwards: «From Lap 1 here this weekend, I've been feeling on it. The engineers have done a great job, the mechanics have done a great job to really fine tune the car — it felt great today, I got a good start, there's so much grip on this new Tarmac it's hard to look after these new tyres and I think everyone was struggling out there the same.»

He added: «The first race was difficult and obviously, I think I really do feel a lot of people underestimated the steep climb it is to get into a new team, to become acclimatised within the team and understanding communication and all sorts of things.

»The amount of critics and people I've heard yapping along the way just clearly not understanding, maybe they've never had the experience or just unaware, so it's felt great to come here and feel comfortable in the car because in Melbourne I didn't feel comfortable in the car.

Hamilton held off old rival Max Verstappen for the first 10 laps of the race, before the Red Bull driver started to struggle with front tyre issues and turned his focus to holding off Oscar Piastri behind him.

Piastri passed Verstappen for second place on lap 15 of the race, but had lost time to Hamilton and ended up 6.8 seconds behind the