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 afterward: “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 tires, 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 acclimatized 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 tire 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 Ferrari driver at the checkered flag.

Hamilton’s victory provides renewed hope for a championship battle after Ferrari struggled at the opening round in Australia and McLaren looked dominant.

He secured eight points for the victory, to add to the single point he scored in Australia, but will enter the rest of the weekend with renewed hope of challenge for a grand prix victory with Ferrari at just his second attempt.

Lando Norris, who won the first race of the season in Melbourne, finished Saturday’s sprint in eighth, scoring just one point, after dropping three places at the start with a mistake at Turn 6.

The McLaren driver said of his performance: “At the minute in the race, I just feel dreadful.”

He added that qualifying sixth in Friday’s session didn’t help matters. “I just had a bad first lap and had to run into the grass a bit in Turn 6 and then it was difficult to do a lot. Qualifying didn’t help, but I wasn’t good today either.”

George Russell secured fourth place for Mercedes after passing Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari for the position at Turn 14 on the opening lap.

Leclerc finished the race fifth ahead of an impressive performance by Racing Bulls driver Yuki Tsunoda, who held off the second Mercedes of Andrea Kimi Antonelli for sixth.