Piastri wins in China as McLaren claim brilliant 1-2

Oscar Piastri finished ahead of Lando Norris and George Russell.

Oscar Piastri picked up maximum points in Shanghai as he led a McLaren 1-2 to kick start his title campaign, whilst Ferrari suffered a double DSQ.

The Australian was comfortable throughout and came home first ahead of teammate Lando Norris in P2, and Mercedes' George Russell in P3.

As the lights went out, Oscar, who started on pole, squeezed George at turn 1 to keep the lead, whilst his teammate swept around the outside to take second place. The top three was then unchanged come the checkered flag, despite a late scare for Lando.

After his dominant performance, Oscar said: "It's been an incredible weekend from start to finish. The car's been pretty mega the whole time. I think today was a bit of a surprise with how the tyres behaved but just super proud of the whole weekend.

"This is what I feel like I deserved from last week, so I'm extremely happy."

The tyre situation was one of the big talking points before the race, with many predicting a two-stop due to the graining seen on the medium in the sprint, however, the one-stop became the favoured strategy in the race.

Oscar said: "The hard was a much better tyre than everyone expected, or certainly we expected. To go all the way to the end like that was a bit of a surprise, but a happy surprise."

Oscar is the first Australian to win in China since Daniel Ricciardo in 2018.

As for Lando, P2 was a good result in the end as he experienced brake pedal problems which eventually led to the Brit having essentially no brakes. He just about hung on ahead of Mercedes' George Russell who quietly went around to make it two podiums in a row to start the season.

Further down Max Verstappen endured a difficult start, dropping two places to P6, however, looked strong late on and retook the places on both Ferraris to finish P4.

As for the Ferrari's, the pair made contact on lap 1 which led to Charles Leclerc losing one of the end plates on his front wing. This seemingly made no difference as for the first time this weekend, Charles was the quicker driver and came home P5 ahead of Hamilton in P6. However, after the race, the pair were disqualified as both cars were in breach of the technical regulations.

Charles' car was found to be underweight, whilst Lewis' skid blocks were worn down more than the regulations allow. It means Lewis becomes the first driver to ever win an event and be disqualified in the same F1 weekend, having won Saturday's sprint.

Elsewhere Esteban Ocon was the standout driver, coming home an incredible P5 with the Haas driver's pace looking especially good on the hard tyre. After starting P11, the Frenchman undercut Albon and made an impressive move on Kimi Antonelli, before smartly managing the one-stop to come home with 10 points. With Bearman also in the points, the weekend was a massive improvement for Haas after fears last week they'd taken a backwards step from last year.

Esteban Ocon scored 10 points with his P5 finish for Haas.

However, for most of the race, it had looked like it was going to be RB who would finish best of the rest, with Yuki Tsunoda running P7 after clearing his teammate early on, however, another strategy blunder cost him.

Just after half-race distance, the big decision for every team was whether to pit or try and drag out the hard tyres till the end, and RB chose to pit both Yuki and Isack.

However, with no one else doing so, and the hard tyres lasting longer than expected, Yuki and Isack lumbered back in P14 and P16.

Ocon's P5 should have been Yuki's if not for the attempted undercut, whilst Isack could easily have finished P7 or P8. That's two weeks in a row now that Yuki has missed out on big points because of the team's calls.

That wasn't it for Yuki's bad luck though, as any attempts to use his fresher tyres were ended as his front wing snapped all on its own in a bizarre incident.

It has to be said however that it was still an incredibly strong drive from Yuki whilst Isack looked more than comfortable on his first race start.

RB's Isack Hadjar battles with Esteban Ocon and Alex Albon

As for the rest of the points scorers, Alex Albon and Williams did well to overcome the graining issues they suffered earlier in the weekend, picking up more valuable points in P7, whilst Ollie Bearman demonstrated some of his brilliant overtaking manoeuvres to cut through the field and take P8.

The young Brit was one of only three drivers to start on the hard tyre, along with Stroll and Lawson, and he made it work incredibly well going from P17 to points on his first outing in Shanghai.

Stroll and Sainz initially finished outside the points however came home P9 and P10 after the DSQs.

As for Lance, his first stint on the hards was well managed but his medium tyres fell away somewhat at the end, and he wasn't able to make the same inroads as Ollie.

Lance's teammate Fernando Alonso continued his difficult start to the season, retiring on Lap 4 after a brake issue.

Outside the points, Pierre Gasly made good progress on the opening few laps, however, took a while to get his hards up to temperature on his second stint and lost out to Ocon and co. Pierre was disqualified after the race with his car coming in 1kg underweight.

Jack Doohan had another interesting day, with a pace similar to Pierre once again, but also showed some signs of inexperience, picking up a ten-second penalty after running Hadjar off the road late on, although he did display some good defensive driving. Alpine are now the only team not to have scored a point this season.

And at the back of the pack, it was once again Liam Lawson. The Kiwi once again failed to make any inroads, and despite a couple of nice overtakes when he had a tyre delta, made no impression on the race. And even though we're just two races in, it seems as though Red Bull may have already seen enough with Yuki in line for a promotion.

But overall it was McLaren's day, as they continue to look a step or two ahead of the rest. The question now is which driver will be the lead papaya?