A reasonable Saturday in Shanghai for the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team began with a double points finish in the Sprint, with Lando crossing the line in P4 and Oscar in P6.

Saturday afternoon's Qualifying followed with McLaren Mastercard placing both cars on the third row, with Oscar set to start tomorrow's Chinese Grand Prix from P5 and Lando from P6.

Reflecting on the first Sprint race of the 2026 season, both drivers had a strong start off the line before the field soon sorted itself out into pace order following the same pattern from Melbourne and yesterday's Qualifying. This resulted in Lando running in P5 and Oscar P6, followed by a large gap to the midfield.

Through careful management, both McLaren Mastercard cars were able to stay with the two leading teams before the team capitalised on a late Safety Car, which shuffled the order as Lando jumped Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Antonelli (with the latter who had to serve a 10-second penalty) in the pits. However, Ferrari's stronger pace in the opening laps meant that Lewis was able to repass Lando when racing resumed. In the closing laps of the race, the World Champion had enough of an advantage to hold off the charging Mercedes of Antonelli to finish P4.

Meanwhile, Oscar was forced to hand a position back to Antonelli late in the race, after the Safety Car restart, as the Mercedes driver appeared to leave the track in the final corner. Oscar sought to capitalise on this, passing him before the start/finish line, however it then became clear the Mercedes car had managed to keep two wheels within track limits. Once this was clear, the team instructed Oscar to hand the position back, and he duly obliged on the long back straight of the circuit, heading into Turn 14.

The Sprint race suggested that the papaya team had reasonable race pace but not enough to beat those ahead with big gaps still to fill, despite some important steps being made in exploiting the power unit.

Friday's SQ3 had provided good insight into what to expect during today's main Qualifying session. Lando and Oscar were able to do minimal runs in Q1, getting comfortably through the session and returning to the garage before the flag. Q2 was a little more competitive, but the leading pack continued to have enough of an advantage to keep expectations realistic.

Both drivers went into Q3 having achieved the goal of retaining two new sets of Soft tyres, which provide a slight mask in weaknesses at this circuit. The first laps were strong, but neither Lando or Oscar could build on them, with both a fraction down on their second attempt. Oscar (P5) and Lando (P6) line up on the third row for the second race in succession, which is a reasonable reflection of the pace in the car at this stage of the season.

Each of today's sessions provided a huge amount of data to be analysed overnight, and a strong baseline for the team to work on ahead of tomorrow's Chinese Grand Prix. The McLaren Mastercard team remain fully focused on continuing the work hard to close the gap between the two teams ahead.

Oscar Piastri: "P5 in Qualifying and P6 in the Sprint. Overall, a decent day but we've still got work to do. Today's Quali result is about where we expected to be. My last lap wasn't the tidiest, so there was a little more in it, but we maximised what we could elsewhere. We'll do what we can to get a good start tomorrow and keep on top of the tyres, as they were a key factor in the Sprint this morning. Car pace will also be very important so let's see what we can unlock overnight to get some more points on the board."

Lando Norris: "A reasonable day where we ended up pretty much where we expected to be. I think P4 was as good as we could achieve in the Sprint, and we did beat one Mercedes, which was better than expected. We know we have some weak areas in race trim that we're trying to tackle, and it's clear we've made some good progress, but we need to keep working hard to improve and try to catch up to the teams ahead.

"In terms of Qualifying, we had a reasonable result but maybe left a little bit out there. Our Sector Three is tricky, and we're losing a fair amount of lap time there, partly on the straight, but also in the corners. Looking ahead to tomorrow, we're not miles away from the Ferrari's pace, but they have some advantages which are difficult to beat. It's clear that we have a direction in which we need to go and need to improve the car, but that's very difficult to do from today to tomorrow. We'll still try to race the cars ahead and give the Ferrari a fight if we can, but we also need to be smart and not ruin our race trying to beat someone who's too quick. We'll see what we can do and try to maximise the points we can achieve."

Andrea Stella: "Today's Sprint race and Grand Prix Qualifying sessions make it clear that a consistent pattern is emerging in the opening stages of the new Formula 1 season. As we saw last weekend in Melbourne, Mercedes are currently the fastest team in terms of both their Quali and race pace, putting them out of reach for Ferrari and ourselves who are battling to be the second-best car.

"Ferrari still appear to have an edge on us in terms of race pace as we saw in this morning's Sprint, but we are progressively closing the gap to be much more competitive over a single lap in Qualifying. However, we appreciate that the new Soft tyre used by both drivers is more forgiving, so will have also played a role in tightening things up today.

"Starting with both cars on the third row shows that we're working hard as a team and moving in the right direction weekend by weekend, but overall, it will still be a challenge to immediately close the gap further until we deliver our next stages of development for the car.

"As with every time we take the MCL40 to track, we are continuing to learn how to maximise the power unit and are finding more performance session by session. Tomorrow's Grand Prix will give us another opportunity to see where we stand, with the focus on making a step forward from today's Sprint and the race pace shown in Melbourne."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Shanghai here.