The British racer still believes his team have room to improve before Sunday's main race.

The new era of Formula 1 is under way and the Chinese Grand Prix will host the first of six sprint events for the 2026 season. The format is largely the same as last year except now the six slowest cars instead of five will be eliminated from the first two sessions because of Cadillac's arrival on the grid.

F1 Sprint weekends are back for 2026, with new locations and a slightly adjusted format for the new season. An F1 Sprint is a shorter race with its own qualifying format that precedes Sunday’s feature-length Grand Prix. A Sprint race is run over 100km, roughly a third of the distance of a full Grand Prix, and lasts around 30 minutes.