Report: No Points From China

A DNS and a P16 Sprint finish for Alex in the 2026 Chinese GP

Published

15 MAR 2026

Est. reading time

2 min

It was a Chinese GP weekend that Alex will look to move past after three challenging days in Shanghai.

A hydraulics issue identified on the instal laps left him unable to start Sunday’s Grand Prix, resulting in his second ever DNS of his F1 career.

Despite the team’s efforts to fix the issue, it was not possible, and Atlassian Williams were forced to retire the car.

The result followed a packed Saturday schedule, where Alex tackled Sprint and Qualifying across two competitive sessions.

After an SQ1 exit, Alex elected for a pit lane start in the Sprint, but that P22 placement did not last long.

Contact further up the order had Alex up to P17 across the opening lap. That quickly morphed to P16 as he passed two-time champion Fernando Alonso in an early indicator of the wheel-to-wheel action awaiting the 100 km dash.

Nico Hulkenberg was the next battle, and the Audi passed Alex before retiring and triggering a Safety Car interruption.

A switch from Medium to used Soft tyres in the slowdown allowed Alex a cheap pit stop in the short race and he returned to the circuit in P16.

Fights with Isack Hadjar and Alonso had the positions shuffle around further, but Alex managed to cross the line in P16 before setting his sights on Qualifying.

Three flying laps in Q1’s 18 minutes didn’t net any progress to Q2, however, with Alex’s 1:34.772 resulting in a P18 qualification.

That, of course, did not transform into a P18 start, but the team elected to change the car’s suspension overnight to trigger a pit lane start before the hydraulics issue halted any hopes of starting the race.

Not the weekend that Alex had hoped for.

“There’s not much to take away from today as on the laps to grid we identified a hydraulic problem that resulted in me not being able to start the race,” said Alex after the race.

“We were hoping we might be able to get back on track at some point to get some laps in and shake down the car again before Japan, but unfortunately we couldn’t fix the problem in time.

“We need to go through our issues and feedback with a fine tooth comb and we need to understand our reliability problems in able to find more performance.

“As a team it’s important to separate what’s in our control and what’s not and we need to pull together for Japan in just two weeks time.

“The silver lining is that Carlos was able to bag a few points for the team today, and a big congrats to Kimi on his first win.”

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