Saturday in China saw Scuderia Ferrari HP clinch its first ever Sprint race win courtesy of Lewis Hamilton, while together with Leclerc it has both cars on the third row for the Grand Prix, run over a distance of 305.066 kilometres, starting at 3pm local time (08.00 CET).

In the morning, or in the middle of the night for those watching in Europe, Lewis added another small note to the history books for himself and for the team. For both parties it was a maiden Sprint race win. The gap in the statistics was filled thanks to a perfectly executed race from Hamilton who led the field from lights out to chequered flag. The Englishman made the most of running in clean air which allowed him to do a good job of managing his used Medium tyres. Charles finished fifth in the morning race which means the team has picked up 12 points today.

In the afternoon, everyone was back on track for qualifying for the Grand Prix, with hotter temperatures, the track up from 34 in the morning to 40, while the wind was also changing. The session was very closely contested with highs and lows for several drivers. Lewis and Charles got through Q1 without any difficulty, but from then on, they struggled quite a lot to put together a good lap. They each had two sets of new Softs for Q3 and their lap times were very similar: Lewis' best was a 1'30"927 and Charles posted a 1'31"021, which secured them fifth and sixth places respectively to share the third row of the grid.

The starting positions of the two SF-25s is clearly not ideal, but tomorrow's race could be extremely tactical. While in the past, a two-stop was comfortably possible, the new track surface which is offering much more grip, puts far more stress on the tyres and they will require very careful management, to avoid a sudden drop in performance. The engineers and drivers will now analyse all of today's data in depth, preparing for every possible scenario for a race that might still present some good opportunities.

Lewis Hamilton: Getting my first Sprint pole and then win in a Ferrari was such a special feeling. The car felt strong and we managed to bring everything together to cross the line first and bring home some good points for the team. The reaction from the crowd was just incredible.

Qualifying was tougher and we didn't get the most out of the car over a lap today, but clearly we have the potential and now it's about working hard to make sure we can consistently unlock that pace across a weekend. The taste of winning has made us all even hungrier and although it will be tough tomorrow, we know the work we need to do.

Charles Leclerc: The Sprint Race was not ideal, we didn't have the pace to do anything special in the first part, then the second was slightly better, but it just wasn't enough to get further ahead without taking risks. I went with a slightly different configuration this morning, but I don't think there was much more to gain in terms of set-up for tomorrow.

Qualifying went as expected, our overall pace was not fast enough and it will be tricky now that we are both in the middle of the pack, starting side by side. We struggled a bit more today compared to Sprint Qualifying and we have to understand where we could have taken a step forward even if I feel I got everything I could out of the car this afternoon.

The race will be challenging, and tyre management will be a huge factor. There is an unknown in that we have never experienced these cars in similar track temperatures so far, whether in testing or a race, so it will be interesting to see how this will affect everyone's performance. The aim is always to win, but starting from where we are on the grid, a podium would be a positive result.

Fred Vasseur: This morning's 19 laps demonstrated that tyre management will be absolutely crucial tomorrow, given the characteristics of the new track surface in Shanghai. Today's qualifying was really difficult to read and several teams, including ourselves, experienced a swing in performance. We were strong in Q1 before struggling in Q2 and in Q3 we came within three tenths of pole, most of the time lost in the final sector. Of course, we would have preferred to have qualified better, because even if you have good pace, we saw in the Sprint that running in dirty air, your tyres suffer a lot more. The race will be all about strategy and we must be ready to take advantage of any situations that arise. The field looks very close and overnight, we will work on ensuring we are in the best possible shape to bring home another good points haul to add to the twelve from today.

Check out our Saturday gallery from Shanghai here.