Lewis Hamilton suffers "seriously painful" Chinese GP embarrassment as huge mistake made

Lewis Hamilton suffered a wretched Chinese Grand Prix qualifying session and qualified just 18th for the Shanghai race.

He was second quickest in Sprint qualifying on Friday and hoped to repeat the trick when setting the grid for the main event. Instead, he made a mistake and lost a lot of time in one corner on his final flying lap which proved fatal to his hopes of another front-row start.

As a result, Hamilton didn't improve on his time when the track was ramping up and others were making gains. By the time everyone had finished their final laps of Q1, Hamilton was marooned down in 18th place.

He asked race engineer Peter Bonnington if he had made it through and apologised to his Mercedes team after being told that he hadn't. In commentary, Nico Rosberg said it would be "seriously painful" for his former team-mate.

Hamilton almost wasn't the only big casualty of the first part of the session. Sergio Perez was only 15th fastest and survived by the skin of his teeth, thanks to another mistake made by home hero Zhou Guanyu.

Sauber have shown strong pace so far this weekend and Zhou was targeting the top 10, but also lost a lot of time with a lock-up and had to settle for 16th, much to the disappointment of the Shanghai crowd.

The Chinese racer said over the radio: "It was really difficult - I don't know why. I just lost all the grid into Turn 14." And Yuki Tsunoda was left similarly baffled with his own unexpected Q1 exit.

"I mean, there's definitely something going on," the Japanese driver moaned over the airwaves, as he suggested there was a problem on his RB car. "I can't be f***ing 19th! Honestly, the lap was pretty good."

Drama continued into the second part of the session as Q2 was red flagged after Carlos Sainz lost control. His impact with the tyre wall after spinning was fairly light, though he lost his front wing and Ferrari had to check that no other damage was done.

At the time, neither he nor George Russell had put a time on the board, leaving their places in the top 10 in jeopardy. Max Verstappen was at the top of the timesheets by half a second with Red Bull seemingly over their grip issues suffered earlier in the weekend.