chinese sprint quali 2025 analysis by brakeboosted | HAM vs LEC
"Turn 4 and 6 is where Lewis makes the difference to Charles. 100% of the time loss is here. They are very close throughout the rest of the lap, some marginal differences here and there. Charles claws back some time in 9-10-16. Lewis is a specialist around this track, he knows exactly where to find the lap time in Q. Like I told you before the weekend. After the first sequence, it's very hard to make time up around here on a flying lap, and Lewis understand this well.
Charles, characteristically, pushes the entry to the snail very hard, then it's just understeer city into turn 3. As you see, this where Lewis has been amazing all weekend, and that comes with winning this race 6 times. A lot of confidence on the throttle entering turn 3. I tend to think it comes from a more rearward bias setup, he has a lot more trust in the rear of the car at those speeds, and this is also why he has so much confidence on the brakes.
Turn 6 braking Lewis is just mega too. Lower pedal saturation for Lewis. Essentially, just means Charles is slowing the car down too much during the braking phase for turn 6.
Where Charles is very strong is in turn 9-10, gains back 2 tenths. Then the final corner he is very committed, & I have a bit of a theory on that:
I get a very similar sensation comparing these laps than when I did with Sainz over the years. Charles hates the understeer in those medium speed, partial load corners like 9-10-12-16. It seems he likes to make a setup compromise for those corners. He'd rather deal with the added understeer in the very low speed turns. This 'style' is generally a bit easier on the front tyres, and this is why he's struggled to generate the front temps in recent years (not necessarily the case here, but generally speaking). It's crucial for the race because the front left gets battered around here. He also mentioned the tyre was dead after the first corners, so maybe the tyre prep was not ideal either."
