Haas drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg missed out in the points in the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint but qualifying leaves them in the mix for points.

Kicking off Saturday morning in Shanghai was the 19-lap Sprint race the first of six planned Sprint weekends on the 2024 Formula 1 schedule.

Magnussen finished 10th with Hulkenberg 19th the format only rewarding the top eight finishers with points.

Magnussen started the Sprint from P12, gaining two spots at the start, then settling into P11 for the majority of the Sprint.

The Dane vigorously defended his position from the Sauber of Valtteri Bottas who had DRS throughout in P12.

Magnussen climbed to P10 three laps from the end with the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso retiring.

Hulkenberg took the start from P13 but lost a couple of positions on the opening laps. Having held P15 through to lap nine, the German then suffered from tire degradation and dropped down the order to finish P19 at the checkered flag.

Saturday afternoon saw Hulkenberg and Magnussen turn their attention to qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix – securing 9th and 17th respectively on the grid for Sunday’s race.

Hulkenberg made it all the way through to the top ten shootout in qualifying after comfortably steering his VF-24 through the first session (P6) and second session (P9) the turnaround in set-up and performance in stark contrast to his earlier Sprint outing.

A final lap in the top ten shootout of 1:34.604 on fresh Pirelli P Zero Red softs was good for P9 and a fifth-row grid slot for Sunday.

Nico Hulkenberg: “We dropped down the field quite dramatically in the Sprint – there was nothing obvious, no damage on the car.

“In the pack, right after the start, I think we ruined our tires over the first few laps. We were just driving in the dirty air of many cars – so we paid a big price for that.

“After that I hit degradation and just went backwards. Maybe we did a wrong turn on the set-up after yesterday going from FP1 into Sprint quali.

“We intended to make the car better, but it reacted in a strange and different way to what we expected in the Sprint.

“Then I was very happy with quali, it was very clean, not sure I could have asked for more in terms of execution and my laps.

“We remedied things from the Sprint, things were more in-line with what we expected – so I’m happy. I expect a tough race tomorrow, I think it will be a stretch for us, but I look forward to it.”

Magnussen exited qualifying in the first qualifying session with traffic a factor on his final flying run on new softs giving him a best lap of 1:34.742 earning P17.

Tenth place finisher in the sprint and seventeenth Kevin Magnussen: “To keep P10 in the Sprint was a pretty tough task – it seemed like the RB and the Sauber were a little bit faster than us.

“So, hopefully we can work on that for tomorrow’s race, we’d like to be able to keep the tires alive a little bit longer.

“In quali, I only got one lap on the first run as I was called onto the weigh-bridge, we didn’t have time to go out again on that first set of tires.

“I only had one lap on my second set, and Sargeant went off at Turn 8 in front of me, I lost a little bit of time there, and then at Turn 14 Tsunoda got in the way.

“These days it’s just so tight and here we find ourselves out in Q1. I feel like I was a little bit unlucky.”