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Hello and a very warm welcome to the late-breaking F-1 podcast presented by Sam Sage and me, Ben Hocking,

reviewing the second race of the 2026 season, that being the Chinese GP,

and a very special one for Andrea Kimmy Antinelli, taking his first ever race victory, ahead of his teammate George Russell on the podium, and Lewis Hamilton, another first, his first podium for

Ferrari. A rather cute podium. Cute is the word we used, Sam, before we started recording.

It was cute. It was adorable, very wholesome. Bono in there like a proud dad to all his many race-winging children that he's got up there. Lewis Hamilton just happy to see a really nice sofa, which was really cool to see. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I thought it was a really, really lovely way to top off what's been quite a controversial race weekend when it comes

to regulations. Cars got being able to get around the track. Some cars will start going

round the track. So at least we've got a nice little story at the end of it. Yes, Ford did not

starts in this race overall with three further retirements happening during the Grand Prix, made

for some very interesting point

scorers. We've got the likes of the William scoring points, Franco Colopinto, scoring his first

point for Alpine, all of which we'll get to a little bit later on in the show. We'll start

out front with Antonelli picking up his first ever race victory. Of course, did it from pole position.

Didn't get the best of start as it's been

tradition for the Mercedes versus the Ferraris in behind so far this year. But crucially, Sam,

I guess it wasn't the disaster that his sprint start was and gave him something to recover

quite quickly. Seemingly, Ferrari are able to get the perfect starts. And so when you're

going up against that, you just need to be good enough. You need to make sure that you're a hell of your teammate and you're not getting swallowed up by all the cars behind you, which, you know, Max was staffing experienced again today. We saw Kimmy Antingelli do that in the sprint race and at Melbourne. And there was a real risk with the pressure of starting on pole that he does do exactly that again. And even with the McLaren's missing from Grigspot's 5 and 6, the likes of Gasly were not far behind for the start of that race. So there's a real risk that if you do get it wrong, you can end up being 7th, 8th, you know, who knows how far back he might end up going. But he gets it right. And yeah, he's passed by both the Ferraris. I almost don't see that as a proper negative at the moment with how good they are off the start line. It's the fact he stayed a head of George Russell for me that shows a real level of growth over the last, over the first three starts that we've had this season, of course, the sprint race in the middle. So really pleased with the fact that he recovered. He was able to hold on to the back of the Ferraris and fight with the Claire early on, keeping him outside on that first kind of chican that we go through, which is really impressive defending. And I think that is basically what sealed the deal when it came to this race because it meant that he was able to separate himself from George Russell early on. Yeah, I was impressed by the start because I think if you'd offered Kimi Antonelli

at the beginning, you know, you're going to drop a spot on the first lap. He'd have gone, sure,

like based on some of his start so far this year, that would actually be considered a win.

And the fact that he had Lewis Hamilton in front of him going through turn one and turn two,

...