Lewis Hamilton hit out at “yapping critics” after claiming the first win of his Ferrari career in Saturday’s sprint race in China.
The seven-time world champion had, by his own admission, a “disastrous” debut in red in Melbourne last weekend. But he has been on the pace from the start in Shanghai, one of his most successful stomping grounds and a circuit on which he had already won six times heading into this week.
After taking his first ever sprint-race pole on Friday, an achievement which left him “gobsmacked” in light of his struggles in Australia, the 40-year-old claimed his first sprint-race victory on Saturday with a minimum of fuss, profiting from what his race engineer Riccardo Adami described as a “masterclass in tyre management”.