This was a positive day overall for Scuderia Ferrari HP at the Shanghai International Circuit.

It began with both drivers finishing on the podium in the first Sprint race of the season, Charles Leclerc second ahead of Lewis Hamilton. Later in qualifying, the potential of the SF-26 was clear to see, as its drivers monopolised the second row of the grid for tomorrow's race, Lewis outqualifying Charles by a whisker.

The day began with the Sprint race, run over 19 laps. Charles and Lewis finished second and third behind George Russell. Having started from sixth and fourth places respectively, both Ferraris got off the line really well, with Hamilton immediately up to second, with his team-mate right behind. In the early stages, Lewis led for a while after a thrilling duel with Russell, before the Mercedes driver again got the upper hand. At half distance, the order changed for the two SF-26s, with Leclerc now second, while Hamilton had to deal with graining on his front left tyre. A Safety Car with a handful of laps remaining gave all drivers at the front the chance to change tyres and switch to a set of Softs. On that occasion the team opted for a double stop, although this meant Lewis briefly lost a position to Lando Norris. After the restart, in the remaining three laps, Charles defended his second place while Lewis passed Norris to claim third spot. With a combined 13 points to its name, Scuderia Ferrari HP was the most successful team in the Sprint.

Qualifying took place in the afternoon, the Scuderia Ferrari HP pair comfortably making it through to the final shoot-out. They each had two sets of new Soft tyres for Q3, but their first run was compromised with traffic when George Russell's Mercedes stopped on track. On their last attempt, Lewis and Charles both improved, the former going third fastest in 1'32"415, just 13 thousandths quicker than his team-mate, who qualified fourth in 1'32"428. They therefore share the second row tomorrow, reflecting the potential shown so far, with a good chance of doing well in the Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton: It's great to be on the second row for the race tomorrow. It wasn't the easiest of sessions and I had to deal with a few snaps and limited grip, so we didn't extract the best from the car and probably left a couple of tenths out there. Overall though, we've continued to make some good progress although it's clear there is still quite the gap to the cars in front.

However, we've learned more about deployment and what to do differently in battle. Lots of work to do ahead of the race but tomorrow we'll give it everything we've got and aim to bring home some good points for the team and a great race for the fans.

The fans here in China are incredible - I receive so much love when I come here and it's a track I love to race at.

Charles Leclerc: There wasn't much more there for us today. This circuit is one I usually find to be more challenging, so I'm satisfied with how I put my lap together in Q3. These cars have to be driven a bit differently in qualifying compared to in the past, so there is some work to be done to optimise our output. We weren't too far off today, so we will focus on tomorrow.

I enjoyed the racing in the Sprint this morning. The fights were good, and it's quite exciting to see what you can do in the car, how to manage tyres and battery and play it well, so I'm looking forward to the race when everything is possible.

Fred Vasseur: At the first race, qualifying seemed to be a weakness, but today showed that we are improving step by step. We were 8 tenths off in Melbourne, 6 tenths off in Sprint Qualifying and 4 tenths off today in the afternoon. Therefore, we are probably working in the right direction, looking at our grid positions, but we have still to have consider those 4 tenths.

In the race tomorrow we will try our best, but Mercedes still have a straight line speed advantage, so that it's quite difficult to fight them. So far, we have seen that we can fight them for the opening laps of the race, but then the risk is to pay the price with the tyres. Let's see if we can push them for longer than that tomorrow.

We are quite pleased with P3 and P4 and tomorrow we will fight and do our best.

Having our two drivers so evenly matched is definitely good for us. It is much easier to improve when you have both drivers pushing each other and this positivity spreads to the whole team and that has been our situation since the Barcelona test.

We saw that also this morning in the Sprint race which also went well. Again, we fought Mercedes at the beginning and our drivers were always very evenly matched, allowing us to score 13 good points.

Check out our Saturday gallery from Shanghai here.