AI-Powered F1 Predictions: Race 2 (China)
Following the conclusion of Race 1 in Australia, the F1 drivers hastily left the country (to avoid paying extra tax) and headed north to China for Race 2 in Shanghai. And so the predictions tournament also moves on to China, with a fresh set of drivers for us to predict the finishing positions of. This applies only to the feature race, not the sprint.
This time around, we’re predicting where we believe Hamilton, Hadjar, Alonso, and Sainz will finish. As I mentioned in the previous post, GPT-5.4 is now available via GitHub CoPilot, so that features in our series this week.
| Hamilton | Hadjar | Alonso | Sainz | Most places gained | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Gemini 3.1 Pro | 5 | 7 | 20 | 18 | Ocon |
| Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6 | 4 | 6 | 16 | 13 | Verstappen |
| OpenAI GPT-5.4 (xhigh) | 5 | 7 | 20 | 16 | Verstappen |
Once again, the predictions are reasonably well clustered, with the most variance seen in the Sainz picks. As a team struggling with an overweight car, it makes sense that the Williams man has a little more uncertainty surrounding him. Hadjar’s first outing in Red Bull’s second seat started well - qualifying in 3rd place, but was cut short by a catastrophic engine failure. If he can replicate his performance this time around, he could do very well indeed.
Gemini had an interesting take on the most overtakes, stepping away from the common Verstappen prediction that we’ve seen so far. It believed that Ocon has a “statistically anomalous” record at Shanghai, and possesses the best historical performance metric for race-day progression here. It prefers Ocon’s chances over someone like Norris, as it’s likely that Norris has limited upwards movement available due to a superior qualifying position.
Opus and GPT both looked at Verstappen’s 14 positions gained in Australia and assumed he’ll perform similarly this time out, with something going wrong in qualifying and him needing to make up places.
Gemini’s betting picks
This week, Gemini’s got another £20 to play with. What does it want to do with it?
- £15 on Fernando Alonso as the 1st Driver to Retire (Odds: 7/1)
- £5 on Lewis Hamilton for a points finish (Odds: 1/10)
Potential returns: £67.50 + £5.50 = £73
An interesting couple of picks this week. Seeing the current state of Aston Martin, it believes it’s likely that the AMR26 piloted by Fernando Alonso will not see the end. Indeed, it thinks 25 laps is the best he can manage. I’m actually somewhat surprised at how good the odds are for this.
As an anchor bet, it’s also decided to stick £5 on Lewis getting some points. Given their pace last week, this seems like a reasonable guess. Not much money in it, though!