2017 Chinese Grand Prix

Championship standings

Vettel leads after his Australia victory, with Hamilton seven points behind and Bottas a further three back.

Previous race

At Melbourne, Vettel won from Hamilton and Bottas — Ferrari’s first victory since the 2015 Singapore Grand Prix and their first in Australia since 2007. Bottas completed the podium on his Mercedes début. Hamilton had started from pole and matched Ayrton Senna’s record of six pole positions at the Australian Grand Prix, but was held up for several laps behind Verstappen and could not challenge Vettel.

Practice

Both Friday sessions were severely disrupted by low cloud, rain and smog in Shanghai. FP1 was red-flagged after just twenty minutes when the prevailing weather made it impossible for the medical helicopter to reach the designated hospital within the required twenty-minute window; an ambulance could not meet the time requirement either. FP2 was abandoned altogether. Some drivers — including Hamilton and championship leader Vettel — had no running on Friday. The fastest time set on Friday was a 1:50.491 by Verstappen in wet conditions.

With only Saturday’s FP3 available for dry preparation, teams faced qualifying after a single practice session instead of the usual three. Most split tyre duties between drivers and gathered data on longer runs. Vettel set the session’s fastest time of 1:33.336 — more than two seconds faster than Rosberg’s pole time from the 2016 race — with Räikkönen second. The two Mercedes drivers finished 0.3 to 0.5 seconds back. Bottas lost track time after the T-wing was dislodged from his car. McLaren and Sauber were at least 2.5 seconds off the pace.