In China they may not be happy about what they have to pay for a grand prix - who is? - but whereas the Malaysians, in the face of continuing lack of local interest, have announced that this year's race will be the last, the Shanghai authorities must surely have been gratified by what was claimed to be a sell-out crowd last Sunday.
Those at the circuit last Friday, however, will not have been too thrilled, for they saw only a handful of laps by a handful of cars. Rules are rules, and visibility was so bad that it would have been impossible, in the event of an emergency, for the circuit's helicopter to land at the nearest major hospital.
If Friday were a waste of time for the fans, so also it was a day lost to the teams, and the way they coped made you wonder - again - why, with so many races on the calendar these days, we don't have two-day GPs, with a couple of hours of practice on Saturday morning, then straight into qualifying.