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Formula 1 Chinese GP

Chinese GP Friday practice

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Every car is in the pits at the moment as we approach the halfway stage of FP1.
Those of you paying attention to that tyre post will notice we said medium, soft and ultrasoft, rather than supersoft. Pirelli has tried a two-compound step here. It'll be interesting to see what sort of difference that makes to strategy on Sunday, for for the quickest cars, potentially in Q2 on Saturday when they set their race-start tyres.
Decent mix of drivers using soft or medium tyres in that session. Plus Vandoorne, who snuck in the 19th-fastest time on ultrasofts.
Information
Top 10 as everyone returns to the pits to hand back their first set of tyres: 1 Hamilton, 2 Bottas, 3 Ricciardo, 4 Verstappen, 5 Vettel, 6 Raikkonen, 7 Ocon, 8 Grosjean, 9 Sainz, 10 Magnussen.
Bottas has improved, but stays second, two tenths down on Hamilton. The Red Bulls are seven tenths off the pace, separated by 0.001s in Ricciardo's favour.
Ricciardo moves ahead of Verstappen to take third. Lots happening on the timing screens in this first part of FP1 as the track improves rapidly.
Sainz now splits the Haas drivers by going eighth.
Decent start for Haas, which occupies best of the rest positions seven and eight early on here.
Verstappen moves up to third behind the two Mercedes drivers.
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Top 10: 1 Hamilton, 2 Bottas, 3 Vettel, 4 Ricciardo, 5 Raikkonen, 6 Verstappen, 7 Grosjean, 8 Sainz, 9 Ocon, 10 Gasly.
Ricciardo moves up to fourth.
Stopwatch
Hamilton improves at the top to a 1m34.962s.
Radio Comms
"Is everything OK with the engine? I feel a lot of hesitation on high power," says Perez. Force India will come back to him.
Radio Comms
Lots of radio traffic about the wind. Vettel reports several corners that are affected by it, and Hartley says it's making things "really tricky".
Improvements are coming thick and fast though, as Vettel moves into second.
Early in FP1, but we already have the top six locked out by Mercedes/Mercedes, Ferrari/Ferrari, Red Bull/Red Bull.
Stopwatch
Hamilton goes fastest with a 1m35.281s on softs. Mercedes 1-2.
Raikkonen and Vettel have come back around, going second and third ahead of the Red Bulls.
Stopwatch
Bottas now goes fastest with a 1m36.587s.
Stopwatch
Ricciardo makes it a Red Bull 1-2 early in FP1, 0.013s faster than Verstappen.
Perez goes third, ahead of Vettel.
Hartley and Sirotkin make it seven cars to have set a lap now, as the track gets busy.
Vettel slots into third with his first lap, six tenths down on Verstappen.
Stopwatch
Raikkonen goes faster again, 1m37.646s, but that is now beaten by Verstappen by a tenth.
Radio Comms
Verstappen is told there is a strong tailwind into Turn 6.
"Used" softs, in the words of Ferrari there, means tyres that have completed one lap already.
Big slide for Raikkonen at Turn 11, the tight left-hander before the long right that leads onto the back straight.
Radio Comms
Alonso says he's going to run down the back straight without DRS to give McLaren some data.
A slow-mo replay of Raikkonen chucking it into Turn 1 shows the Ferrari driver turns in with the DRS still open, and the wing flap shuts shortly afterwards. Incredible stability from these modern cars.

By: Geoff Creighton

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