De la Rosa confident about tyre choice

The team postponed their running until the second session, but that was hit by rain at the halfway point, which meant their tyre programme was more difficult to complete.

De la Rosa, who wound up 12th, still believes the team will make the right call for the rest of the weekend.

"We went through our programme with the Michelin tyres to gain some data to help us make the correct tyre choice," de la Rosa explained. "We decided to postpone our running until the second session, which was then affected a little bit by the rain which made it more challenging to evaluate the data.

"However we are confident that we will make the right tyre choice for the rest of the weekend. I like this track which I know from being the third driver on Fridays last year, and I look forward to the rest of the Chinese Grand Prix weekend."

Teammate Kimi Raikkonen covered just five laps today and finished well off the pace in 21st position.

"The rain halfway through the second session did affect our programme slightly as we planned to run towards the end of that practice," said Raikkonen. "However we obtained some initial useful data and will continue our work in tomorrow's practice after which we have to make our Michelin tyre choice.

"I had a small spin on my first run in the morning's session, but these things happen - it was just a bit slippery."