Sebastian Vettel leads wet FP3 session in Shanghai

In the final and also wet practice session in Shanghai, Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets ahead of Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez; showing that Ferrari cannot be discounted from challenging Mercedes at the front.

With heavy rain throughout the morning meant that the first car did not venture out on to the sodden track until 15 minutes into the hour-long session, with Valtteri Bottas serving as the guinea pig on full-wet tyres as many others looked on.

Despite standing water in some places (and obvious plumes of spray), come the halfway point where the rain eased sufficiently for Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen to finally record the first laptime with a 2.00.812s .

At that stage of the session,Raikkonen's team-mate Vettel had not even ventured out of the garage for an exploratory lap. But Vettel finally took to the track with 22 minutes remaining on intermediates tyres, at a time when Red Bull duo Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat were also testing the inters.

Both Red Bulls set purple sectors – Ricciardo in the first, Kvyat in the second – before they aborted their laps and returned to the pits which highlighted that the track was ready for that particular Pirelli compound.

At the same time, and on his first flying lap, Carlos Sainz Jr temporarily went quickest on full wets, knocking Raikkonen off top spot by a second. Behind him, however, and despite complaining at one stage of “issues”, including being “stuck in first gear”, Vettel comfortably went on to set the quickest time that remained untouched.

But it was Sebastian Vettel who was fastest with a lap time of 1.57.351 ahead of Valtteri Bottas in second place who was 0.710 seconds behind him and ahead of Sergio Perez in third place who was 1.338 seconds behind Vettel.

Carlos Sainz Jr finished the session in fourth place ahead of Esteban Gutierrez in fifth place and Jolyon Palmer in sixth place who sustained a punctured right-rear full-wet tyre at one point in the session, and ventured off track on a couple of other occasions. Palmer finished ahead of Kevin Magnussen in seventh place, Pascal Wehrlein in eighth place, Max Verstappen in ninth place and Nico Hulkenberg who rounded off the top ten finishers.

Felipe Nasr ended the session in eleventh place ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in twelfth place, Felipe Massa in thirteenth place and Rio Haryanto in fourteenth place.

Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Romain Grosjean, Daniil Kvyat, Nico Rosberg, Daniel Ricciardo, Lewis Hamilton and Marcus Ericsson did not set any times. However Ericsson did manage to make it out for a last-gasp installation lap following a technical problem on his Sauber.

The classification of FP3 for the Chinese GP is as follows:-

1. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, 1.57.351
2. Valtteri Bottas, Williams-Mercedes, 0.710s
3. Sergio Perez, Force India-Mercedes, 1.338s
4. Carlos Sainz Jr, Toro Rosso, 1.449s
5. Esteban Gutierrez, Haas Ferrari, 2.175s
6. Jolyon Palmer, Renault, 2.326s
7. Kevin Magnussen, Renault, 2.410s
8. Pascal Wehrlein, MRT Racing, 2.613s
9. Max Verstappen, Toro Rosso, 2.799s
10. Nico Hulkenberg, Force India-Mercedes, 2.807s
11. Felipe Nasr, Sauber-Ferrari, 2.846s
12. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 3.461s
13. Felipe Massa, Williams-Mercedes, 5.087s
14. Rio Haryanto, MRT Racing, 5.381s
15. Jenson Button, McLaren-Honda, Not classified
16. Fernando Alonso, McLaren-Honda, Not classified
17. Romain Grosjean, Haas Ferrari, Not classified
18. Daniil Kvyat, Red Bull Renault, Not classified
19. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes, Not classified
20. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull-Renault, Not classified
21. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Not classified
22. Marcus Ericsson, Sauber-Ferrari, Not classified

Sarah Jones- @jonesy_laaa