The Latest Breaking News from Valtteri Bottas

The championship leader had rarely looked beatable throughout the session and ploughed a lonely furrow in pursuit of pole position, particularly as nobody had been able to beat his opening 1m33.977s effort - let alone his ultimate pole lap.

F1 has altered its sprint race schedule once again, with sprint race qualifying shifting to Friday and the sprint race moving to Saturday. The race weekend format then reverts back to a traditional schedule for grand prix qualifying on Saturday afternoon with the grand prix on Sunday. Here’s how the…

This year’s race takes place on 21 April at 3:00am ET over 56 laps of the Shanghai International Circuit, and the time difference means some late nights and early starts for the American audience.

Verstappen beat team-mate Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, in a race that was red flagged following an opening lap crash between RB’s Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon of Williams.

The Red Bull drivers were amongst just a handful of drivers to gain time on the second runs in Q3, where Ferrari’s challenge failed to materialise and the Mercedes drivers ended up behind Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.

The Red Bull drivers were amongst just a handful of drivers to gain time on the second runs in Q3, where Ferrari's challenge failed to materialise and the Mercedes drivers ended up behind Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso.

There was a touch of inevitability. Red Bull’s significant Suzuka upgrade has not slimmed the RB20 as predicted, with rumours Ferrari was rushing its important Imola updates scotched too on what was overall something of a slow news day on Thursday.

Rain started sporadically falling in the paddock with under an hour to go ahead of FP2’s 3pm local time commencement, but this intensified with 15 minutes to go.

Rain started sporadically falling in the paddock with under an hour to go ahead of FP2's 3pm local time commencement, but this intensified with 15 minutes to go.