Championship leader Valtteri Bottas edged out Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in the afternoon practice session at the Chinese Grand Prix.

Despite an early spin, the Finn pipped Vettel by 0.027 seconds and posted a best effort of a 1:33.330 on the red side-walled Pirelli C4 softer tyre.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen completed the top three and was a further 0.221 off of the Mercedes driver’s benchmark lap with the Dutchman having a major wobble at the final corner, which suggested his true pace could have made Bottas.

The other Mercedes F1 W10 EQ Power+ of Lewis Hamilton also suffered a spin like his time-sheet topping team-mate but ended the day fourth fastest as the Briton failed to get a proper qualifying simulation lap in due to running over debris from Haas F1 Team’s Romain Grosjean.

Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg ensured the French-Anglo outfit continued it’s promising start to the weekend after reliability issues in Bahrain to go fifth quickest and finished ahead of McLaren’s Carlos Sainz who was sixth.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finished seventh on the time-sheets but the Monegasque youngster could not get a qualifying simulation run after hitting traffic on his initial attempt and making an error on his second flyer.

Leclerc also ended his day thirty minutes early due to the Maranello-based squad performing cooling checks on his SF90 racer.

McLaren’s Lando Norris took eighth place in Free Practice Two and in-front of the second Renault of Daniel Ricciardo who was ninth and 1.006 seconds adrift of Bottas’ time.

The other Honda-powered Red Bull RB15 of Pierre Gasly was once again well off the time of team-mate Verstappen, but the Frenchman completed the top ten and was only 0.096 ahead of 11th placed Alfa Romeo Racing’s Kimi Raikkonen.

The two Toro Rosso’s of Alexander Albon and Daniil Kvyat followed in 12th and 13th places respectively with the latter having to change his power-unit after a problem was found in the opening session.

SportPesa Racing Point’s Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez were next on the time-sheets in 14th and 15th respectively along with the two Ferrari-powered VF-19 Haas machines of Kevin Magnussen and Grosjean as the latter suffered a front wing failure after riding over the bumps into turn one.

The other Alfa Romeo Racing racer of Antonio Giovinazzi was back out on track in FP1 after an engine installation issue forced the Italian to not set a lap time as his best effort was only good enough for 18th.

The two ROKiT Williams Racing entries of Robert Kubica and George Russell brought up the rear.

Formula 1 Heineken Chinese Grand Prix 2019 Free Practice Two Classification