2014 Chinese Grand Prix

Heading into the fourth round of the season, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg was leading the Drivers' Championship with 61 points; Rosberg's teammate Lewis Hamilton was second on 50 points, 11 points behind Rosberg. Behind Rosberg and Hamilton in the Drivers' Championship, Nico Hülkenberg was third on 28 points, with Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button on 26 and 23 points respectively.[3] In the Constructors Championship, Mercedes were leading with 111 points and Force India were second on 44 points, with McLaren third on 43 points.[4]

Prior to the race weekend, Stefano Domenicali resigned from position as Ferrari team principal citing the team's poor start to the season and their longest winless streak for 18 years.[5] Domenicali was replaced by the President and CEO of Ferrari North America Marco Mattiacci.[6]

Like the 2013 Chinese Grand Prix, tyre supplier Pirelli brought its white-banded medium compound tyre as the harder "prime" tyre and the yellow-banded soft compound tyre as the softer "option" tyre.[7]

Three practice sessions were held before the race; the first on Friday morning and the second on Friday afternoon. Both sessions lasted one and a half hours. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour.[8]

The qualifying session held on Saturday afternoon was split into three parts. The first part ran for 18 minutes and eliminated the cars from qualifying that finished the session 16th or lower. The second part of qualifying lasted 15 minutes and eliminated cars that finished in positions 11 to 16. The final part of qualifying determined the positions from first to tenth, and decided pole position.

Qualifying took place under wet conditions, with all drivers using either intermediate or full wet tyres. Hamilton clinched his third pole position for the season, with a time of 1:53.860. As a result, Hamilton became the British driver with the highest number of pole positions, surpassing Jim Clark's record of 33.[9] He was joined on the front row of the grid by Riccardo with Vettel qualifying third. Rosberg qualified fourth, 1.2 seconds behind Hamilton and Alonso qualified fifth. Massa, Bottas, Hulkenberg, Jean-Éric Vergne and Romain Grosjean rounded out the top ten. Räikkönen only managed 11th — missing out on the top ten for the second time in 2014 having struggled with the balance and handling of his car during the session.[10] Jenson Button was the best placed McLaren in 12th, ahead of Daniil Kvyat, Adrian Sutil, Button's teammate Kevin Magnussen, with Sergio Pérez qualifying 16th. Esteban Gutiérrez was 17th, with the rest of the field consisting of the Caterham and Marussia cars. Lotus driver Pastor Maldonado did not take part in the qualifying sessions,[11] but was allowed to start the race.[12]

The race was raced over 56 laps, however the chequered flag was shown to Lewis Hamilton at end of lap 55 by mistake. According to Article 43.2 of the FIA Sporting Regulations this meant that the race officially finished at the end of lap 54.[8] This meant that Kamui Kobayashi's overtake of Jules Bianchi on the final lap did not stand.[13]

As a consequence of the race, Hamilton reduced Rosberg's lead over him in the Drivers' Championship to four points. Alonso moved up to third position passing Hülkenberg with Vettel maintaining fifth place and Ricciardo moved from 10th to 6th.[14] In the Constructors' Championship, Mercedes increased their lead, with Red Bull jumping ahead of Force India for second position and Ferrari moving to fourth, ahead of McLaren who fell from third to fifth position.[15]

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Q1	Q2	Q3	Grid
1	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:55.516	1:54.029	1:53.860	1
2	3	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:56.641	1:55.302	1:54.455	2
3	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:55.926	1:54.499	1:54.960	3
4	6	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:56.058	1:55.294	1:55.143	4
5	14	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:56.961	1:55.765	1:55.637	5
6	19	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1:56.850	1:56.757	1:56.147	6
7	77	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1:56.501	1:56.253	1:56.282	7
8	27	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:55.913	1:56.847	1:56.366	8
9	25	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:57.477	1:56.584	1:56.773	9
10	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:58.411	1:56.407	1:57.079	10
11	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:58.279	1:56.860		11
12	22	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:57.783	1:56.963		12
13	26	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:57.261	1:57.289		13
14	99	Adrian Sutil	Sauber-Ferrari	1:58.138	1:57.393		14
15	20	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Mercedes	1:57.369	1:57.675		15
16	11	Sergio Pérez	Force India-Mercedes	1:58.362	1:58.264		16
17	21	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:58.988			17
18	10	Kamui Kobayashi	Caterham-Renault	1:59.260			18
19	17	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Ferrari	1:59.326			19
20	9	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham-Renault	2:00.646			20
21	4	Max Chilton	Marussia-Ferrari	2:00.865			21
107% time: 2:03.602
NC1	13	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Renault	no time1			22
Source:[11]

Notes

• ^1  — Pastor Maldonado failed to set a lap time within 107% of the fastest lap time set by Lewis Hamilton in Q1. He was later given permission to start by race stewards.[12]