Mercedes expects drivers to overcome loss of Friday practice

The Mercedes team is confident that drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas will be able to overcome any setback caused by the loss of free practice on Friday.

Running was limited to just 20 minutes in FP1 before the session was red flagged. The stoppage was caused by the safety helicopter being grounded by poor visibility. The afternoon session was completely abandoned when weather conditions over Shanghai failed to improve.

"Missing Friday means we go into qualifying and the race not knowing as much about the tyres as we'd like," admitted Mercedes' technical director James Allison.

"For example how long they will last and what the performance difference is between the compounds. Those data are the basis for your race strategy.

"We'll miss the time for set-up tweaking to fine-tune the balance as well. But these days you arrive at the track with a pretty good balance so we shouldn't be hurt too badly.

"The nature of modern Formula 1 is that, even if it's wet in practice, we limit the amount of running," he admitted. "You don't want to spin off or damage the car and be on the back foot for the rest of the weekend.

"So most of the time when the drivers use the wet tyres it's a voyage of discovery for them," he continued. "That's where you see their ability really come to the fore.

"We are fortunate that, in situations like this, our two drivers have the skills to limit any disadvantage.

"Saturday should be the best of the three days in term of weather but Sunday is looking quite troublesome."

China FP2 session abandoned over visibility concerns

Valtteri Bottas said he was sorry for the fans about the lack of action on Friday.

"A big thank you to all those loyal fans for their support," said the Finn. "I promise we'll do all we can to make it exciting in qualifying for them tomorrow and especially on race day.

"Hopefully we get some dry running in FP3," he added. "If it is wet on Saturday or Sunday it's no big drama.

"We have a little bit of information on the intermediate tyre," he noted. "More or less the same as any other team, so we're all in the same situation."

GALLERY: All the pictures from Friday in Shanghai

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.