Chinese Grand Prix to go ahead on Sunday

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The Chinese Grand Prix is still set to go ahead on Sunday as planned, after teams met with the FIA to discuss the possibility of rescheduling.

Team bosses met with the FIA in Friday night's drivers' briefing to discuss whether to move the race to Saturday. Any change would have required unanimous support from all ten teams.

"Someone mentioned it, but it was very clear that it was not going to happen," said Sauber's Marcus Ericsson.

Race director Charlie Whiting told the meeting that the timetable for the weekend would go ahead without any alteration.

A further meeting between the teams and Formula 1's new owners Liberty Media is still planned for Saturday morning.

All but 20 minutes of practice time was lost on Friday because of the weather. Poor visibility over Shanghai meant that the medical helicopter was grounded for most of the day.

FIA safety protocols say a session can only go ahead if a patient can reach a hospital with advanced neurological specialisms in less than half an hour. The nearest such hospital is 38km from Shanghai International Circuit, which takes too long by ground transportation.

Forecasts for the weekend say that Saturday's weather will be much improved for final practice and qualifying. However the outlook for Sunday was initially feared to be much the same - or worse - than it had been on Friday.

"It looks like the weather forecast is saying the clouds will be a bit higher up," Haas driver Kevin Magnussen reported. "That means the chance of the helicopter being able to land will be better on Sunday."

China FP2 session abandoned over visibility concerns

"There's talk of maybe racing on Saturday because the weather isn't good on Sunday. Some teams wanted to try running later today for a practice session but that's been canned," Sky Sports F1 commentator Martin Brundle said earlier.

"One thing under consideration is a race tomorrow. I don't think it will happen because of TV schedules," he added. "But you'd rather a guaranteed race tomorrow than a maybe on Sunday.

"There was also talk of adding some more time in tomorrow. But the teams don't want to do that as they put their race gearboxes in."

The FIA is under pressure because the Chinese Grand Prix is the first in a back-to-back line up of two races on consecutive weekends.

That means teams have to pack up immediately after the chequered flag to get their equipment freighted to Bahrain. Any delay in running this week's Grand Prix could cause a domino effect putting the third race of the season at risk.

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.