Sergey Sirotkin qualified 16th and Lance Stroll 18th for the Chinese Grand Prix. Both Sergey and Lance qualified on the ultrasoft Pirelli tyre. Both drivers improved lap-by-lap with their first runs initially placing Sergey and Lance seventh and ninth respectively. A flurry of late improvements from other cars knocked both drivers down the order. Both cars pitted for fresh tyres, and despite Sergey's second and final run initially promoted him to P11, he was eventually demoted to P16 and missed out on Q2 by 0.05 seconds.

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: The team has done some great work so far this weekend to find a few improvements on the car relative to where we were in Bahrain. Therefore, there's some disappointment that we didn't manage to get at least one car into Q2, which had looked to be a possibility having seen the performance from FP3. However, it was a great job by both drivers in quite tricky conditions to get good laps. We now focus on the race tomorrow when conditions will be very different.

Sergey Sirotkin: We were very close to Q2 and we have improved from Bahrain. I think we have continued to work well and we've done some good work through the weekend. We went P10 this morning, which is extraordinary given our shape at the moment. Even the first lap in Q1 was really decent. I don't think we maximised the second lap, and we can find more time there. Maybe not as much time as others, because I think our first run was better than most of them, but still I believe we could have got a little more which would allow us to jump into Q2. I'm sorry about this, but at the same time we're moving forward step by step.

Lance Stroll: It was tricky with both cars out in Q1. To be honest I am not happy with the result of Q1. But we were really struggling all weekend, and I spun yesterday so never got a baseline. We were trying so many different set-ups in FP1 because of the struggles coming out of Bahrain. I didn't actually put everything together in qualifying, but I am really happy to get a bit closer. It is not as good as it was in Australia, but maybe a bit better than Bahrain, however, tomorrow is another day and anything is possible.

Check out our Saturday gallery from Shanghai, here.