Qualifying report: F1 1000th Chinese GP

For the 1000th Grand Prix race ever in the history of Formula 1, Valtteri Bottas denies Lewis Hamilton the pole position at Shanghai International Circuit. This makes Bottas the 3rd different driver to take a pole position so far of the season. The Finnish driver has been dominant throughout the weekend topping the free practice sessions, and was able to translate his dominance further into the qualifying session.

It wasn't an easy start of the day as Alex Albon crashed on the start finish straight on FP3, making a hastle for a lot of drivers who were about to get out to make final adjustments before qualifying. But it wasn't just with the Toro Rosso driver who could participate in the qualifying session, Antonio Giovinazzi also couldn't get out on the track due to his car showing power unit issues so he was left out for the day.

With Q2 session, it was unfortunate for the McLaren drivers that they failed to reach Q3 as for the first time Renault did so, with Daniel and Nico both starting P7 and P8 respectively. Meanwhile Danil Kvyat also showed a decent performance, but wasn't enough to get him into the 3rd qualifying session, leaving the Russian, Raikonnen, Norris, Sainz and Perez out of Q3.

And finally with the Q3 session, an early attempt was made by Bottas to take a provisional pole, just 7 miliseconds off from Lewis's time. But the latter parts of the qualifying stages became interesting as all of the drivers pretty much commenced their hot lap just on the very end before the chequered flag was waved, those who couldn't responed fast enough were the two Red Bull and Haas drivers.

Sebastian Vettel saw that time was running out and went on to overtake Max Verstappen to start his lap while one of the Renault driver also overtook him in the process. The results displayed for themselves as Mercedes completed their 59th front row lock out, with the two Ferraris firmly filling the second row while Max and Pierre with the 3rd row. Haas drivers will start from 9th and 10th as they failed to qualify due to Red Bull slow down. Meanwhile, Bottas was easily celebrating his 7th pole position, and Max was infuriated about the pack overtaking him on the last corner of the circuit. Charles on the other hand wasn't pleased about his results, said on the radio that he could have done better.

With the first 4 rows locked out in pairs, it seems the race day will show an interesting chains of events, Ferrari with higher top speed and Mercedes faster pace through the corner and the Red Bull not far off for an attack will leave the 1000th GP a race to remember.