Valtteri Bottas put Mercedes on top as he edged Sebastian Vettel to P1 in second practice for the Chinese Grand Prix.
In what was a pretty scrappy series of low fuel qualifying runs on the soft C4 tyre, the Finn was the most solid as he posted a 1m33.330s to finish just 0.027s ahead of the Ferrari driver.
Max Verstappen continued to show Red Bull will be a threat sitting only 0.2s back in third, that time can probably be attributed to running wide at the final corner and onto the Astroturf.
Lewis Hamilton was 0.7s back in fourth after a poor lap, while Charles Leclerc didn’t manage a representative time on the soft tyre and was only seventh in the other Ferrari.
Worse for the Monegasque, he would miss the opportunity to complete a race simulation as the team completed cooling checks on his car to “avoid any damage”.
Earlier in the session, Mercedes also had two nervy moments when both Bottas and Hamilton spun with metres of exiting the pits on cold tyres.
The world champion, in particular, was fortunate to narrowly avoid the gravel at Turn 3 which would have ended his session before it had barely started.
In the midfield, Renault continue to show improvement with Nico Hulkenberg ‘best of the rest’ in fifth but the two McLaren’s also look competitive with Carlos Sainz sixth and Lando Norris eighth.
Daniel Ricciardo followed in ninth for the French manufacturer as Pierre Gasly completed the top 10 in the second Red Bull.
Kimi Raikkonen continues to longer in 11th for Alfa Romeo, just ahead of the Toro Rosso duo, as Daniil Kvyat recovered from an engine issue at the start to finish just 0.06s behind teammate Alex Albon.
Romain Grosjean failed to set a proper time on the soft tyre as the right-hand side of his front wing collapsed over the bumps entering Turn 1.
That left the Frenchman down in 17th but only one place behind teammate Kevin Magnussen as the expected pace of Haas again failed to materialise.
Antonio Giovinazzi was playing catch up in the second Alfa after missing almost all of the morning session to an engine issue and was only 18th as a result.
Finally, the two Williams remain stuck at the bottom of the timesheet, with 1.3s between Robert Kubica in P19 and Magnussen in the last of the representative midfield cars.
Teammate George Russell was just a tenth back in 20th.
Full standings from second practice in Shanghai can be seen below:
