2017 Chinese Grand Prix lap times and fastest laps

Mercedes and Ferrari were closely matched on performance in the Chinese Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel traded quick laps late in the race as Vettel tried to bring the Mercedes within range. he couldn’t, but he was quicker than Hamilton on eight of the last ten laps.

Hamilton, however, answered Vettel with a 1’36.657 two laps from home which stood as the race’s fastest lap. There was less than five-hundredths of a second in it between him and Vettel, suggesting there was almost nothing to choose between the pair today.

Vettel spent an earlier part of the race stuck behind his team mate Kimi Raikkonen. Once he got ahead and moved past Daniel Ricciardo into clean air, Vettel was vastly quicker than his team mate, by more than a second per lap at times.

Did Ferrari miss an opportunity to help Vettel win the race by not getting Raikkonen to wave him through? Raikkonen was complaining about poor engine performance and understeer at the time.

Vettel finished the race just over six seconds behind Hamilton, but it clearly could have been closer. It couldn’t be any closer between them in the championship, as they are level on points heading to Bahrain. But if this is the shape of things to come Ferrari may not be content to allow one of their drivers to hold the other one up for many more races.

2017 Chinese Grand Prix lap times

All the lap times by the drivers (in seconds, very slow laps excluded). Scroll to zoom, drag to pan and toggle drivers using the control below:

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2017 Chinese Grand Prix fastest laps

Each driver’s fastest lap:

Rank	Driver	Car	Fastest lap	Gap	On lap
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’35.378		44
2	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’35.423	0.045	40
3	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1’35.849	0.471	41
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1’36.003	0.625	42
5	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1’36.511	1.133	50
6	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	1’36.531	1.153	55
7	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’36.722	1.344	31
8	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’36.791	1.413	36
9	Esteban Ocon	Force India-Mercedes	1’37.036	1.658	55
10	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Toro Rosso-Renault	1’37.398	2.020	30
11	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’37.528	2.150	35
12	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	1’37.551	2.173	50
13	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1’38.015	2.637	36
14	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	1’38.181	2.803	47
15	Fernando Alonso	McLaren-Honda	1’39.496	4.118	31
16	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber-Ferrari	1’39.732	4.354	50
17	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Renault	1’40.090	4.712	18
18	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren-Honda	1’41.460	6.082	15
19	Antonio Giovinazzi	Sauber-Ferrari	2’02.409	27.031	1

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