Nico Rosberg is hopeful his Mercedes team can enjoy a stronger weekend in China after claiming the squad made progress in practice on Friday.
"Today we made a small step forward, particularly this morning where we learned some positive things with the car compared to Malaysia," said Rosberg after posting the fourth fastest time in the afternoon session, just 0.255sec behind pacesetter Sebastian Vettel. "The balance was quite good today, and I really enjoy driving this track. We don't really know where we are right now, and, of course, what everyone was doing, but today's running gives me hope for an improved performance tomorrow."
Teammate Michael Schumacher was also encouraged by the progress made today, the German saying a different working approach had paid off. Schumacher was fifth fastest today.
"We've had a good working day here during the first outings on the Shanghai track. We have changed our working approach this weekend, and I think this has paid off.
"We concentrated mainly on high fuel loads, and it seems we can find the setup better than starting from low fuel. The long runs were good in my view which is clearly an improvement on the first two races. There is room for further improvement so I look forward to understanding what we can achieve in qualifying."