page_title: 2010 Chinese Grand Prix
section_title: Practice
hierarchical_section_title: 2010 Chinese Grand Prix / Practice
caption_attribution_description: Buemi at the Shanghai F1 Qualifying
context_page_description: The 2010 Chinese Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at the Shanghai International Circuit in the Jiading District of Shanghai on 18 April 2010. Approximately 85,000 people attended the event. It was the fourth race of the 2010 Formula One World Championship and the seventh running of the race. The 56-lap race was won by McLaren driver Jenson Button from a fifth position start. His teammate Lewis Hamilton finished in second and Nico Rosberg of the Mercedes team was third.
  Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel won the eighth pole position of his career by posting the fastest lap in qualifying. Fernando Alonso for Ferrari, started from third, and passed both Red Bull cars into the first corner. However, the stewards deemed that he had jumped the start and incurred a drive-through penalty. The safety car was deployed on the first lap, after a three-car collision at turn six, and remained out for four laps. Rosberg led from laps five to 19 until Button overtook him. Intermittent rain made track conditions slippery though Button maintained the lead for the rest of the race to secure his second victory of the season and the ninth of his career.
context_section_description: Three practice sessions – two on Friday and a third on Saturday – were held before the race on Sunday. The Friday morning and afternoon sessions lasted ninety minutes each; the third, one-hour session was held on Saturday morning. In the first practice session, held in hazy and cold weather conditions, Button was fastest with a lap of 1 minute and 36.677 seconds, with his teammate Hamilton third. They were separated by Rosberg in second and Michael Schumacher in the other Mercedes was fourth. Vettel was fifth-fastest, ahead of the Renaults of Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov. Red Bull's Mark Webber, Adrian Sutil for Force India and Massa followed in eighth to tenth. Alonso stopped at the exit of turn six after 54 minutes with a right-hand exhaust bank bay fire that prevented him from recording a lap.
  With ten minutes remaining, the front wheels on Sébastien Buemi's Toro Rosso sheared under braking the turn 14 hairpin due to the right-front upright failing, causing the front-right wheel to break free. The front-left wheel followed suit when its upright section was suddenly forced to bear the entire load of the front. He was pitched into a gravel trap and a barrier at high speed. Although Buemi was unhurt, the FIA race director Charlie Whiting stopped the session for debris clearing and his teammate Jaime Alguersuari was kept in the garage while the team investigated the cause of the incident. Virgin driver Timo Glock's front wing shattered and the Lotus of Jarno Trulli shed its diffuser, both through bottoming out on a bump approaching turn one.
  McLaren continued to run strong with Hamilton setting the fastest lap of the day in the second practice session of 1 minute and 35.217 seconds on the soft compound tyres and his teammate Button was third. The Mercedes of Rosberg and Schumacher duplicated their first practice session results in second and fourth. Vettel, Webber, Sutil, Alguersuari, Kubica and Alonso followed in the top ten. During the session, where several drivers pirouetted and ran off the circuit, Buemi was unable to set a lap time because his car was rebuilt by Toro Rosso and Heikki Kovalainen stopped his Lotus at the side of the track towards the conclusion of practice with fading oil pressure.
  The final practice session was held in dry weather conditions. Hamilton set the initial pace before Webber recorded the overall fastest lap on the soft compound tyres at 1 minute and 35.323 seconds. Hamilton was second and Vettel third. Button, Alonso, Rosberg, Schumacher, Kubica, Massa and Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi completed the top ten ahead of qualifying. Though the session passed relatively peacefully, Petrov ran wide onto the artificial grass leaving the final corner and he lost control of his Renault. He skidded across a gravel trap and crashed heavily into a tyre barrier with the front of his car. Although Petrov was unhurt, Whiting stopped the session for seven minutes to allow track marshals to clear debris.
caption: Sébastien Buemi had the front wheels shear from his Toro Rosso during the first practice session.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D70", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image DateTime": "2010:04:17 14:32:45", "Image ExifOffset": "197", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1600", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:04:17 14:32:45", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:04:17 14:32:45", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "300", "EXIF SubSecTime": "20", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "20", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "20", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "814", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "482", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "450", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "e20302d8fecb6d02f29216ff9a8af72d"}