McLarens Lando Norris starts in P4 today, he said: "We can try a lot, I think we can give it a good shot, the pace has been good all weekend. Long race ahead, many things can happen, cool temperatures for the time being but we can have a fun race."

His team-mate Oscar Piastri will start behind in P5, he said: "We will see what we can do, starting a bit further up from which I was yesterday which is nice, but we've got some pretty quick cars around so it's going to be a pretty tough race. I think probably an interesting one with different strategies and different tyres for everyone so we will see what we can do."

Image source, Getty Images

Andrew Benson
BBC F1 correspondent

Just as in Japan two weeks ago, this race is expected to be predominantly a two-stop strategy. Tyre wear is high, and whereas in the past China was a track where the front tyres were most under stress, the wider tyres introduced from 2017 have changed that to the rear. There will be a lot of tyre management in the race, with drivers lapping well off the theoretical maximum pace.

Tyre choice is unusually open. It had been expected that the medium and hard compounds would be the main focus of the race, but a strong sprint performance from George Russell on the soft tyre has brought that into play as well.

The Red Bull and Ferrari are better on their tyres than the McLaren and the Aston Martin, with the Mercedes somewhere in the middle - hence the belief of the drivers from those teams that Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will move up from sixth and seventh on the grid to podium contention, while especially Fernando Alonso - brilliant again in qualifying - but also Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri fall back.

The pit-stop time loss is about 24 seconds, and 17 under safety car, which is quite common in China historically.

Zhou Guanyu will start in 16th, he told Sky Sports pre-race: "I'm going to drive my heart out like yesterday and the day before, I'm going to focus on the race and hopefully get some good results."

Aston Martin are leaving it late with Fernando Alonso's car. There's work going on on it right now while it is on the grid.

The clock is ticking...

Former F1 world champion Nico Rosberg, speaking on Sky Sports: "Max Verstappen and this car are on another planet. It is something historical we are witnessing with this level of performance.

"Sergio Perez will struggle to keep with him. The question is can Fernando Alonso keep his position or not?"

Max Verstappen has led the championship for a record 43 successive races dating back to Spain in May 2022.

He arrives in China 13 points clear of Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez and 18 ahead of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc.

Zhou Guanyu was watching the Chinese Grand Prix from the stands when he was a kid and now he is preparing to make his home race debut.

He has his work cut out from 16th but he firmly has the fans behind him.

Image source, Getty Images

Lewis Hamilton qualified down in 18th, he said pre-race: "[The fans] always bring such great energy and I love this track and I really enjoy being out here.

"I definitely easily should have been in Q2 [in qualifying], it was entirely my fault, the team are doing a great job and George did a great job yesterday with what we have. There are no excuses and I've got to do a better job and I will try and recover somehow today."

Image source, Getty Images

What are your podium predictions for today?

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Max Verstappen has won three of the first four races this season, with Ferrari's Carlos Sainz winning in Australia.

Sainz is the only driver to have beaten Red Bull since 2022.

BBC Radio 5 Live

Live audio coverage of today's race is on Radio 5 Live, BBC Sounds and via this page from 07:45 BST, so tune in!

Hello!

Welcome along to our coverage of the fifth race of the season - the Chinese Grand Prix.

As just mentioned the weekend has largely belonged to Max Verstappen so far with his Red Bull once again looking formidable.

He starts on pole position for today's race with his team-mate Sergio Perez right alongside him.

Lights out is at 08:00 BST.

Image source, Getty Images

"Max Verstappen wins" is a sentence we've become very accustomed to reading on a Sunday over the last few years but one race it hasn't appeared for so far is the Chinese Grand Prix.

None of his 57 victories in Formula 1 have come in Shanghai but, after dominating the sprint race and qualifying, is that set to change in the next few hours?