After Friday’s disastrous attempts failed to produce any meaningful running due to low cloud that precluded the medical helicopter from taking off, Saturday dawned dry yet smoggy.

The session produced a huge amount of running, as teams scrabbled to make up for lost time.

Vettel set the pace, leading a Ferrari 1-2 after Lewis Hamilton made a mistake on his final run for Mercedes.

Vettel ended up just five hundredths clear of teammate Kimi Raikkonen, setting his benchmark 1m33.336s during a supersofts run midway through the hour-long session.

Hamilton, meanwhile, wasted his opportunity to knock Vettel off top spot when he ran wide at the hairpin on his final supersofts run, having gone quickest in the first sector.

Story of the session

Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo led the early running, jumping to the top with a 1m35.647s on supersofts, which left him the best part of two seconds clear of the likes of Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll.

Raikkonen moved the benchmark into the 1m34s right on the half-way point in the session with a 1m34.519s, despite complaining of a lack of front grip on the radio.

At almost the same time, Vettel made the move to the supersofts, taking more than a second out of Raikkonen’s time to go fastest with a 1m33.336s.

Felipe Massa’s Williams also made gains on the softer rubber around the same time, shifting into third with a 1m35.092s while Ricciardo improved to the identical time to the thousandth.

Valtteri Bottas, who lost his Mercedes' T-wing when it snapped off early in the session, made his move with 17 minutes to go, splitting the Ferraris at the top with a 1m34.333s. He was quickly replaced by teammate Hamilton, however, who went second with a 1m34.093.

But they were both shuffled back a spot several minutes later when Raikkonen restored the Ferrari 1-2 with a 1m33.389s.

Error from Hamilton

Hamilton then came out with a few minutes to go to have one more crack at the Ferraris, going fastest overall in Sector 1.

However, he overshot the turn-in to the hairpin at the end of the long back straight, which meant he only improved to a 1m33.879s.

That also gave Bottas the opportunity to sneak into third, jumping his teammate with a 1m33.707s on his final run.

Massa was best of the rest in fifth, improving to a 1m34.773s, while Max Verstappen jumped his Red Bull teammate Ricciardo with a 1m34.946s set inside the last 10 minutes.

Lance Stroll (Williams) and Jolyon Palmer (Renault) were next in line, while Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz was 10th quickest in the Toro Rosso.

The fastest McLaren was Fernando Alonso in 17th, who managed to beat both Saubers and teammate Stoffel Vandoorne.

Chinese GP FP3

Pos	Driver	Chassis	Laps	Time	Gap
1	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	20	1'33.336
2	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	19	1'33.389	0.053
3	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	26	1'33.707	0.371
4	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	25	1'33.879	0.543
5	Felipe Massa	Williams	23	1'34.773	1.437
6	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	20	1'34.946	1.610
7	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	23	1'35.092	1.756
8	Lance Stroll	Williams	24	1'35.182	1.846
9	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	21	1'35.192	1.856
10	Carlos Sainz Jr.	Toro Rosso	24	1'35.223	1.887
11	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	22	1'35.449	2.113
12	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	22	1'35.521	2.185
13	Sergio Perez	Force India	20	1'35.626	2.290
14	Romain Grosjean	Haas	22	1'35.680	2.344
15	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso	23	1'35.804	2.468
16	Esteban Ocon	Force India	24	1'35.811	2.475
17	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	17	1'35.912	2.576
18	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	25	1'36.063	2.727
19	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren	21	1'36.221	2.885
20	Antonio Giovinazzi	Sauber	24	1'36.705	3.369