Formula 1 believes this weekend to be the 1000th official Grand Prix.  And it is, if you take into account the 11 Indianapolis 500 that were considered as part of the calendar.  If you don't, stop being a Eurosnob and realize the FIA disagrees with you.  So China becomes the 1000th race, and I'm sure that wasn't intentional in the least.  Here's the provisional grid for the 2019 Grand Prix of China:

Pos		Driver	Car	Q1	Q2	Q3
1		Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1:32.658	1:31.728	1:31.547
2		Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:33.115	1:31.637	1:31.570
3		Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:33.557	1:32.232	1:31.848
4		Charles AMX-30	Ferrari	1:32.712	1:32.324	1:31.865
5		DH Verstappen	Red Bull Racing	1:33.274	1:32.369	1:32.089
6		Pierre Ghastly	Red Bull Racing	1:33.863	1:32.948	1:32.930
7		Smiley Ricciardo	Renault	1:33.709	1:33.214	1:32.958
8		Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1:33.644	1:32.968	1:32.962
9		DP Magnussen	Haas Ferrari	1:34.036	1:33.150	DNF
10		Lettuce Grosjean	Haas Ferrari	1:33.752	1:33.156	DNF
11		Torpedo Kvyat	Toro Rosso	1:33.783	1:33.236
12		Sergio Perez	Racing Point	1:34.026	1:33.299
13		Kimi Räikkönen	Alfa Romeo Racing	1:34.125	1:33.419
14		Carlos Sainz	McLaren Renault	1:33.686	1:33.523
15		Lando Calrissian	McLaren Renault	1:34.148	1:33.967
16		Pleasant Stroll	Racing Point	1:34.292
17		George Russell	Williams Mercedes	1:35.253
18		Dumbass Kubica	Williams Mercedes	1:35.281
NC		Tony Snazzy	Alfa Romeo Racing	DNF

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that there's only 19 names listed.  Good call!  Mitch Albon managed to comprehensively destroy his Toro Rosso with only a couple minutes of Practice 3 remaining, and the team wasn't able to build up a new one for him in the couple of hours between then and Quals.  While he didn't destroy his car, Alfa Romeo's Tony Snazzy had a serious power unit problem that the team couldn't repair in time to send him forth.  What this means is that Williams avoided being on the last row for the first time this season!

You've also probably noticed that both Haas drivers DNF'd in Q3.  That's because they got caught in a kerfluffle between Vettel and Verstappen right at the end of the session.  The two "V" drivers were doing a "After you Alphonse, after you Gaston" routine, behaving in accordance to the the "unwritten rules" that state that drivers don't pass each other on track at in quals.  After essentially blocking the track, Vettel decided that the Dutchman was going too slowly, charged past the Red Bull driver and raced around to the line in time to be able to take one more flying lap.  Verstappen, for his part, has said that he had backed off to give himself room to the car ahead and Vettel prevented him from taking a final shot at pole.  Meanwhile, both Haas drivers were blaming the "V" drivers for not being able to do their runs.  The "good" news is that at most they'd likely be only able to move up a single spot on the grid.  So probably no harm done.  Verstappen would disagree, bitching that he could have improved on 5th.

So the race is tonight, at midnight here at The Pond... I'm unsure as to what the quality will be, there's been a lot of Mercedes running away so far.  It's been a dusty track so far... apparently a huge cement plant is upwind of the complex... and that's made it a little hard on the tires so far.  We shall see!

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