REPORT: Disrupted First Day in Suzuka

The Japanese Grand Prix weekend is underway, and whilst FP1 provided a clear hour of running, the same couldn’t be said for FP2.

Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon ended both sessions in P10 and P11, respectively. Both started FP1 on medium tyres before switching to softs later in the hour – Carlos’ best time of 1:29.333 put him marginally ahead of Alex’s 1:29.392.

In the afternoon, the first of four red flags in FP2 came just eight minutes in when Jack Doohan suffered a heavy impact with the barriers at Turn 2. Thankfully, the Australian racer reported he was OK and climbed out of the car under his own steam.

The crash caused a 20-minute delay before the session resumed, only for Fernando Alonso to spin at the Degner curves and beach his car, triggering another stoppage.

FP2 then ended with a pair of red flags due to separate trackside grassfires. Amongst all this disruption, both Carlos and Alex managed to complete a representative soft-tyre run, with Carlos posting a 1:28.832 and Alex a 1:29.023.

Reflecting on the day's action, Carlos said: "An eventful Friday here in Suzuka. During FP1 we managed to test a few things on the car and do some good running.

"However, FP2 was very disrupted and I really couldn’t get a proper read of the things we wanted to try out, although it seemed we were working in the right direction.

"It’s going to be a hectic FP3 for everyone tomorrow, there’s a lot of things to try and the wind direction is going to change, so the cars may feel very different compared to today. I hope Jack is feeling well after his incident and tomorrow he can be back at it."

Alex added: "I think we need the sprinklers out! We maybe weren’t as quick as we wanted to be but today has been very disjointed. We know where we need to improve though, so we’ll do some tuning overnight.

"I’m feeling good in the car, I’m confident and I hope we can score some points this weekend."