Report: Frustration as we narrowly miss out on Q2 in Japan

The grid has been set for the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix and Alex Albon missed out on a Q2 berth by just sixth-hundredths of a second as he qualified in P16.

His teammate Nicholas Latifi, who had been carrying with him a five-place grid penalty, set a time that placed him P20 in the order.

Saturday brought clearer conditions than the day prior, leading to a queue at the end of the pit lane with all teams keen to get some dry data under their belts.

The wind was causing some challenges for our duo during the hour of practice, but Alex was able to put in the most laps on the medium tyre compound of anyone and we ended the session in P12 and P19.

As qualifying rolled around, Nicky was the first man out on track as he ran a setup check on an installation lap.

After the first push lap from our pair, Alex sat P14 with Nicky in P19 – our Thair racer would have his effort deleted for a track limits violation, putting it all on to his final run.

Alex would eventually miss out by just 0.055s, putting his FW44 in P16 with Nicky two-tenths back in P20.

Once again, we were fastest through the speed traps which, with the threat of changeable conditions, gives the team reason to be optimistic about climbing the order in racing conditions tomorrow.

“It’s frustrating to miss out on Q2 by just half a tenth,” Alex explained when we caught up with him after qualifying, continuing: “I definitely feel like we had the car today to be in Q2.

“The very end of our outlap was slow because the cars in front of me were very slow through sector 3, so the tyres weren’t quite ready.

“I was sliding around very quickly early in the lap and that causes the tyres to overheat. More than any other circuit that is very detrimental to lap time.

“Our race pace was okay in the dry, so we’ll need to wait and see what happens tomorrow.”

Nicky was happy with the progress made throughout the day and is already turning his attention to tomorrow's Grand Prix, sharing: “From how FP3 went, Qualifying went better than expected.

“It’s been my first time driving this track in the dry. However, I only managed to do two representative laps in FP3.

“The track itself is quite difficult to get up to speed with as It requires a lot of commitment and full trust and confidence in the car. To only have a few laps to really put it on the edge was unfortunate.

“I’m happy with the steps I made and as a team, we went in the right direction with the car. To be a few tenths from Q2 is a positive as it wasn’t a perfect lap with a few mistakes in the middle of it.

“We’re very fast in the straight here so if we manage to get ahead of cars tomorrow it could be interesting.”

Dave Robson rounded out our reaction by sharing the view from the pit wall, stating: “The car had the pace for Q2 today and so to miss out again is disappointing.

“We needed to get everything right to progress and we didn’t manage that today; we need to look at the session and understand how to be better.

“The tyres need careful preparation to get a good lap out of them and with Alex having to slow down for the cars ahead just before opening his lap, he couldn’t get the perfect preparation.

“Nicholas made some sizeable changes to his car after FP3 and although these were in a good direction and gave him a more competitive car for qualifying, he couldn’t maximise the performance in the two laps that he had in Q1.

“It looks certain that there will be rain at some point tomorrow and this could easily affect the grand prix.

“Although we are starting the race from further back than we expected, there should be opportunities to get back to a good position before the chequered flag.”