Category: Formula 1

Verstappen was fastest in Free Practice 1, lapping in 1m30.056s, while FP2 was blighted by rain showers. That was topped by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, with a quickest time of 1m34.725s.

Japanese GP FP1 results: Verstappen fastest from Perez

What happened in Japanese GP Free Practice 1?

Lewis Hamilton had just sent the quickest time on soft tyres of 1m30.543s in his Mercedes when Logan Sargeant lost control of his Williams at the final element of The Esses, known as the Dunlop Curve, and his car slammed into the tyre wall.

Sargeant, who was using the repaired chassis that team-mate Alex Albon crashed in Melbourne, was unhurt.

After a lengthy break to clear the track, the session resumed with Verstappen immediately setting a faster time of 1m30.056s, 0.181s quicker than team-mate Perez. Ferrari’s Australian GP winner Carlos Sainz was third fastest on 1m30.269s, three tenths ahead of George Russell’s Mercedes.

With rain in the forecast, teams were keen to get a long run on soft tyres, which meant further improvements weren’t forthcoming. Charles Leclerc ended the session in sixth, half a second off the pace, behind Hamilton but ahead of Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) and Oscar Piastri (McLaren).

Local hero Yuki Tsunoda was ninth fastest for RB, ahead of the second McLaren of Lando Norris.

Japanese GP FP2 results: Piastri fastest from Hamilton

What happened in Japanese GP Free Practice 2?

Rain showers caused a frustrating lack of running in FP2, with Hamilton and RB’s Daniel Ricciardo – who missed FP1 in favour of Red Bull junior Ayumu Iwasa – emerging after 15 minutes on slicks, only for it to sprinkle some more and send them pitwards.

Piastri sparked a small flurry of cars running on intermediates just before the halfway point. Tsunoda set the first flying lap time, a 1m42.304s, which he lowered to 1m40.946s, just under a second faster than team-mate Ricciardo.

For most of the session it was too wet for slicks and too dry for any serious running on inters, but Piastri ran again towards the end, this time on slicks, and worked down to 1m34.725s.

Hamilton also had a go, lapping half a second off the pace, with Leclerc going third fastest, ahead of inter runners Tsunoda and Ricciardo.

Norris and Sainz were sixth and seventh with unrepresentative times.

Verstappen was fastest in Free Practice 1, lapping in 1m30.056s, while FP2 was blighted by rain showers. That was topped by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, with a quickest time of 1m34.725s.

Japanese GP FP1 results: Verstappen fastest from Perez

What happened in Japanese GP Free Practice 1?

Lewis Hamilton had just sent the quickest time on soft tyres of 1m30.543s in his Mercedes when Logan Sargeant lost control of his Williams at the final element of The Esses, known as the Dunlop Curve, and his car slammed into the tyre wall.

Sargeant, who was using the repaired chassis that team-mate Alex Albon crashed in Melbourne, was unhurt.

After a lengthy break to clear the track, the session resumed with Verstappen immediately setting a faster time of 1m30.056s, 0.181s quicker than team-mate Perez. Ferrari’s Australian GP winner Carlos Sainz was third fastest on 1m30.269s, three tenths ahead of George Russell’s Mercedes.

With rain in the forecast, teams were keen to get a long run on soft tyres, which meant further improvements weren’t forthcoming. Charles Leclerc ended the session in sixth, half a second off the pace, behind Hamilton but ahead of Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) and Oscar Piastri (McLaren).

Local hero Yuki Tsunoda was ninth fastest for RB, ahead of the second McLaren of Lando Norris.

Japanese GP FP2 results: Piastri fastest from Hamilton

What happened in Japanese GP Free Practice 2?

Rain showers caused a frustrating lack of running in FP2, with Hamilton and RB’s Daniel Ricciardo – who missed FP1 in favour of Red Bull junior Ayumu Iwasa – emerging after 15 minutes on slicks, only for it to sprinkle some more and send them pitwards.

Piastri sparked a small flurry of cars running on intermediates just before the halfway point. Tsunoda set the first flying lap time, a 1m42.304s, which he lowered to 1m40.946s, just under a second faster than team-mate Ricciardo.

For most of the session it was too wet for slicks and too dry for any serious running on inters, but Piastri ran again towards the end, this time on slicks, and worked down to 1m34.725s.

Hamilton also had a go, lapping half a second off the pace, with Leclerc going third fastest, ahead of inter runners Tsunoda and Ricciardo.

Norris and Sainz were sixth and seventh with unrepresentative times.

Rain started sporadically falling in the paddock with under an hour to go ahead of FP2’s 3pm local time commencement, but this intensified with 15 minutes to go.

It was therefore no shock when no cars headed out as FP2 did get under way, with few drivers even in their cockpits at this stage.

After 12 minutes, Lewis Hamilton did venture out on the mediums, declaring the track “pretty dry”, but he was called back into the pits the next time by after Mercedes spotted what Hamilton’s race engineer Peter Bonnington called “rain indicators in sector one”, which stopped the Briton putting a time on the board.

As Hamilton was heading in, Daniel Ricciardo was out exploring, but with the rain Mercedes had seen getting even heavier, the RB driver was soon back in the pits after a sole tour on the mediums.

A 10-minute absence of action then commenced before Oscar Piastri took his McLaren out on the intermediates – his car sending spray upwards from the track surface, which had not been happening during the earlier excursions of Hamilton and Ricciardo.

Piastri said it was “not really that wet”, but he nevertheless was brought back in immediately, just as Zhou Guanyu, Valtteri Bottas, Yuki Tsunoda and Ricciardo were also sampling the inters for the first time as the session’s second half kicked off.

Yuki Tsunoda, RB F1 Team VCARB 01

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Only the RB pair stayed out for longer than a single out/in lap, with Tsunoda duly taking his inters to the initial first place benchmark with a 1m42.304s and Ricciardo slotting in behind him 4.1s adrift.

After each had completed a cooldown tour, the RB drivers pushed again and Tsunoda improved to a 1m40.946s, with Ricciardo’s second effort closing him to 0.9s off his team-mate’s new leading time.

With just a third of the one-hour running remaining the RBs pitted, but still few others were willing to join the fray – the consensus that the conditions were really too dry for the inters but too wet for slicks.

Zhou and Bottas at least reappeared on the inters, but again only for single out/in laps aboard their Saubers. Another lull in action that lasted nearly 10 minutes then occurred, before Zhou again headed out in the inters, yet again for just single tours.

As the final 10 minutes of the session began, Alex Albon and the Haas drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg emerged on the slicks, but only Hulkenberg attempted a flying lap.

Yet he abandoned that and so it was left to Piastri, who had also come out late on the slicks, to break the RB lock at the top of the times.

With purple sectors in the final two thirds of his first flier of FP2, Piastri did indeed sneak ahead on a 1m39.105s.

Pierre Gasly, Alpine A524

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Although there was just a minute to go by this stage, a gaggle of drivers had also moved to sample the softs – including Hamilton, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and the two Saubers, while the RBs remerged to do final inters tours.

Shortly after Piastri produced a third successive fastest lap to finally head the session on a 1m34.725s, Hamilton’s sole slicks effort came in 0.501s down, while Leclerc posted FP2’s third-best time 4.035s off the pace.

The rest had come out without enough time left, leaving the RBs in fourth and fifth with Tsunoda ahead of Ricciardo, Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz taking sixth and seventh ahead of Hulkenberg, who finally posted a time of 1m55.179s.

Bottas took ninth ahead of Esteban Ocon, with Zhou, Albon and Magnussen completing an ultimately meaningless order as most had toured around with the sole aim of being able to conduct a post-chequered-flag practice start on the damp grid.

F1 Japanese GP – FP2 results

Rain started sporadically falling in the paddock with under an hour to go ahead of FP2’s 3pm local time commencement, but this intensified with 15 minutes to go.

It was therefore no shock when no cars headed out as FP2 did get under way, with few drivers even in their cockpits at this stage.

After 12 minutes, Lewis Hamilton did venture out on the mediums, declaring the track “pretty dry”, but he was called back into the pits the next time by after Mercedes spotted what Hamilton’s race engineer Peter Bonnington called “rain indicators in sector one”, which stopped the Briton putting a time on the board.

As Hamilton was heading in, Daniel Ricciardo was out exploring, but with the rain Mercedes had seen getting even heavier, the RB driver was soon back in the pits after a sole tour on the mediums.

A 10-minute absence of action then commenced before Oscar Piastri took his McLaren out on the intermediates – his car sending spray upwards from the track surface, which had not been happening during the earlier excursions of Hamilton and Ricciardo.

Piastri said it was “not really that wet”, but he nevertheless was brought back in immediately, just as Zhou Guanyu, Valtteri Bottas, Yuki Tsunoda and Ricciardo were also sampling the inters for the first time as the session’s second half kicked off.

Yuki Tsunoda, RB F1 Team VCARB 01

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Only the RB pair stayed out for longer than a single out/in lap, with Tsunoda duly taking his inters to the initial first place benchmark with a 1m42.304s and Ricciardo slotting in behind him 4.1s adrift.

After each had completed a cooldown tour, the RB drivers pushed again and Tsunoda improved to a 1m40.946s, with Ricciardo’s second effort closing him to 0.9s off his team-mate’s new leading time.

With just a third of the one-hour running remaining the RBs pitted, but still few others were willing to join the fray – the consensus that the conditions were really too dry for the inters but too wet for slicks.

Zhou and Bottas at least reappeared on the inters, but again only for single out/in laps aboard their Saubers. Another lull in action that lasted nearly 10 minutes then occurred, before Zhou again headed out in the inters, yet again for just single tours.

As the final 10 minutes of the session began, Alex Albon and the Haas drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg emerged on the slicks, but only Hulkenberg attempted a flying lap.

Yet he abandoned that and so it was left to Piastri, who had also come out late on the slicks, to break the RB lock at the top of the times.

With purple sectors in the final two thirds of his first flier of FP2, Piastri did indeed sneak ahead on a 1m39.105s.

Pierre Gasly, Alpine A524

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Although there was just a minute to go by this stage, a gaggle of drivers had also moved to sample the softs – including Hamilton, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and the two Saubers, while the RBs remerged to do final inters tours.

Shortly after Piastri produced a third successive fastest lap to finally head the session on a 1m34.725s, Hamilton’s sole slicks effort came in 0.501s down, while Leclerc posted FP2’s third-best time 4.035s off the pace.

The rest had come out without enough time left, leaving the RBs in fourth and fifth with Tsunoda ahead of Ricciardo, Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz taking sixth and seventh ahead of Hulkenberg, who finally posted a time of 1m55.179s.

Bottas took ninth ahead of Esteban Ocon, with Zhou, Albon and Magnussen completing an ultimately meaningless order as most had toured around with the sole aim of being able to conduct a post-chequered-flag practice start on the damp grid.

F1 Japanese GP – FP2 results

The Grove team still does not have a spare, as Sargeant is using the chassis that was crashed by Alex Albon in Melbourne and subsequently repaired.

Sargeant lost control when he put his right-hand wheels on the grass at the high-speed Dunlop Curve lefthander, striking the barrier with both ends of the car. The accident left the team in a race to repair it for FP2.

“It’s pretty significant,” said Vowles, when asked about the extent of the damage. “The chassis is okay, fortunately, but I would say pretty much everything else isn’t. So suspension all round, gearbox cracked, big damage.

“It’s going to be difficult. We’ll obviously do our utmost to try and get the car back out there again, but the damage is extensive. So it will take a while.”

Regarding Sargeant’s mistake he added: “It’s at the top of the brow of the hill there, he struggled to see where his positioning was on track. It fundamentally looks like he didn’t quite realise where he was, with where the grass was on the outside, and put a wheel on the grass.”

The damaged car of Logan Sargeant, Williams FW46, is taken away on a truck by marshals after a crash in FP1

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Vowles denied the suggestion that Sargeant may have felt under pressure to prove a point after being obliged to hand his car to Albon in Melbourne.

“I’ve been chatting to him all week, all these last few weeks, in fact, because this is the point where you’ve got to keep a driver very close to you,” he said. “You’ve given them a very difficult situation to deal with, through no fault of their own.

“But he was honestly in a very good state of mind this week and last night again when I called him at about 9-10pm, a really, really strong state of mind, just wanted to get back into the car and get going. But not with the intention of proving to the world he deserves a seat, just his normal approach to things.

“What you saw here wasn’t a driver making a mistake because they were pushing to the limits. It’s a very different type of mistake, a frustrating one by all accounts, because it wasn’t on the limit of what the car could do.

“There was far more turning potential in it, he just didn’t know where the car was on track, relative to where he expected it to be, anyway.

“So I don’t think you’re seeing there the reaction of someone that wasn’t driving in Melbourne, I think you’re seeing more just a situation that could have appeared at any time.”

James Vowles, Team Principal, Williams Racing

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Vowles says Williams will still be without a spare at the next race in China.

“The third chassis at the moment won’t be with us until Miami, a long way away,” he said.
“In terms of the chassis, if you put all of your resources everything you possibly had within the organisation on it, it could be 8-10 weeks that you pretty much get a chassis done from freezer to something actually built and out there.

“And that’s by the time you get to a third chassis. It takes longer for the first ones as you get used to the process.

“Clearly, we don’t have the whole organisation just working on that, we’re working at the same time on spares and updates, and trying to get the throughputs.

“In our particular case clearly we have never had the intention of being here without three chassis, the intention was to have three right at the beginning of the year.

“It’s an outcome from just an overload within the system, the complexity of this car, and the amount that we were trying to push through.

“In terms of the complexity of it, it’s enormous. The chassis is thousands and thousands of pieces that you’re trying to bring together at the same time.”

While the revisions did not include any changes to its aggressive sidepod solution, which is a step above what any of its rivals have done so far, there was a notable tweak to the arrangements surrounding the cockpit.

Red Bull has already raised eyebrows this year by having inlets in the channel behind the cockpit – with the squad having copied the high gulleys that Mercedes had utilised in recent years.

But for the Japanese GP, an extra inlet has appeared much further forward – as is shown with the white arrows in the image below.

In the upgrade submission documents that teams must send to the FIA before each race weekend, Red Bull explained that this revised location was technically for the “sidepod mounted primary heat exchangers”.

This extra inlet has also coincided with the squad completely closing off, as it has done with extra panels at some races already, outlet areas to help improve efficiency and deliver aero gains further downstream.

Speaking about the motivation for the change, Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan explained that a great deal of work had gone into defining the location for the inlet – as it was key to find one that delivered the biggest bang for buck.

“When you’re trying to do an inlet, it will be really silly to put the inlet where there’s little pressure to work with,” he said.

“So, we’re trying to refine and pick the highest pressure inlets to make the radiator cooling most efficient. That’s the rationale behind the repackage of the inlets. It offers us some rewards.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

While teams are constantly battling aero compromises with additional cooling, Monaghan was clear that the extra inlet was not a response to any issues the team may have found in the early races.

Instead, he explained that the changes were part of an upgrade push that had been agreed before the RB20 had run in anger.

“It was actually done before we even turned a wheel in pre-season testing,” he said. “So, this was sitting there as a small performance gain. The question was, could we actually get it onto the car in the flyaway sequence?

“We looked at it and thought: ‘yeah, we can.’ We made some parts and got them to Australia, so some of it started there. And then we picked the rest of it up here.”

Red Bull Racing RB20 technical detail

Photo by: Jon Noble

New floor and revised brakes

As well as the sidepod inlets, Red Bull has made revisions to the floor – which includes some subtle surface changes and an increased camber to help improve flow to the floor edge wing.

Working together, these changes help deliver more downforce while also maintaining an adequate level of stability.

Monaghan added: “It’s visually a reasonably striking one, and in terms of magnitude of upgrade, it’s roughly what triggers us to do an upgrade.”

Beyond the floor, Red Bull has also reduced the size of its inlet and exit ducts for the front brakes.

This has been possible because of the low brake energy demands of Suzuka, and having a smaller arrangement here is more efficient than simply blanking off ducts – as the team has done at earlier races.

Red Bull Racing RB20 technical detail

Photo by: Jon Noble

Ricciardo has struggled to match team-mate Yuki Tsunoda this year and has suggested that something might not be right with his package.

Racing director Alan Permane has stressed that the fresh chassis was being constructed anyway, and hasn’t been built because of any doubts over Ricciardo’s current car.

“For me the chassis is a big lump of carbon that we attach the suspension to, attach an engine to, and a gearbox to,” he said. “It’s really ever so unlikely that there are performance issues with the chassis.

“However, we have a new one coming through, it makes sense at all levels to give that to Daniel, not least that Yuki is super happy and super comfortable where he is. We don’t have a preference on drivers.

“With Daniel maybe it’s good for him to just put that completely to bed, that there any there any issues with the car.”

In the past teams have sometimes discovered that drivers who suspected an issue with a chassis were correct, although Permane believes that won’t be the case with Ricciardo’s VCARB 01.

Daniel Ricciardo, Visa Cash App RB F1 Team

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“Sometimes you can measure things, you can put chassis on rigs and check stiffnesses and things like that,” he said. “The reason I say it’s ever so unlikely is because it really is not a performance differentiator.

“A survival cell is what it’s known as in the regulations, it’s there to mount the front suspension off, to mount the engine off, and to keep the driver safe.

“So I don’t see it as being a performance differentiator, and it’s certainly not something we want to be hopping drivers in and out of. It’s a happy accident that we have one coming, and it doesn’t make sense to give it to Yuki.

“It makes sense to give it to Daniel, but we’re not bringing a new chassis because of his issues, to clear about that. It is just that it all kind of fits together.”

Permane conceded that the team has to take a careful approach when tuning the car for Ricciardo’s personal preferences.

“It’s not an easy one because you can address those sorts of things with set up,” he said. “But what you don’t want to do is make the car slower, and we’ve been very cautious not to make it [a] more comfortable but slower car.

“In a perfect world, you dial it out, give him his confidence, and then slowly creep back to get the maximum performance.

Daniel Ricciardo, RB F1 Team VCARB 01

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“There’s no reason that Daniel can’t drive the car like it is, in its quickest form. That’s clear. I’m pretty sure he understands that and that’s what we need to do, is give him the quickest possible car.”

For Suzuka the team has introduced a revised floor, which was run by Tsunoda in FP1 while third driver Ayuma Iwasa used the standard version. That car was then converted to the new floor for Ricciardo’s use in FP2.

Permane added that the update will bring more performance at venues where slower corners dominate.

“It has strakes at the front, it has a new wing down the side of it, and actually a new little detail round the rear tyre,” he said. “It gives us a nice little step of downforce.

“We’re a little bit hesitant to say it’s going to be fantastic here at Suzuka, it mainly focusses a little bit on lower speed, and here we have a much more high speed content, so we’re intrigued to see how it will go here.

“We would like a little bit more high-speed performance, that’s why I say we’re a little bit hesitant here. We’ve got upgrades coming in the next couple of races that will target that area.”

Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble

The Japanese GP is being hosted in April, the earliest the event has ever been held after consistently being hosted later in the season. The race has been brought forward to be more logistically efficient along with the Chinese GP which takes place in two weeks’ time.

The event coincides with Japan’s cherry blossom season and is also expected to see some significant changes to the usual weather conditions. Temperatures are expected to be cooler for the grand prix in April, with the average maximum temperatures of around 15°C compared to the averages of late September/early October which are usually 22-24°C when the race normally takes place.

Bringing the race forward also decreases the risk of rainfall, with MeteoMotorsport saying that the risk has dropped from 41% to 33%. Although the chances of rain have decreased, the Suzuka circuit is still one of the wettest destinations on the 2024 calendar.

An earlier race ensures that the Japanese GP is being held before the Kansai region’s rainy season, which takes place from the start of June to around mid-July. There has also never been a recorded typhoon this early in the year, further reducing the risk of bad weather affecting the race.

The Kansai region has not witnessed a tropical cyclone this early in the year since records began in 1951, however during that time the area has seen 38 approaching or nearby in the month of October, when the race is usually held. The earliest tropical cyclone in Japan was Typhoon Thelma, which made landfall on 25 April 1956.

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

What is the weather forecast for the 2024 Japanese Grand Prix?

Practice – Friday, 5 April

Maximum temperature: 17°C
Minimum temperature: 9°C
Chance of rain: 30%

Friday is set to start off chilly and mostly cloudy but should see the only potential sunshine of the whole weekend. FP1 should remain dry, however, it will get progressively more overcast over the course of the afternoon, with a slight chance of rain for the afternoon FP2 session.

A light northerly breeze of around 10kph is expected during the afternoon practice with a 30% chance of a potential light shower during the hour.

FP1 will see highs of 17°C with temperatures increasing to 15°C for FP2.

Qualifying – Saturday, 6 April

Maximum temperature: 19°C
Minimum temperature: 10°C
Chance of rain: 30%

Saturday is expected to be overcast with a potential chance of light rain but is likely to be dry. A slight north-westerly breeze of 10kph is once again expected.

FP3 will see highs of 17°C with temperatures increasing to 19°C for qualifying.

Race – Sunday, 7 April

Maximum temperature: 21°C
Minimum temperature: 12°C
Chance of rain: 40%

There is a slight chance of rain in the morning of race day, but this is expected to improve during the course of the day.

The race will start at 2pm local time (6am UK time), with Japanese forecaster Weather News predicting sunny spells before becoming overcast as the event progresses.

Race temperatures are expected to be around 21°C.

Has the Japanese Grand Prix ever been affected by a typhoon?

Michael Schumacher , Benetton B194 leads Damon Hill, Williams FW16

Photo by: Sutton Images

The Japanese Grand Prix has been affected by multiple typhoons since it was first held in 1968. The 1994 grand prix was indirectly impacted by the back end of Typhoon Zelda, which saw heavy rainfall at the start of the race causing nine cars to crash out in the first 15 laps. The race was red-flagged after Martin Brundle’s McLaren aquaplaned at the Dunlop corner, resulting in the car hitting a marshal who was attending to the Footwork of Gianni Morbidelli, breaking his leg.

Due to the 1994 regulations, the red flag split the race into two parts and the times from both sessions were added together to decide the result. This was the last time in F1 history where the final classification had been set by aggregate time, with Damon Hill in the Williams taking the chequered flag by 10.1 seconds. At the time of the red flag, Michael Schumacher in the Benetton had been leading the race by 6.8s but with Hill’s lead at the end of the race, aggregate time meant he had taken the win by 3.3s. This meant that the British driver was just one point behind the German in the driver’s championship with just one race left to go in the season.

Typhoon Phanfone affected the 2014 grand prix with an extremely wet race which resulted in multiple red flags. The race was set to run for 53 laps but was brought to an early end on the 46th lap after Jules Bianchi lost control of his Marussia a few laps before and crashed into a tractor crane, which was on the track to tend to the Sauber of Adrian Sutil who had spun off on the 42nd lap.

The impact resulted in Bianchi sustaining severe head injuries, which he later died from in 2015. The Frenchman’s death prompted an investigation by the FIA and eventually led to the introduction of the virtual safety car and the cockpit halo, to prevent a similar accident in the future.

Typhoon Hagibis forced the 2019 Saturday qualifying session to be moved to Sunday due to forecasted poor weather. It was the third time that a qualifying session at the Japanese GP was moved due to the heavy rain. This includes the 2004 race which was impacted by Typhoon Ma-on and the 2010 grand prix, which was delayed three times due to the weather before it was moved to Sunday.

Multiple Japanese GPs have been affected by the rain including the memorable qualifying session for the 2005 race, where deteriorating wet conditions resulted in many of the championship front runners qualifying towards the bottom of the grid. The race eventually saw Kimi Raikkonen take the win after qualifying 17th.

Verstappen retired in the opening stages of the last race in Melbourne after his brakes overheated – with it appearing that the pad had jammed on to the disc because of an issue related to the caliper.

While there has been no detailed explanation from Red Bull about what exactly happened to trigger the failure, various theories have emerged.

One idea is that the culprit was the failure of the team to tighten a screw that was critical to the brake caliper operating correctly.

Verstappen added credence to that idea at Suzuka on Thursday when he suggested that it was more a procedural problem than a design fault.

“It wasn’t really a problem in the end, but you have to secure it properly, of course,” he said. “The procedures will be changed a bit to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan has explained, however, that the situation was more complicated.

He said that it involved a chain of events that had potentially kicked off as early as when extra work was required following Verstappen’s off in FP1.

“As I’ve seen many times when cars retire from the race, a sequence of events has occurred in an appropriate order that has triggered it,” he said.

“You can almost trace it back into what began on Friday. Saturday, there were unclear hints maybe there was something amiss, but there was nothing that stood out to say this is going to let you down. So, it was many things.

“If you can stop the sequence, you will stop the problem. So, there are little changes in place to try and interrupt that sequence for that specific event. And it’s applicable to all of the car, in that if there’s a sequence of events that leads to a race retirement, you try to interrupt it before you get them.

“So, I’m not going to say to you it’s a process or anything else. Everybody will do their best to ensure we break that sequence.”

Monaghan explained that some short-term fixes were in place for the Japanese GP, while other aspects would follow down the road.

“There are some subtle changes in there,” he said. “It’s actually quite a long-term process to try and deal with the hot air ducts.

“Clearly we’re not seeking a repeat, so yes what fixes can be applied since Australia are on and there are more longer-term ones coming as and when we can revise the parts.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

But despite work continuing on the matter, Monaghan expressed some confidence that there would be no repeat issue.

Asked if such a problem could happen again, he said: “I doubt it, no.”

Additional reporting by Ronald Vording

The Red Bull driver followed the red flag-enforced hiatus, produced by Logan Sargeant’s crash, with a hot lap on soft tyres that eventually landed on a 1m30.056s to throw down the gauntlet for the rest of the weekend.

In anticipation of any inclement weather at Suzuka later on in the weekend, it appeared that many of the teams wished to prioritise the longer runs during FP1 in the event that FP2 faces any rainfall.

This stunted the period of faster runs on the soft tyre, as the opening half-hour of running was dedicated to the hard and medium compounds amid the early installation laps.

Lando Norris led the way after the opening 15 minutes, having traded top-line times with Melbourne winner Carlos Sainz, but the Briton then had his time matched to the thousandth by Fernando Alonso.

Verstappen then raised the bar with a 1m31.463s, ominously on the hard tyre, before a lull in proceedings among the majority of the field as the teams switched from the cast of medium and hard tyres for a soft run during the second half of the session.

This prompted Lewis Hamilton to vault to the top on softs, almost a second faster than his 2021 title rival’s time.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

The session was red-flagged moments after when Logan Sargeant put his Williams into the wall: the American washed out through the Dunlop Curve and spun over the gravel. This did little to stop him from hitting the wall with the front of his car, which rotated it rearwards.

Williams will need to assess Sargeant’s car for damage, which was the car Albon crashed in FP1 at the Australian Grand Prix and required chassis repairs. The Grove team is still awaiting completion of a spare tub, which it does not expect to have until Miami.

When the 10-minute lay-off had ended once the Williams was swept away, Verstappen punched in a 1m30.056s to return to the top, followed by team-mate Sergio Perez who was 0.181s off in that phase of the session.

This remained the set order at the top of the timesheets, as the two Red Bulls switched back onto the hard tyres to collect more running around the Japanese figure-of-eight circuit.

Sainz was third fastest, just over two tenths off of Verstappen’s best, as the Ferraris were split by the two Mercedes cars; George Russell was a scant 0.013s clear of Lewis Hamilton, who in turn beat Charles Leclerc by just a smidgen.

Fernando Alonso was seventh, running the older-spec bodywork on his Aston Martin AMR24 as Lance Stroll trialled the slightly revised sidepods on his machinery. However, their back-to-back testing hit a snag as an aero rake broke on Stroll’s car early on in the session.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri collected the eighth-fastest time over home hero Yuki Tsunoda, while Lando Norris completed the top 10 over Esteban Ocon and Alex Albon. 

Red Bull junior Ayumu Iwasa made his first FP1 appearance for RB at his home circuit, claiming the 16th-fastest time as he slowly grew into the session. This was 0.9s shy of Tsunoda’s fastest lap in an error-free showing from the Formula 2 race winner.

F1 Japanese GP – FP1 results