Contrary to the weather forecast, conditions remained dry for free practice in Suzuka, with all three slick tyres performing strongly and Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton going quickest on the supersoft: outpacing last year’s practice times in cool conditions.

The track surface proved to be a bit more aggressive this year than expected, possibly due to recent typhoons having cleaned the surface. This may accelerate tyre wear and degradation, with teams carrying out track assessments in free practice over all three compounds on different fuel loads. A few cases of blistering were noted in free practice, but this affected only a small number of drivers.

The work carried out in free practice will be particularly important if it rains tomorrow as expected, limiting dry running. Sunday’s race is nonetheless expected to be dry and warmer than today.

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF CAR RACING
“The teams benefitted from unexpectedly dry weather to gather plenty of information about all three compounds here, on a slightly more aggressive surface than generally anticipated, with each tyre potentially forming part of a viable race strategy for Sunday. This obviously includes the supersoft, with the softest choice in Japan this weekend being far less extreme than the hypersoft tyre nominated at the last two races. This means that there will be a different approach to strategy and tyre choices, when it comes to qualifying as well, as already seen by the quite mixed choices made by different teams in their tyre selections for the grand prix here. There are still some question marks to consider – especially if Sunday’s race conditions turn out to be quite different to today or tomorrow – so it’s hard to make any more detailed predictions for now.”

FREE PRACTICE 1 – TOP 3 TIMES
DRIVER 		TIME   	  COMPOUND
Hamilton 	1m28.691s SOFT NEW
Bottas		1m29.137s MEDIUM NEW
Ricciardo 	1m29.373s SUPERSOFT NEW

FREE PRACTICE 2 – TOP 3 TIMES
DRIVER 		TIME 	  COMPOUND
Hamilton 	1m28.217s SUPERSOFT NEW
Bottas		1m28.678s SUPERSOFT NEW
Vettel 		1m29.050s SUPERSOFT NEW

FP1 - BEST TIME BY COMPOUND
COMPOUND 	DRIVER 	  TIME
MEDIUM 		Bottas    1m29.137s
SOFT		Hamilton  1m28.691s
SUPERSOFT 	Ricciardo 1m29.373s

FP2 - BEST TIME BY COMPOUND
COMPOUND 	DRIVER 	  TIME
MEDIUM 		Ocon 	  1m31.130s
SOFT		Hamilton  1m28.911s
SUPERSOFT	Hamilton  1m28.217s

MOST LAPS BY COMPOUND SO FAR
COMPOUND 	DRIVER    LAPS
MEDIUM 		Sirotkin  25
SOFT		Stroll    25
SUPERSOFT 	Sirotkin  24

TYRE STATISTICS OF THE DAY
			MEDIUM	SOFT	SUPERSOFT
Kms driven* 		1178 	2473 	2793
Sets used overall**	14	29	36

* The above number gives the total amount of kilometres
driven in FP1 and FP2 today, all drivers combined.
** Per compound, all drivers combined.