Across the length of a the pit lane, drivers seemed to be just as thrilled to be back in Japan as the passionate, eclectic local fans were pleased to be able to watch F1 up close once again.
However, one aspect the paddock likely would not have missed about the famous figure of eight track located near the coast of Mie Prefecture is its weather. From typhoons to rain more regular than at the likes of Silverstone, rarely in the modern era does a three-day race weekend at Suzuka go by without wet tyres being called into action at some point.
As if to prove this point, the first day of practice for the 31st world championship grand prix held at Suzuka was one of the rare Fridays this year where not a single lap was completed on dry tyres by any of the 20 cars. Instead, the entire field will only have a single hour of expected dry running on Saturday to test their cars on the different compounds, plan their strategies and, crucially, decide whether or not to go with a dry set-up for qualifying or potentially prepare their cars in the expectation more rain is to come on Sunday.
At the end of a very wet day of running, Mercedes sat at the top of the times with George Russell ahead of team mate by two tenths of a second. It was a big improvement over the pair’s placing in the earlier session, where Russell had ended first practice in 18th and Hamilton 13th after both had ventured out onto the track far later than their rivals and saw the track conditions quickly deteriorate as more rain arrived.
“The wet conditions today were probably not that representative for the rest of the weekend,” fastest driver Russell admitted.
“It was a good learning opportunity for the future. It’s important to understand things like the tyre crossover from wet to intermediate, and even if that doesn’t pay dividends this weekend, it will in the future.”
There remains a modest, but by no means small, risk that Sunday may also be affected by rain. With teams being limited to how many sets of wet and intermediate tyres they used, Mercedes made the call to run three separate sets of intermediate tyres over the second 90-minute session. Technical director Mike Elliott later explained they were simply scrubbing their intermediates available to be better prepared for Sunday should they require them.
“To be honest,…
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