Formula 1 drivers sympathised with fans at Suzuka who saw little running after rain fell during practice on Friday.
After the first practice session was disrupted when Logan Sargeant crashed his Williams, rain fell ahead of the second hour of running. With the track only slightly wet, drivers were unwilling to risk wearing out a set of intermediate tyres on the abrasive surface.
As a result, seven of the 19 drivers expected to participate did not leave the pits during the session and most of those who did only completed installation laps. Sauber used the opportunity to practice pit stops while the whole field covered just 71 laps between them.
“It’s a shame for the fans,” said Fernando Alonso, one of the drivers who did not run at all. “Always when they come here, they support us so much and we don’t have the tyres to run. So I’m sorry for them.”
Lewis Hamilton blamed an off-season rules change which took away the opportunity for drivers to receive an extra set of intermediate tyres for rain-affected practice sessions on Fridays. The rule was introduced to encourage drivers to run in wet practice sessions instead of stockpiling fresh intermediates for later in the weekend.
Although drivers have a larger allocation of intermediate tyres this year – five sets instead of four – most chose not to use them at this stage in case later sessions are affected by rain.
“It’s a shame we didn’t get that that session,” said the Mercedes driver. “They have changed the tyre rule so therefore no one goes out and runs on intermediates. It just doesn’t make sense really, but there you go.”
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His team mate George Russell said the FIA should use “common sense” and give each driver an extra set of slick tyres to use during final practice on Saturday.
“It is a shame for the fans here and people watching at home,” he said. “We’ve obviously travelled three quarters of the way around the world, so to not do any laps is pretty annoying.
I hope the FIA allow all the teams to carry over a set of dry tyres into FP3 because ordinarily in FP3 we don’t do many laps, just practising for qualifying. That’d be great for us and for the fans.
“So I hope common sense prevails there and hope we just find a solution for these kind of conditions because it’s not the first time this has happened, and it definitely won’t be the last time.”
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