Max Verstappen and Red Bull led the way in opening practice for Formula 1’s 2024 Japanese Grand Prix, but this was far from a repeat affair of the opening day from the 2023 event at Suzuka just six months ago.
This time, in the cooler April climate, rain intervened to limit running massively in FP2, while Red Bull was left eyeing Charles Leclerc‘s surprise early long-run times from FP1 with something approaching concern.
It remains far too early to tell if Ferrari really stands a chance of repeating its Australia glory, but this development has added a clear note of intrigue to an event many had expected to be a Red Bull walkover given how good it and Verstappen were here in 2023.
The story of the day
Most of Friday’s early focus had gone on Red Bull’s cockpit-mounted cooling updates, plus the sidepod upgrades Aston Martin has so far only put on Lance Stroll‘s AMR23. The green team placed a massive aerodynamic load measuring rake behind his rear wheels early in FP1, only for a part of it to break and hang loose after a few minutes of running.
Then, just as he did following Red Bull’s 2023 Singapore GP defeat, Verstappen led the way in FP1. But this time at Suzuka it was in a rather different fashion.
For a start, Sergio Perez ended up 0.181s adrift in second, with Melbourne winner Carlos Sainz also getting within 0.213s of the world champion’s leading time. At this stage in 2023 here, Verstappen had a commanding 0.626s margin over Sainz when topping FP1.
Verstappen’s advantage in FP1 was not as great as it had been last year, before he sat out the weather-blighted FP2
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
But the bigger differences came in how the opening session played out once the early installation running on the hard and medium tyres was completed. FP1 was pretty much split into two parts by Logan Sargeant‘s costly Dunlop Curve shunt, just as Hamilton had led the way on the switch to soft tyres and temporarily taken the top spot.
When the rest headed out on softs, Verstappen and Perez carved their way to the leading times, but the Dutchman and Leclerc then switched to long-run data gathering. This isn’t unheard of in FP1, but it is unusual given the run plans the teams enact are rather uniform and reflect the pre-event fears that rain would impact FP2. This, indeed, came to pass.
What precipitation did fall was light – it could hardly be said to be a washout. But enough near-constant drizzle…
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