Oscar Piastri led a McLaren one-two in a disrupted second practice for the Japanese Grand Prix, the Australian set a 28.114 going just under half a tenth faster than teammate Lando Norris. The second session was interrupted by four red flags but that didn\u2019t stop the two McLaren\u2019s from leading the way with Isack Hadjar putting his Racing Bull three and a half tenth behind Norris.<\/p>\n
Much of the build-up to this weekend had been focused on Hadjar\u2019s now former teammate Yuki Tsunoda switching places with Liam Lawson at Red Bull. While McLaren led the way as expected their main rivals, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes did not set a reprehensive time on the soft tyre.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton was their nearest real rival, the Ferrari driver going fourth four-tenths off the pace set by Piastri as he spilt the Racing Bulls. The seven-time champion was a quarter of a tenth behind Hadjar as he went a hundredth and a half faster than Lawson. However, the session was interrupted by four red flags.<\/p>\n
The biggest was Jack Doohan who crashed his Alpine after losing control at the First Turn (Turns One-Two), he went across the gravel making contact with the barriers and losing his front tyres in the process. While he fortunately reported that he was okay, the incident left behind significant debris as well as damage to the barriers, leading to a lengthy recovery operation by the marshals.<\/p>\n
The series of stoppages left it impossible to draw any serious conclusions about relative pace, although it remains clear that McLaren are the team to beat. Teams also looked to struggle<\/p>\n
George Russell put his Mercedes sixth just eight thousandths behind Lawson, as the Englishman went two hundredths ahead of Charles Leclerc. Leclerc was eight hundredths faster than Max Verstappen, Ferrari\u2019s focus on Friday looked to be resolving the set-up problems which has held them back in the opening races.<\/p>\n
Verstappen looked to struggle to get a clean lap in which left him eight hundredths ahead of Pierre Gasly, as Carlos Sainz was three-quarters of a tenth off. Sainz completed the top ten after he went nearly two-tenths faster than his Williams teammate Alex Albon, as the British-Thai driver going four hundredths ahead of the Sauber\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Nico Hulkenberg was comfortably nearly a quarter of a second faster than his teammate Gabriel Bortoleto, and Esteban Ocon was a tenth and a half ahead of his teammate Ollie Bearman. While Sauber and Haas were separated by just over a tenth between Bortoleto and Ocon. Kimi Antonelli aborted his soft run leaving him without a representative lap as he went nearly a quarter of a second ahead of Alonso<\/p>\n
The Spaniard was another to bring out the red flag as he went off and beached his Aston Martin after spinning when he touched the gravel at Degner One (Turn Eight). It was an uncharacteristic mistake by the most experienced driver in the sport’s history, but highlighted the gusty conditions.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda was eighteenth, but the Japanese driver making his debut for Red Bull this weekend didn\u2019t get a representative time on the soft tyre, which left him two and a half seconds off the outright pace as he spilt the Aston Martin\u2019s. Tsunoda was six and a half tenths behind Alonso and ahead of Lance Stroll by almost a quarter of a second while Jack Doohan completed the field.<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri led a McLaren one-two in a disrupted second practice for the Japanese Grand Prix, the Australian set a 28.114 going just under half a tenth faster than teammate Lando Norris. The second session was interrupted by four red flags but that didn\u2019t stop the two McLaren\u2019s from leading the way with Isack Hadjar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2250,767,2232,1009,1011,1012,1131,1287,1331,1475,1572,1573,2296,2297,1940,1941],"class_list":["post-14485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-2250","tag-fp2","tag-isack-hadjar","tag-japan","tag-japanese-gp","tag-japanese-grand-prix","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-mie-prefecture","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-practice-reports","tag-practice-two","tag-racing-bulls","tag-racing-bulls-honda","tag-suzuka","tag-suzuka-international-racing-course"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14486,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485\/revisions\/14486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}